Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal?
Most
likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government
doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top
secret.
Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: “We can’t make
this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would
be opposed to it.”
If the American people would be opposed to a
trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of
the United States.
Let’s send a loud message to our trade
officials: No vote on a fast-track for trade agreements until the American
people can see what’s in this TPP deal. Sign this petition right now to make the
TPP agreement public.
The Administration says I’m wrong – that there’s nothing to worry about. They
say the deal is nearly done, and they are making a lot of promises about how the
deal will affect workers, the environment, and human rights. Promises – but
people like you can’t see the actual deal.
For more than two years now,
giant corporations have had an enormous amount of access to see the parts of the
deal that might affect them and to give their views as negotiations progressed.
But the doors stayed locked for the regular people whose jobs are on the
line.
If most of the trade deal is good for the American economy, but there’s a
provision hidden in the fine print that could help multinational corporations
ship American jobs overseas or allow for watering down of environmental or labor
rules, fast track would mean that Congress couldn’t write an amendment to fix
it. It’s all or nothing.
Before we sign on to rush through a deal like
that – no amendments, no delays, no ability to block a bad bill – the American
people should get to see what’s in it.
Sherrod Brown has been leading
this fight, and he points out that TPP isn’t classified military intelligence –
it’s a trade agreement among 12 countries that control 40% of the world’s
economy. A trade agreement that affects jobs, environmental regulations, and
whether workers around the globe are treated humanely. It might even affect the
new financial rules we put in place after the 2008 crisis. This trade agreement
doesn’t matter to just the biggest corporations – it matters to all of
us.
When giant corporations get to see the
details and the American people don’t, we all lose. Let’s level the playing
field: No vote on fast-tracking trade until the public can read the TPP
deal.
We’ve all seen the tricks and traps that corporations
hide in the fine print of contracts. We’ve all seen the provisions they slip
into legislation to rig the game in their favor. Now just imagine what they have
done working behind closed doors with TPP.
We can’t keep the American
people in the dark.
Thank you for being a part of
this,
Elizabeth
No comments:
Post a Comment