- U.S. Senator Wyden of Oregon is asked why he hasn’t responded to Jan. 7, 2016, letter to him from 1500+ major national/state organizations citing critical reasons to not support the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Sen. Wyden Townhall held in Eagle Point, OR and video published on Aug 1, 2016. More information at https://peacehouse.net/u-s-senator-wyden-of-oregon-is-asked-why-he-hasnt-responded-to-jan-7-2016-letter-to-him-from-1500-major-nationalstate-organizations-citing-critical-reasons-to-not-support-tpp/
Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=hhYFo_f5XuQ&feature=youtu.be - The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose – Elizabeth Warren, Washington Post, “The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.”
- Video – NAFTA, TPPA the Internationalization of the state – Speaker, Michael Niemann
- Over 1500 Organizations Urge Opposition to the TPP – Letter delivered to Sen. Wyden’s office 2/4/2016, is an exceptional explanation of what the Trans-Pacific Partnership ‘Trade’ agreement contains and how horrendous it is, and why Peace House opposes the TPP.
- “Mystery Meat: After WTO Ruling, U.S. Tosses Meat Origin Labeling Law, Leaving Consumers in the Dark” – Interview of Lori Wallach by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. “As TransCanada files a NAFTA claim for $15 billion against the U.S. government over the rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, we turn to another case in which massive trade agreements have infringed on the U.S.”
- Do Trade Agreements Kill Jobs? – Forbes “There was a clear feeling that something different was happening in the U.S. economy,” Professor Porter explains. “Virtually all the net new jobs created over the last decade were in local businesses—government, healthcare, retailing—not exposed to international competition. That was a sign that the U.S. businesses were losing the ability compete internationally.”The report shows how it happened. “The basic narrative begins in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Through globalization, it became possible and attractive for firms to do business in, to, and from far more countries. Changes in corporate governance and compensation caused U.S. managers to adopt an approach to management that focused attention on the stock price and short-term performance.”As a result, “firms invested less in shared resources such as pools of skilled labor, supplier networks, an educated populace, and the physical and technical infrastructure on which U.S. competitiveness ultimately depends.”These management actions in turn gave rise to “serious social problems (loss of jobs, stagnating income, growing inequality) and eventually a decline of the public sector (an inability to fund health and pensions, or investments in ‘the commons’ such as infrastructure, training, education, and basic research, fields that the private sector had abandoned.)”
- Promises be damned: TPP ‘benefits’ are strictly for the corporations – The Ecologist, “The TPP, even more so than previous deals, has very little to do with trade and much to do with solidifying corporate control over life, arguably the most significant erosion of what is left of formal democracy yet.” “More than 330,000 manufacturing jobs are expected to be lost in the US alone if TPP is passed, according to a separate calculation by the United Steelworkers, and Unifor estimates that 20,000 Canadian jobs in auto manufacturing alone are at risk.” “Underlying all this further tilting of the scales already heavily weighted toward corporate money and power is the ‘investor-state dispute settlement‘ provision, whereby multi-national corporations can sue governments to overturn laws and regulations they don’t like under the excuse that measures to protect safety, health or the environment constitute a ‘taking’ of their expected profits – not even actual profits.”
