TPP Protestors to Foreign Negotiators: "Don't Let U.S. Bully You"

[unhappycamper]

http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/tpp-protestors-to-foreign-negotiators-don-t-let-united-states-bully-you?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20131122

/image

Activists project messages about the Trans-Pacific Partnership onto the exterior of the Grand American Hotel in Salt Lake City.

TPP Protestors to Foreign Negotiators: "Don't Let U.S. Bully You"
by James Trimarco
posted Nov 22, 2013

When negotiators from the 12 countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership gathered this week in Salt Lake City, Utah, they were met by the "TPP Welcoming Committee," a coalition of environmental, social justice, and labor groups who did their best to show that there is opposition to the deal in the United States.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would affect laws and regulations involved in fields including agriculture, media, and medicine, and would cover about 40 percent of global GDP. While the leadership of both mainstream political parties in the United States supports the deal, advocates of environmental and social justice, as well as some elected representatives, have criticized it.

The Sierra Club has said the TPP would result in an "explosion of fracking." Public Citizen called it a "corporate power tool of the one percent." And, in a letter signed by more than 130 Democratic members of Congress, representatives Rosa DeLauro and George Miller described the TPP as "weakening ... Buy America provisions, providing extraordinary investor-state privileges, and restricting access to lifesaving medicines in developing nations."

One of the goals of this week's protests was to raise the profile of the deal. The text of the TPP remains secret to everyone except the national negotiating teams and more than 600 corporate "advisors."



unhappycamper comment: Doncha just love SECRET trade agreements?

[FreakinDJ]

1. +1000