Letter to Congress on the TPP and Fast Track

BACKGROUND
The President just touted the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement in his State of the Union address, and the Chamber of Commerce and others are now pushing legislation that would “Fast Track” the TPP through Congress.  We need to act immediately to let Congress know our demands for trade policy and our opposition to Fast Track.  Individuals can take action through this link.  U.S.-based organizations are urged to please add their names to the letter below.

• 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.

• 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.