Democrats on Capitol Hill stood with American workers today by voting No to a trade provision that would have provided trade assistance to displaced workers if TPP is passed. Without the provision passing the house, another vote must me taken to advance TPP as a whole without the help for workers. The vote was 302-126, effectively stalling the larger slave trade compact known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The defeat for Obama's agenda of gaining fast-track authority is another example of DC politics that have made it difficult to get even basic trade deals and other national security programs passed into law.
Americans are far too weary of anything that looks or smells like the same old 90's and Bush era policies that do nothing to advance American workers wages or conditions domestically, while giving corporate America everything they want, even when the trade deal has more built in safeguards.
Without trade assistance, it a pure corporate bonanza of weakened labor leverage, and more depressed wages, that will have to be put up for a vote in the Senate. With trade assistance failing in the house, senate democrats are less likely to allow fast track there.
The Trans-Pacific partnership is a corporate wish-list, with far reaching implications that would only strengthen already dominate corporate interests in medicine and technology, being sold as a trade deal that will enhance our GDP with easier exporting.
More corporate power:
While the safeguards built into TPP protect from corporate extortion, as the US has never lost a "trade dispute" complaint in the WTO, its an example of American distrust of American corporations and their use of arbitration provisions to circumvent US legal precedent.
Drug prices in the USA would continue to climb, as big pharma has used TPP as a trojan horse vehicle to regulate drug markets in their favor. Why would big pharma need to do this with a trade deal? Because no such pro-pharma regulation would pass as easily as a fast-tracked TPP.
Hollywood is using TPP to export copyright laws. Currently US ISP's are immune to their
"users" behavior, but exporting that protection is cold comfort to consumers who already have to battle corporate America to use products they thought they "owned" from things such as cars to cell phones.
Labor is outraged with TPP because the mechanisms to protect workers in other countries are already not being enforced, adding a few lines of language to TPP is not going to make up for almost a decade of human rights abuses that are still unresolved in past trade agreements.
Removing the corporate wish-list would mean fewer republican voting for the deal. We know republicans don't give a damn about American workers, and so far have been all too happy in supporting Obama selling out his supporters in the process.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8773145/democrat-tpp-obama-fail
The defeat for Obama's agenda of gaining fast-track authority is another example of DC politics that have made it difficult to get even basic trade deals and other national security programs passed into law.
Americans are far too weary of anything that looks or smells like the same old 90's and Bush era policies that do nothing to advance American workers wages or conditions domestically, while giving corporate America everything they want, even when the trade deal has more built in safeguards.
Without trade assistance, it a pure corporate bonanza of weakened labor leverage, and more depressed wages, that will have to be put up for a vote in the Senate. With trade assistance failing in the house, senate democrats are less likely to allow fast track there.
The Trans-Pacific partnership is a corporate wish-list, with far reaching implications that would only strengthen already dominate corporate interests in medicine and technology, being sold as a trade deal that will enhance our GDP with easier exporting.
More corporate power:
While the safeguards built into TPP protect from corporate extortion, as the US has never lost a "trade dispute" complaint in the WTO, its an example of American distrust of American corporations and their use of arbitration provisions to circumvent US legal precedent.
Drug prices in the USA would continue to climb, as big pharma has used TPP as a trojan horse vehicle to regulate drug markets in their favor. Why would big pharma need to do this with a trade deal? Because no such pro-pharma regulation would pass as easily as a fast-tracked TPP.
Hollywood is using TPP to export copyright laws. Currently US ISP's are immune to their
"users" behavior, but exporting that protection is cold comfort to consumers who already have to battle corporate America to use products they thought they "owned" from things such as cars to cell phones.
Labor is outraged with TPP because the mechanisms to protect workers in other countries are already not being enforced, adding a few lines of language to TPP is not going to make up for almost a decade of human rights abuses that are still unresolved in past trade agreements.
Removing the corporate wish-list would mean fewer republican voting for the deal. We know republicans don't give a damn about American workers, and so far have been all too happy in supporting Obama selling out his supporters in the process.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/12/8773145/democrat-tpp-obama-fail
