May, 23 2016, 02:00pm EDT
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Over 1,500 Organizations Call on Congress to Oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)
A united cross-sector movement of 1,525 civil society organizations resent a letter today urging Congress to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). They highlighted for each Congress member the number of groups on the letter with supporters in their state. The letter comes the same day as the corporate lobby group "U.S. Coalition for TPP" sent its own letter to Congress in support of the trade agreement.
WASHINGTON
A united cross-sector movement of 1,525 civil society organizations resent a letter today urging Congress to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). They highlighted for each Congress member the number of groups on the letter with supporters in their state. The letter comes the same day as the corporate lobby group "U.S. Coalition for TPP" sent its own letter to Congress in support of the trade agreement.
"The TPP would make it even easier to ship American jobs overseas to wherever labor is the most exploited and environmental regulations are the weakest, so it's little surprise that certain corporations support this pact," said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign, which organized the civil society letter. "Civill society is unprecedentedly united against the TPP, however, due the pact's significant threats to jobs and wages, food safety, public health and the environment. This is an outrageously bad deal for working families, and Congress needs to side with constituents over corporate interest groups on this one."
The TPP is a proposed 12-nation pact that would set rules governing approximately 40% of the global economy, with a built-in mechanism so that other countries can join over time. A recent study by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) -- which has traditionally overestimated the benefits and underestimated the costs of trade proposals -- found the TPP would increase the United States' global trade deficit and lead to a meager 0.15% economic growth by the year 2032.
"Given widespread public opposition, TPP supporters are now pushing to hold a vote on the agreement after the November elections during the 'lame duck' session of Congress -- that unique moment in the political calendar when Congressional accountability to constituents is at its lowest," said Stamoulis. "The offshorers aren't fooling anyone with that timing. Americans are angry about job-killing trade agreements, and voters' memories on these types of issues aren't as short as some might hope."
A copy of the letter with the full list of signers can be found online here. Text of the letter is below:
Dear Representative/Senator:
We urge you to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a binding pact that poses significant threats to American jobs and wages, the environment, food safety and public health, and that falls far short of establishing the high standards the United States should require in a 21st Century trade agreement.
If enacted, the TPP would set rules governing approximately 40% of the global economy, and includes a "docking" mechanism through which not only Pacific Rim nations, but any country in the world, could join over time. The questions policymakers should be asking about these rules is whether, on the whole, they would create American jobs, raise our wages, enhance environmental sustainability, improve public health and advance human rights and democracy. After careful consideration, we believe you will agree, the answer to these questions is no.
Our opposition to the TPP is broad and varied. Below are just some of the likely effects of the TPP that we find deeply disturbing.
Offshoring U.S. jobs and driving down wages
The TPP would offshore more good-paying American jobs, lower wages in the jobs that are left and increase income inequality by forcing U.S. employers into closer competition with companies exploiting labor in countries like Vietnam, with workers legally paid less than 65 cents an hour, and Malaysia, where an estimated one third of workers in the country's export-oriented electronics industry are the victims of human trafficking.
The TPP replicates the investor protections that reduce the risks and costs of relocating production to low wage countries. The pro-free-trade Cato Institute considers these terms a subsidy on offshoring, noting that they lower the risk premium of relocating to venues that American firms might otherwise not consider.
And the TPP's labor standards are grossly inadequate to the task of protecting human rights abroad and jobs here at home. The countries involved in the TPP have labor and human rights records so egregious that the "May 10th" model -- which was never sufficient to tackle the systemic labor abuses in Colombia -- is simply incapable of ensuring that workers in Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia and all TPP countries will be able to exercise the rights they are promised on paper. Even if the labor standards were much stronger, the TPP is also so poorly negotiated that it allows products assembled mainly from parts manufactured in "third party" countries with no TPP obligations whatsoever to enter the United States duty free.
The TPP contains none of the enforceable safeguards against currency manipulation demanded by a bipartisan majority in both chambers of Congress. Thus, the often modest tariff cuts achieved under the pact for U.S. exporters could be easily wiped out overnight by countries' willingness to devalue their currencies in order to gain an unfair trade advantage. Already, the TPP includes several notorious currency manipulators, and would be open for countries such as China to join.
