Trans Pacific Partnership FTA – TPP FTA
Trade negotiators from the United States and eight other countries have been busily negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. This currently includes Vietnam, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Australia, Peru and Chile, but is also intended as a “docking agreement” that other Pacific Rim countries would join over time, such as Indonesia, Russia, Japan, the Philippines and possibly even China.
To date, the Obama Administration has been using NAFTA as the model for these negotiations. And the window of opportunity for preventing this FTA from becoming a new “NAFTA for the Pacific Rim” is rapidly closing. Here are some of the questions yet to be answered:
- Labor rights: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA include labor standards based on International Labor Organization conventions, and if included, how will they be enforced?
- Investment Provisions: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA include so-called “investor-to-state” provisions that allow individual corporations to challenge environmental, consumer and other public interest policies as barriers to trade?
- Public Procurement: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA respect nations’ and communities’ right to set purchasing preferences that keep taxpayer dollars re-circulating in local economies?
- Access to Medicines: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA allow governments to produce and/or obtain affordable, generic medications for sick people?
- Agriculture: Will the Trans-Pacific FTA allow countries to ensure that farmers and farm workers are fairly compensated, while also preventing the agricultural dumping that has forced so many family farmers off their land?
Please weigh in with your legislators that these issues need to be addressed – see the contact information at the bottom of this page.
Background written by the Washington Fair Trade Coalition
Find out more about the TPP and take action at the Citizen’s Trade Campaign
Good news! TPP will be a big topic in the Democratic platform. I received information from people working on getting rid of this terrible plan. Here is a link to a video: https://youtu.be/wFfaItb5elA
And, an interactive webinar tomorrow, Sunday, at 4:30PM Pacific time: https://actionnetwork.org/events/free-trade-pipelines-spark-clean-energy-revolution
The webinar has several people involved with successful programs – food, water resources, fracked gas, and natural resources in general.
I’m not sure if these links can be accessed from this connection, but if you can’t get the webinar to open, try:
Or, if an email is provided to me, I can just forward the complete information. And, the links will be accessible.
I am interested in joining your organization, as well.