How bad is this job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal? Now that we know some of what’s actually in this secret agreement negotiated by foreign governments and multinational corporations to benefit a few powerful businesses and their executives at the top of the economic ladder, the answer is–the TPP is as bad or worse than we had imagined.
The TPP specifics are devastating. American workers will again be asked to compete with countries that offer little or none of the wages, benefits, health, safety and environmental protections that helped us build the strongest middle class in history.
House Democrats joined me at a Capitol press conference last week to explain how these trade agreements are destroying good paying American jobs and the middle class, sending millions of jobs overseas and causing millions more workers to lose wages and benefits in a race to the bottom that must be stopped.
In fact, this TPP contains nothing to fix a broken U.S. trade enforcement system that allows terrible economic damage to be done before any actions can be taken; no requirements for “partner” nations to provide living wages or worker health and safety benefits comparable to the United States; nothing requiring them to protect the environment from industrial pollution; nothing preventing them from manipulating their currencies to keep dumping millions more tons of low-grade, foreign government subsidized steel–and countless other sub-par knock-offs of American manufactured goods– into the U.S. marketplace; nothing to assure that imported foods will meet tough U.S. safety and inspection standards; nothing to protect U.S. consumers from big international price increases for lifesaving drugs to fight cancer and other dread diseases and nothing to help stop horrific violations of human rights.
Make no mistake—the battle to stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a battle to save American jobs, American manufacturing, the American middle class and the American dream. We will leave no stone unturned to send it to the scrap heap of history.
U.S. Congressman Rick Nolan
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