DRESS FOR RAIN! Protest Where? Outside the Grand America Hotel 555 S. Main St. • Salt Lake City, Utah
Rally and Press Conference During the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations in SLC
Lead negotiators from twelve countries throughout the Pacific Rim will be meeting at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City from November 19 to 24 to push the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership towards completion.
This massive pact will affect jobs, the environment, internet freedom, consumer safety and more — but negotiators refuse to tell the public what they are proposing in our names. Meanwhile, they have granted hundreds of corporate and industry lobbyists access to the text, representing Walmart, Chevron, Cargill and more.
Join Citizens Trade Campaign, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club and the Backbone Campaign for a press event and rally aimed at dragging the TPP out of the shadows.
These meetings are officially referred to as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Talks.
The nations involved are the
United States,
Australia,
New Zealand,
Singapore,
Malaysia,
Vietnam,
Brunei,
Chile, and
Peru.
Japan, Mexico and Canada have indicated a desire to join.
The economic power of this group is more than 40% larger than the 27-nation European Union. The claimed purpose of TPP is to promote development and create jobs.
NAFTA SHAFTA was a bad joke on us.
TPP is even worse.
Alan Grayson "US Sovereignty Being Handed to Corporate Interests"
It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it's alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.
Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty. And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!
NAFTA SHAFTA was a bad joke on us.
Let's look at NAFTA's broken promises. We have a nearly 20 year history that proves NAFTA harmed US workers.
NAFTA’s Broken Promises 1994-2013: Outcomes of the North American Free Trade Agreement
After nineteen years of NAFTA, we can measure its actual outcomes. The grand promises made by proponents remain unfulfilled. Many outcomes are exactly the opposite of what was promised.
NAFTA was an experiment, establishing a radically new “trade” agreement model. It exploded the boundaries of past trade pacts, which had focused narrowly on cutting tariffs and quotas.
In contrast, NAFTA contained chapters that created new privileges and protections for foreign investors; required the three countries to waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American; limited regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extended medicine patent monopolies and limited food and product safety standards and border inspection.
U.S. Job Loss, Not Gain
Projections on trade balance, jobs prove wrong. In 1993, Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) projected that NAFTA would lead to a rising U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, which would create 170,000 net new jobs in the United States.
One million American jobs lost to NAFTA.
Huge new NAFTA trade deficit emerges.
Services and manufacturing export growth slows under NAFTA.
Trade Adjustment Assistance data tracks the NAFTA jobs devastation.
The Department of Commerce established such a program, but after finding fewer than 1,500 specific jobs that could be attributed to NAFTA, the program was shut down because its findings were so bleak.23
Corporate promises of job creation are broken.
Special investor privileges promote offshoring of American jobs.
Decreased Wages, Increased Inequality
The average U.S. wage has grown less than one percent annually in real terms in the 19 years since NAFTA was enacted even as worker productivity has risen at more than three times that pace.33 Given rising inequality, the median U.S. wage has fared even worse and today remains at the same level seen in 1979.34
OK, TPP started under GW BUSH. No surprise. There have been at least 19 planning meetings so far. All secret of course. TPP now belongs to President Obama.
A LITTLE TPP HISTORY. OK, TPP started under GW BUSH. No surprise. There have been at least 19 planning meetings so far. All secret of course. TPP now belongs to President Obama.
The Evolution of the TPP
HOW BADLY WILL THE TRANSPACIFIC PARTNERSHIP AFFECT US?
I highly recommend reading this article if you haven't. There is more information here regarding TPP than I have found elsewhere under one cover.
But it's not really a trade agreement.
Second, note that many of those countries already have trade agreements with the US. Hence, THIS AMAZING FACT:
TPP is a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. In fact, of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters!
The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism. They create sweeping new "rights" and escape hatches to protect multinational corporations from accountability to our governments... and to us. Here are a few of TPP's provisos that would make our daily lives riskier, poorer, and less free:
Food safety. Any of our government's food safety regulations (on pesticide levels, bacterial contamination, fecal exposure, toxic additives, GMOs, non-edible fillers, etc.) that are stricter than "international standards," as most are, could be ruled as "illegal trade barriers."
Fracking. Our Department of Energy would lose its authority to regulate exports of natural gas to any TPP nation. This would create an explosion of the destructive fracking process
Jobs. US corporations would get special foreign-investor protections to limit the cost and risk of relocating their factories to low-wage nations that sign onto this agreement
Drug prices. Big Pharma would be given more years of monopoly pricing on each of their patents and be empowered to block distribution of cheaper generic drugs.
Banksters. Wall Street and the financial giants in other TPP countries would make out like bandits: The deal explicitly prohibits transaction taxes (such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax here) that would shut down super-rich speculators who have repeatedly triggered financial crises and economic crashes around the world;
However, they've slipped SOPA's most pernicious provisions into TPP. Corporate-created content, for example, would be given copyright protection for a stunning 120 years!
Public services. Also, corporations from any TPP nation must be allowed to bid on contracts to provide public services in the US on the same terms as American corporations.
And that's just the TIP OF THE TPP ICEBERG!
I hope I feel well enough to PROTEST IN SALT LAKE CITY TOMORROW!!