At the March Oregon Progressive Party public meeting, we appoved this statement to be mailed to our US Senators/Representatives and other stating our position of opposition to the granting of Fast Track Authority to the president as well as to the Trans Pacific Partnership, NAFTA on steriods corporate trade agreement. 

Because Oregon Senator Ron Wyden plays a unique role in moving the next corporate trade agreements forward, the Oregon Progressive Party calls for Senator Wyden to abandon his talks with Senator Hatch of the Senate Finance Committee for granting revised Trade Promotion Authority (Fast Track Authority) to President Obama and to opposite the trade agreements which President Obama has been negotiating in top secret for as long as the past 5 years.

• The Trans Pacific Partnership has been negotiated in deep secrecy for over 5 years

• The Obama administration has also been negotiating the Trans Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) and the Trade in Services Agreement (both also in secret)

• The Trans Pacific Partnership will affect much more than traditional trade issues of quotas and tariffs, including access to medicine, patents, copyright law, internet access, labor rights including the ability to freely associate, protection of the environment, state organized enterprises, regulatory coherence, banking and financial regulation, Buy American and Buy Local laws, sweatshop free laws, labeling of foods and GMO containing products, and much more

• The TPP, thus far encompassing 40% of world economic activity, is less about trade than about a massive expansion of transnational corporate control, establishing rules which are enforced by corporate challenges to domestic laws before unaccountable tribunals, thus stripping decision-making from citizens and usurping democracy locally and globally

• Past corporate trade agreements have resulted in loss of American manufacturing jobs, attacks on the environment and labor rights, corporate suits against sovereign nations for perceived lost of future corporate profits

• All past corporate trade agreements have been passed using the Trade Promotion Authority process

• The Trade Promotion Authority process cedes Congressional responsibility to negotiate trade to the executive branch and does so for 5-7 years with possibly extensions

• Trade Promotion Authority is not required in order to negotiate trade agreements

• The Trade Promotion Authority process suspends standard democratic processes (presidential signing of agreement after approval by congress, the ability to have unlimited time to read and consider the agreement, full open congressional debate, amendment of the agreement)

The Oregon Progressive Party calls on our US Representatives and Senators to oppose the extension of Trade Promotion Authority to the president and we call for the immediate release of negotiating text to the American public of all agreements being negotiated.

And because the Trans Pacific Partnership and other agreements are based on the NAFTA Free Trade model and have been negotiated in secret with no access by the pubic, we further call for our Oregon Congressional delegation to vote no on these agreements should they come to a vote