Groups urge U.S. Congress to reject TPP over environmental concerns

[DemMomma4Sanders]

Source: News Trust

The groups noted that in January, Canadian energy company TransCanada asked for a private tribunal through the North American Free Trade Agreement to seek compensation exceeding $15 billion, after Obama last year rejected a permit for its Keystone pipeline, citing global warming concerns.

"The TPP and TTIP would more than double the number of fossil fuel corporations that could follow TransCanada's example and challenge U.S. policies in private tribunals," the letter said.

A spokesman for the United States Trade Representative said on Monday that the United States has never lost an ISDS case because "we have continued to raise standards through each agreement."

The spokesman said the TPP has the strongest environmental safeguards of any trade agreement and upgrades NAFTA with "full enforceable environmental obligations."

Read more: http://news.trust.org/item/20160606110323-mrsna/

[AntiBank]

1. Bringing up TPP will soon be grounds for banishment on this board

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/15/politics/45-times-secretary-clinton-pushed-the-trade-bill-she-now-opposes/

[Angel Martin]

2. you know that they are going to pass

TPP and TTIP in the lame duck session after the election ?

... just like NAFTA

[jwirr]

3. More than likely. Even if we pull together and fight it. But if

Hillary wins the election it won't matter when they pass it - in Obama's term or hers. Either way we are going to get screwed.

[Angel Martin]

4. I think the lame duck is much more likely

there is a lot of opposition on the Repub side (voters not donors). That's part of the reason Trump won.

The ones that will provide the margin of "victory" for TPP/TTIP will be defeated or retiring D's and R's - it's like the first day on the job of their post politics "lobbying" careers.

Same thing as they did with NAFTA

[jwirr]

5. That sounds reasonable. It is really too bad.

[djean111]

6. Silly groups. The fix is in, the money has been paid, all that's left to do is for Obama

to sign it, without any of the shit-stain that is the TPP/TTIP staining Hillary's expensive clothing.

[askeptic]

7. What Public Citizen has to say about TPP

Secret TPP Text Unveiled: It's Worse than We Thought

In early November 2015, after seven years of close-door negotiations with the public, press and policymakers locked out, the final TPP text was released. In chapter after chapter, the final text is worse than expected, with the demands of the 500 official U.S. trade advisers representing corporate interests satisfied to the detriment of the public interest.The text reveals that the pact replicates many of the most controversial terms of past pacts that promote job offshoring and push down U.S. wages.

If passed, the TPP would:

make it easier for big corporations to ship our jobs overseas, pushing down our wages and increasing income inequality,
flood our country with unsafe imported food,
jack up the cost of medicines by giving big pharmaceutical corporations new monopoly rights to keep lower cost generic drugs off the market,
empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards,
ban Buy American policies needed to create green jobs,
roll back Wall Street reforms,
sneak in SOPA-like threats to Internet freedom,
and undermine human rights.

https://www.citizen.org/TPP

I am so disappointed that we have to fight Pres. Obama on this thing.