SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
trans-pacific partnership
Groups Demand Clinton Publicly Oppose Lame-Duck TPP Vote--Now
A vote in Congress after the election 'would send an unmistakable signal that the game is rigged in favor of elites and against everyday Americans'
Aug 25, 2016
Heavy-hitting progressive groups have sent a letter to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, urging her to make "a clear, public, and unequivocal statement opposing any vote on the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the post-election, 'lame-duck' session of Congress."
"Allowing a lame-duck vote would be a tacit admission that corporate interests matter more than the will of the people, relying on members of Congress who will be less accountable to voters."
The letter, published at Medium, says Clinton's "continued leadership is sadly necessary as President [Barack] Obama refuses to abandon this unpopular deal."
Even as the White House gears up for an all-out, post-election push on the maligned 12-nation trade deal, "the American public and their elected representatives in both parties are increasingly concluding that the TPP puts corporations ahead of human needs on jobs and wages, human rights, access to medicine, climate change and more," wrote the signatories, including environmental group 350 Action, the Communications Workers of America union, and grassroots political organization Democracy for America.
"In the face of such opposition," they continued, "allowing a lame-duck vote would be a tacit admission that corporate interests matter more than the people's will, relying on members of Congress who will be less accountable to voters. Regardless of the outcome, a vote itself would send an unmistakable signal that the game is rigged in favor of elites and against everyday Americans."
To that end, the groups demanded that Clinton "immediately make a clear and strong public statement" against the vote.
The missive follows a concerted campaign calling on Clinton--who supported the TPP as secretary of state before coming out against it--to take the lead in killing the deal. In the past two weeks, more than 100,000 people have signed CREDO and Democracy for America petitions that ask Clinton the same question. Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, who is advising Clinton on her campaign, also said Tuesday that to "rush [the TPP] through in a lame-duck session" would be "outrageous" and "wrong."
As for the candidate herself, she offered her "strongest words yet" against the TPP earlier this month--saying she would oppose the deal "after the election" and "as president"--but stopped short of pushing Obama on the issue.
Is that because, as Cenk Uygur of "The Young Turks" hypothesized this week, she knows that if she's elected, she'll have to support the deal?
Meanwhile, NBC Newsnotes that Clinton's former primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), "used the launch of his new group Wednesday night to say he too was spoiling for a fight" on the corporate-friendly agreement, opposition to which was a cornerstone of his campaign.
"Let me be very clear. I will do everything I can to defeat the TPP if it comes to the floor of the Senate, as I expect it will," Sanders said during his Our Revolution live address. "The American people have got to stand together and say no to the TPP."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rightwing vs. Leftwing Populists on Global Trade
Jul 01, 2016
It must have given the earnest wonks at the Economic Policy Institute a bit of a start when Donald Trump touted their research in a speech courting white, working-class voters by criticizing NAFTA and U.S. trade policy with China.
EPI president Lawrence Mishel was moved to respond in a blog post titled "Trump's Trade Scam."
"If he is so keen to help working people, why does he steer the discussion back toward the traditional corporate agenda of tax cuts for corporations and the rich?" Mishel wrote, hastening to distance himself from Trump.
Progressives who have long criticized trade deals that favor multinational corporations, suppress wages, accelerate outsourcing, and replace local democracy with unelected tribunals shrink from keeping company with the racist, isolationist right.
This is equally true in Trump's America and Britain, which is newly divorced from the rest of Europe. Guardian columnist Gary Younge concurs with Michel on the fraudulence of rightwing anti-globalism, and particularly the immigrant-bashing Brexit campaign:
"The very people who are slashing resources--the Tory right-- and diverting what's left to the wealthy are the ones rallying the poor by blaming migrants for the lack of resources," Younge wrote.
"Not content with urinating on our leg and telling us it's raining, they have found someone to blame for the weather."
Rightwing populists are making a lot of noise about the weather lately--that is, the lousy economic climate brought on by trade deals that favor corporations at the expense of labor. As a result, they are making inroads with an anxious working class.