In addition, the TPP includes procurement requirements that would waive "Buy American" and "Buy Local" preferences in many types of government purchasing, meaning our tax dollars would also be offshored rather than being invested at home to create jobs here. Even the many Chinese state-owned enterprises in Vietnam would have to be treated equally with U.S. firms in bidding on most U.S. government contracts. The pact even includes financial services provisions that we are concerned might be interpreted to prohibit many of the commonsense financial stability policies necessary to head off future economic crises. The TPP is a major threat to the U.S. and global economy alike.
Undermining environmental protection
The TPP's Environment Chapter rolls back the initial progress made in the "May 10th" agreement between congressional Democrats and President George W. Bush with respect to multilateral environmental (MEAs) agreements. The TPP only includes an obligation to "adopt, maintain, and implement" domestic policies to fulfill one of the seven MEAs covered by Bush-era free trade agreements and listed in the "Fast Track" law. This omission would allow countries to violate their obligations in key environmental treaties in order to boost trade or investment without any consequences.
Of the new conservation measures in the TPP, most have extremely weak obligations attached to them, requiring countries to do things such as "exchange information and experiences" and "endeavor not to undermine" conservation efforts, rather than requiring them to "prohibit" and "ban" destructive practices. This stands in stark contrast to many of the commercial obligations found within the agreement.
The TPP's controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system would enable foreign investors to challenge bedrock environmental and public health laws, regulations and court decisions as violations of the TPP's broad foreign investor rights in international tribunals that circumvent domestic judicial systems -- a threat felt at home and throughout the Pacific Rim.
Despite the fact that the TPP could threaten climate policies, increase shipping emissions and shift U.S. manufacturing to more carbon-intensive countries, the TPP fails to even include the words "climate change."
Jeopardizing the safety of the food we feed our families
The TPP includes language not found in past pacts that allows exporters to challenge border food safety inspection procedures. This is a dire concern given the TPP includes countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia that export massive quantities of shrimp and other seafood to the United States, significant amounts of which are now rejected as unsafe under current policies.
As well, new language in the final text replicates the industry demand for a so-called "Rapid Response Mechanism" that requires border inspectors to notify exporters for every food safety check that finds a problem and give the exporter the right to bring a challenge to that port inspection determination. This is a new right to bring a trade challenge to individual border inspection decisions (including potentially laboratory or other testing) that second-guesses U.S. inspectors and creates a chilling effect that would deter rigorous oversight of imported foods.
The TPP additionally includes new rules on risk assessment that would prioritize the extent to which a food safety policy impacts trade, not the extent to which it protects consumers.
Rolling back access to life-saving medications
Many of the TPP's intellectual property provisions would effectively delay the introduction of low-cost generic medications, increasing health care prices and reducing access to medicine both at home and abroad.
Pharmaceutical firms obtained much of their agenda in the TPP. This includes new monopoly rights that do not exist in past agreements with respect to biologic medicines, a category that includes cutting edge cancer treatments. The TPP also contains requirements that TPP nations allow additional 20-year patents for new uses of drugs already under patent, among other rules that would promote the "evergreening" of patent monopolies. Other TPP provisions may enable pharmaceutical companies to challenge Medicare drug listing decisions, Medicaid reimbursements and constrain future U.S. policy reforms to reduce healthcare costs.
With this agreement, the United States would shamefully roll back some of the hard-fought protections for access to medicine in trade agreements that were secured during the George W. Bush administration. Indeed, the pact eviscerates the core premise of the "May 10th" reforms that poor nations require more flexibility in medicine patent rules so as to ensure access. All of the TPP's extreme medicine patent rules will apply equally to developing countries with only short transition periods for application of some of the rules.
