Insider view on the "secret" TPP [View all]

[PosterChild]

Dick Sadler runs a fruit-packing plant in Dundee, a few miles from the Sokol Blosser winery in Yamhill County, shipping jars of Oregon blueberries to Japan. Unlike Sokol Blosser, Sadler does not have to take the TPP’s benefits purely on faith; he is on a federal advisory committee on agricultural trade and has received confidential briefings on the negotiations.

Sitting in his farmhouse surrounded by hazelnut trees, he said he has heard little from trade officials that gives him pause. “You can’t negotiate something as complex as this in public,” he said. The benefits will be more meaningful for small players like himself, he added, than for big exporters who can more readily deal with the current complications of international trade — the labeling rules and the ingredient certifications and so forth.

“The TPP is designed to give us structure to deal with all of that,” he said. “It’s hard to say what’s bad about it.”

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