Stop the TPP, the next biggest Free Trade Agreement - Organizational Sign-On Letter on the TPP & Fast Track

 http://stoptpp.org/

This just in from our local organizer.

Please join us in putting your organization's name on this list and circulating this to your networks.

It's FTAs like this that create the rules for economic injustice and allow companies to continue to exploit workers and the environment. 
Sarah

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Hi Friends,
We have only two weeks to get hundreds of organizations to sign onto this letter opposing Fast Track, a tool the Chamber of Commerce in D.C. is pushing for to make it easier to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Please bring this to your unions, churches, organizations, and more to sign onto!
Thank You!

Elizabeth Swager
Oregon Fair Trade Campaign
www.OregonFairTrade.orgOrganizational Sign-On Letter on the TPP & Fast Track

Please add your organization's name by Sunday, March 3 at: http://tinyurl.com/tradeletter  

Email info@citizenstrade.org with any questions.

Dear Member of Congress:

As U.S. trade negotiators seek to conclude a standard-setting new trade and investment pact for the Asia-Pacific region by this October and consider launching another with the European Union, we write on behalf of our combined XX million members and supporters to share our expectations regarding commercial agreements in the 21st Century and the congressional oversight role needed to transform past U.S. trade policy into a tool that helps build a more just and sustainable global economy. 

We find it troubling that, even as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement enters its 16th major round of negotiations this March in Singapore, U.S. negotiators still refuse to inform the American public what they have been proposing in our names.  Shielding not only proposals, but agreed-upon texts from public view until after negotiations have concluded and the pact is finalized is not consistent with democratic principles.  In this regard, the TPP appears to be even less transparent than some past trade negotiations.  For example, in 2001, the United States joined with 33 other countries in releasing draft text of the Free Trade Area of the Americans, and draft texts within the World Trade Organization are frequently made available.  

Issues that must be addressed so that a TPP, a European Union-U.S. Agreement or any other U.S. trade pact actually improves the quality of life for Americans and people throughout the world include:

• Prioritization of human and labor rights.  Too many existing trade policies go to great lengths to protect the rights of investors, while ignoring or glossing over issues of forced labor, child labor, sweatshop working conditions, political violence, environmental degradation, violations of indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and government suppression of such basic freedoms as speech, assembly, movement and the rights to form independent trade unions and bargain collectively.  Human and labor rights must be front-and-center in any trade agreement if it is to help reverse the global race to the bottom in working conditions and environmental practices.  

• Respect for local development goals and the procurement policies that deliver on them.  Trade agreements should not impede governments from spending taxpayer funds in ways that prioritize local development, environmental or social goals.  The procurement provisions of trade pacts must maintain existing “Buy American” preferences, as well as prevailing wage requirements, green preferences, sweat-free preferences, human rights preferences and policies designed to address long-standing inequalities.  

• No elevation of corporations to equal terms with governments.  Trade agreements should not grant individual corporations and investors special powers to privately enforce agreement terms by challenging laws, regulations and court decisions through tribunals that circumvent domestic judicial systems.  The “investor-state” tribunal system that allows panels of three private sector lawyers to order unlimited taxpayer compensation for foreign firms who claim that a country’s laws undermine their expected future profits must be eliminated.  International investment rules must also be revised to more narrowly define terms including “investment,” “expropriation” and “minimum standard of treatment” in order to safeguard the ability of governments to regulate in the public interest.  

• Protect food sovereignty.  Trade agreements should respect governments’ ability to implement programs that ensure farmers and other food workers receive fair compensation and that consumers have access to safe and affordable foods.  Likewise, nations must be able to protect themselves from dumping and other unfair trade practices that force farmers off their land.  

• Access to affordable medicine.  Maintaining access to affordable, generic medications is critical to reducing health care costs in the United States and to saving lives throughout the world.  Trade agreements are an inappropriate vehicle for extending the length of drug patents, and U.S. policies should explicitly uphold the standards set forth in the Doha Declaration on access to medicine.  

• Safeguards against currency manipulation.  Trade agreements should include measures that allow the United States and other governments to take measures to counteract trade-distorting currency manipulation.  Agreements should also include strong rule of origin provisions to ensure that the benefits of the agreement go to those countries that agree to meet its rules.

• Space for robust financial regulations and public services.  Trade pacts should set floors, not ceilings, when it comes to the regulation of banks, insurance companies, hedge funds and other financial service providers.  Trade agreements’ services provisions should contain clear and specific language stating that nothing in the agreement should be interpreted as requiring deregulation or privatization of any private or public service.   

• Improved consumer and environmental standards.  Likewise, trade agreements should set floors, rather than ceilings, when it comes to environmental, food and product safety and consumer right-to-know measures.  

We believe a much greater degree of public and congressional oversight is needed if the TPP and other pacts are to achieve these high standards.  Before granting the Obama administration any special trade policymaking authority, please request that it make the draft TPP texts public.

Instead of delegating Congress’ exclusive constitutional authority to “regulate commerce with foreign nations” to the executive branch through the reinstatement of outdated and extreme procedures like Fast Track “Trade Promotion Authority,” we urge you to support a new American trade agreement negotiation and approval process that:

• Requires that Office of the U.S. Trade Representative consult with all interested stakeholders, participate in hearings with all committees of jurisdiction over matters affected by trade agreements and provide a thorough and public assessment of what specific job creation and export expansion opportunities each prospective trade partner would provide and how a proposed agreement would impact human and labor rights, the environment, food sovereignty, access to medicine, currency manipulation and balance of trade among the countries involved — beginning this expanded engagement process with the TPP as soon as possible;
• Sets up an objective process to verify that negotiating objectives set by Congress are actually achieved in the final agreement; and 
• Includes a process by which a majority of the Congress must vote to certify that a proposed agreement is in the public interest and that Congress’ negotiating objectives have been met before the executive branch can sign the agreement and bind the United States to its terms.

Only through this type of robust oversight and public participation can we forge a new national and global consensus on trade policy that works for all.

Sincerely,

[YOUR ORGANIZATION & many others]