"Progressives can't afford to cede economic populism to the man who could prove to be the most effective white nationalist campaigner of our generation," Tarso Luis Ramos, executive director of the rightwing watchdog group Political Research Associates, put it to me recently, when I interviewed him about Donald Trump.
I spoke with Melinda St. Louis, International Campaigns Director for Public Citizens' Global Trade Watch to get a progressive view on globalization. St. Louis has spent her career working on fair trade.
She is optimistic about a global movement for economic justice.
"I don't think we're ceding talking points on this," she says, pointing to the campaign to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which she calls "kind of exciting."
Both major parties pushed multinational corporations' agenda in big trade deals for years. But not this year. Growing public ire over NAFTA, especially in the Rust Belt, which has seen more than 57,000 factories offshored, has changed the political debate. St. Louis points out:
"Now the candidates are fighting over who hates the TPP more. That is a prudent response since all of the trade unions, environmental groups, LGBT organizations, women, retirees--the entire progressive base is opposing TPP.
It's not about trade or not trade, it's about who writes the rules and who benefits."
Human rights advocates see no reason for the TPP to make it easier for Malaysia, which has a problem with human trafficking, to access U.S. markets. LGBT activists don't want to roll out the red carpet for Brunei, which is bad on LGBT rights.
Overall, the trouble with the TPP is that it "doesn't learn the lessons of NAFTA," St. Louis says. "It expands incentives for offshoring and creates more opportunities to challenge environmental and health and safety laws through secret tribunals."
The public is increasingly unhappy with such deals.
St. Louis notes the TransCanada corporation's recent Keystone claim against the United States under NAFTA's rules. "Obama listened to activists, who pointed to the environmental and economic damage, and now we, the taxpayers, could be on the hook for $15 billion because of an unaccountable trade deal. Why on earth would we want to expand that through the TPP?"
Perhaps the biggest difference between left and right-wing views of global trade is that while right-wing populists blame immigrants and foreign workers, progressives see workers across borders making common causes.
"I worked in Central America during the Central America Free Trade Agreement negotiations, and the people in Central America said at the time, 'This is going to decimate us,'" says St. Louis. "Sure enough, we've seen an increase in inequality and instability in the region since CAFTA passed."
St. Louis speaks with feeling about "the brightest, most entrepreneurial people" leaving Southern Mexico and Central America to make the dangerous trek North, not because they think the streets in the United States are paved with gold, but because there are no other opportunities for them:
"To see these families in a place where family is so important being broken up for years--parents sending money to their children, but not seeing them for fifteen years--it's devastating."
Scapegoating these immigrants is particularly outrageous, she says, since economic and trade policies have been a major contributor to their plight.
Take the two million Mexican farmers who lost their livelihoods under NAFTA when U.S.-subsidized corn flooded the market at lower prices than the production cost.
Despite the bad economic news and the ominous rightwing backlash, St. Louis is optimistic about the global movement for economic justice:
"When there is this level of overreach of corporate greed people do mobilize and beat it back. A couple of years ago it was unthinkable that the TPP would be a major issue in the presidential campaign."
There have been other victories. Massive opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas--a proposed NAFTA expansion--killed that plan. Likewise, citizen organizing helped kill the Multilateral Agreement on Investments.
Liberal economists, including Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, and Robert Reich, have moved away from their pro-NAFTA positions and begun to support the call for fair trade. St. Louis sums it up:
"There is a populist response from the left and the right. Elites should pay attention."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Backers of Sanders Mobilize to Overthrow DNC Platform's Pro-TPP Stance
'Opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party,' declares progressive advocacy group. So why is it?
Jun 30, 2016
Before the Democratic Party's platform is finalized at a meeting late next week, Bernie Sanders and his progressive allies are mobilizing to ensure that opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—described by its critics as a global corporate power grab—becomes the party's official stance.
Though President Obama continues to lobby hard on behalf of the controversial deal, and despite a proposal to include such language being voted down during a drafting session last weekend in St. Louis, Sanders and his supporters are making their case into a rallying cry about the future of the Democratic Party.
