Bernie and the TPP
By Bernie Sanders is taking the lead in attacking the odious Trans-Pacific Partnership, the centerpiece of Obama’s trade agenda.
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is blasting the Obama administration for a lack of transparency in negotiating a major trade deal that he says will be “disastrous” for workers.
The 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would be the largest free trade agreement in history, is still being negotiated but is expected to come before Congress for approval this year.
Sanders, an independent, said the treaty’s proposals were written in secret with input from multi-national corporations while members of Congress were “locked out of the process.” Administration officials dispute that claim.
Sanders said the trade pact is part of a “global race to the bottom” to boost corporate profits.
“It is incomprehensible to me that the leaders of major corporate interests who stand to gain enormous financial benefits from this agreement are actively involved in the writing of the TPP while, at the same time, the elected officials of this country, representing the American people, have little or no knowledge as to what is in it,” Sanders wrote Monday to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman.
What I love is the lies about the number of jobs that the TPP will create:
Murphy said trade agreements like TPP dismantle tariffs and barriers used by foreign governments to shut out U.S. goods and services. The deal could boost U.S. exports by $124 billion by 2025 and generate 700,000 new American jobs, he wrote, citing a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
These same sorts of claims were made about NAFTA. Instead, 683,000 American jobs were lost because of NAFTA by 2010, 61 percent of which were the high-paying manufacturing jobs at the backbone of the American union movement of the 20th century.