Elevating investor rights over human rights and democracy
Contrary to Fast Track negotiating objectives, the TPP's Investment Chapter and its ISDS system would grant foreign firms greater rights than domestic firms enjoy under U.S. law. One class of interests -- foreign firms -- could privately enforce this public treaty by skirting domestic laws and courts to challenge U.S. federal, state and local decisions and policies on grounds not available in U.S. law and do so before extrajudicial tribunals authorized to order payment of unlimited sums of taxpayer dollars. Under the TPP, compensation orders could include the "expected future profits" a tribunal determines that an investor would have earned in the absence of the public policy it is attacking.
Worse, the TPP would expand U.S. ISDS liability by widening the scope of domestic policies and government actions that could be challenged. For the first time in any U.S. free trade agreement, the provision used in most successful investor compensation demands would be extended to challenges of financial regulatory policies. The TPP would extend the "minimum standard of treatment" obligation to the TPP's Financial Services Chapter's terms, allowing financial firms to challenge policies as violating investors' "expectations" of how they should be treated. Meanwhile, the "safeguard" that the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) claims would protect such policies merely replicates terms that have failed to protect challenged policies in the past.
In addition, the TPP would newly allow pharmaceutical firms to use the TPP to demand cash compensation for claimed violations of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on creation, limitation or revocation of intellectual property rights. Currently, WTO rules are not privately enforceable by investors.
With Japanese, Australian and other firms newly empowered to launch ISDS attacks against the United States, the TPP would double U.S. ISDS exposure. More than 1,000 additional corporations in TPP nations, which own more than 9,200 subsidiaries here, could newly launch ISDS cases against the U.S. government. About 1,300 foreign firms with about 9,500 U.S. subsidiaries are so empowered under all existing U.S. investor-state-enforced pacts. Most of these are with developing nations with few investors here. That is why, until the TPP, the United States has managed largely to dodge ISDS attacks to date.
In these, and multiple other ways, the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy, threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing what was being proposed in its name.
The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP, strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP's many risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely. We respectfully ask that you do just that.
Thank you for your consideration. We will be following your position on this matter closely.
Sincerely,
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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"Trump judges are hellbent on torching environmental safeguards, the climate, and our democracy," said an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.
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A Trump-appointed judge on Monday blocked the Biden administration's pause on approvals of new liquefied natural gas export permits, the latest move by the nation's conservative-dominated judiciary to stop the federal government from taking action against the worsening climate emergency.
Judge James D. Cain Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana sided with more than a dozen Republican-led states that sued over the pause earlier this year, claiming it would harm their economies.
Cain wrote in his ruling that the pause, which temporarily halted the approval process for facilities exporting LNG to countries without a free trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S., was "perhaps the epiphany [sic] of ideocracy." The judge falsely characterized the pause as a "ban."
A Department of Energy (DOE) spokesperson said the agency "disagrees" with Cain's decision and "continues to review the court's order and evaluate next steps."
Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media, called Cain's ruling an "absurd and nakedly partisan decision untethered from reality."
"There is no 'LNG Export Ban' for the court to overturn," Henn wrote on social media. "DOE has simply paused new licenses while conducting a review of LNG's impacts."
This is an absurd and nakedly partisan decision untethered from reality.
There is no “LNG Export Ban” for the court to overturn. DOE has simply paused new licenses while conducting a review of LNG’s impacts. https://t.co/4TQFjYal4M
— Jamie Henn (@jamieclimate) July 1, 2024
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The Washington Postreported late Monday that Cain's ruling "means the Energy Department must resume its consideration of permit applications for new LNG export projects." The administration's pause put at least 14 pending gas export projects on hold, according to Earthjustice.
Craig Segall, the vice president of Evergreen Action, argued Monday that Cain's "deeply misguided" ruling "should have no impact on the Department of Energy's statutory authority over what must be included in a public-interest determination." Segall added that "pause or no pause, the science is clear: No sound analysis that accounts for the climate and environmental harm inflicted by LNG exports could possibly determine that these deadly facilities are in the public interest."
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Climate advocates have argued that the United States' status as the world's largest LNG exporter is harmful to both consumers and the planet, pushing up domestic energy costs while threatening to lock in decades of potent emissions as fossil fuel-driven extreme weather intensifies and scientists warn the world is barreling toward devastation.
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Cain's decision to block the Biden administration's LNG export pause came after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down several rulings that could imperil federal agencies' ability to limit planet-warming pollution.
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"Once again, anti-abortion rights politicians in Congress are manipulating the federal appropriations process to push for a recycled slate of dangerous and unpopular provisions to block access to sexual and reproductive healthcare across the country and around the world," states the new PPFA memo.
The PPFA document details anti-health policies in spending legislation for fiscal year 2025 that House Republicans have advanced recently, which include provisions "eliminating the Title X family planning program and reinstating the Trump-era expanded global gag rule."
The global gag rule bars U.S. government funding for foreign groups that provide information, referrals, or services for abortion care, or advocate for decriminalization or increasing access. It was initially implemented by former Republican President Ronald Reagan as the Mexico City policy, then reinstated and expanded by former President Donald Trump.
"In all, anti-abortion rights politicians continue to act in defiance of the vast majority of their constituents who believe that the government has no right to control people's personal healthcare decisions with attacks on abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care."
Despite Trump's ongoing legal battles, he is the presumptive Republican nominee to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November. Biden rescinded his predecessor's gag rule shortly after taking office in 2021. Reproductive freedom has been a key issue in not only that contest but races at all levels of U.S. politics this cycle, as GOP policymakers and candidates have set their sights on abortion care, birth control, and in vitro fertilization.
The gag rule was included in the appropriations bill for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, which the House on Friday passed 212-200. The only Democrat who voted in favor was Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington—who supports reproductive rights and has shared her own abortion story.
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The Citizens Not Politicians campaign said it delivered 731,306 signatures to the office of Ohio's secretary of state in Columbus on Monday, significantly more than the 413,487 valid signatures needed to qualify for November's ballot.
If approved, the Citizens Not Politicians Amendment will:
- Create the 15-member Ohio Citizens Redistricting Commission made up of Republican, Democratic, and Independent citizens who broadly represent the different geographic areas and demographics of the state;
- Ban current or former politicians, political party officials, and lobbyists from sitting on the commission;
- Require fair and impartial districts by making it unconstitutional to draw voting districts that discriminate against or favor any political party or individual politician; and
- Require the commission to operate under an open and independent process.
Nearly 100 organizations, businesses, and thought leaders across Ohio are supporting the amendment. If the measure is certified for November's ballot and approved by voters, the new commission could draw maps for use as soon as the 2026 elections. Seven other states have similar independent commissions: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Washington.
After the delivery, hundreds of campaign staff, volunteers, and supporters rallied in the Statehouse Atrium to celebrate their achievement and send a message to gerrymandering politicians.
"This is our house, the people's house, and with today's signature turn-in, we move one giant step closer to ensuring that the citizens decide who serves here, not the politicians who just scheme and rig the game to stay in power," said retired Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican who helped write the amendment. "This constitutional amendment will restore power to Ohio citizens and take it away from the self-serving politicians and their lobbyist friends and big-money donors."
Ted Linscott, a retired bricklayer from Appalachian Ohio, said: "Where I come from, we believe in fairness and working together to do what's right. For too long, career politicians and their lobbyist friends have manipulated our districts to serve their interests. It's time we put an end to this. We need a system that is open, transparent, and fair."
According to the Citizens Not Politicians campaign:
Nationally, Ohio is recognized as one of the worst states for gerrymandering, undermining proportional representation and leading to political stagnation and ineffective policy.
More than 9 million Ohioans, or 77% of the state population, live in districts where one party has a severe advantage in the 2024 Ohio House of Representatives elections, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.
"In my work for voter access and education, I have seen firsthand how gerrymandering creates a Legislature that is ineffective and unresponsive to the needs of Ohio voters," amendment supporter Tucker Sutherland said. "They don't have to care what we think because they draw themselves into cozy districts where they often don't even face opposition for reelection."
Equal Districts, a coalition of 30 advocacy groups,
said on social media that "our chance to finally achieve fair maps in Ohio is just around the corner."
"Let's end gerrymandering in Ohio," the group added.
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