On Wednesday, the Sanders campaign and Democracy for America, a progressive advocacy group, launched petitions calling on the platform committee to include the anti-TPP language in the final version.
"The Democratic Platform includes a number of very important initiatives that we have been fighting to achieve during this campaign," reads the petition from the Sanders campaign. "But one big item is missing: preventing the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal from ever coming up for a vote in Congress."
In addition to citing Sanders' and Clinton's publicly stated opposition to the TPP, the Sanders petition points out that key Democratic voting blocs—including "virtually every labor union, environmental group, and even major religious groups"—also oppose it. The petition argues that the party should now "go on record in opposition to holding a vote on the TPP during the lame duck session of Congress and beyond."
According to DFA's petition, "opposition to the job-killing TPP should not be controversial within the Democratic Party: Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton campaigned against the TPP during this year's presidential primary."
Though many have questioned Clinton's resolute opposition to the TPP, others are willing to take her at her word and argue that Obama and other pro-TPP forces within the Democratic Party undermined her campaign by not following through. Either way, outside progressive forces have remained vigilant against the corporate-friendly agreement even as Obama argues for it.
Meanwhile, in an op-ed in the New York Times this week, Sanders warned the Democratic leadership they needed to "wake up" when it comes to recognizing just how frustrated working people and the poor are when it comes to an economic system that is so clearly rigged against them.
While the 15-member committee voted down the measure in St. Louis by a 10-5 vote--with the five Sanders-appointed members voting in favor and all the Clinton- and DNC-appointed members voting against--the split offers a window into how Sanders and the millions of voters inspired by his campaign hope to influence the party in the weeks and months ahead. In turn, the battle over TPP and similar fights related to the minimum wage, climate action, and universal healthcare will reveal much about how the party establishment, currently transitioning its leadership from Obama to Clinton, will respond to the groundswells from below.
As the Washington Post reports Thursday, members of the platform panel who voted to reject the anti-TPP proposal said the White House's influence, not their own feelings on TPP, most impacted their decision.
Citing "people with knowledge of the platform negotiations," the newspaper reports how
Sanders used his post-primary meeting with the president to say he would push for the party to officially oppose the TPP. The president said he would now allow it. And since then, the White House has leaned on key Democrats to make sure that the platform did not include a rebuke.
This is how Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), co-chair of the platform committee, explained his vote: "We have one president, and I have listened to him argue his case many times, and I know that he truly believes this. He really does. I disagree with him, but I don't want to do anything, as he ends his term, to undercut the president. I'm just not going to do it. In his last six months? I'm not gonna do that."
Sanders, however, appears very willing to challenge the president on the issue that he believes will so negatively impact the planet, people, and communities for generations to come.
"Well, I don't want to embarrass the president either. He's a friend," Sanders told USA Today in an interview this week. "But in a Democratic society, people can have disagreements."
In a series of tweets that began Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning, he made it clear that the fight over TPP is among the foremost issues on his mind:
\u201cOur job is to do everything we can to rally support for an amendment to the platform in strong opposition to the TPP. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467235477
\u201cTell the DNC: We have gotta strongly oppose bad trade agreements like the TPP in the Party Platform. #StopTPP\nhttps://t.co/PdXXerIGt0\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467242708
\u201cThe TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities all over this country. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467248463
\u201cWe need trade policies that benefit American workers, not just corporate CEOs. Democrats must do all they can to defeat the TPP. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467293695
\u201cTrade is a good thing but it has to be fair. And the TPP is anything but fair. We must ensure the TPP doesn't come up for a vote. #StopTPP\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1467299525
The question, however, remains: If a majority of the Democrats on the panel oppose the TPP, the presumptive nominee opposes it, and the challenging candidate who won 22 primary contests by stirring the hopes of millions of voters opposes it, why can't the DNC leadership take this opportunity to recalibrate the party's trajectory on this seminal issue?
The full Democratic Platform Committee will meet in Orlando on July 8th and 9th to approve the final draft of the platform.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular