RIP, TPP. Now let’s redo NAFTA: Opposing view
Americans are united in their desire for trade deals that create jobs and empower people.
On Monday, the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. President Trump may have signed the TPP’s death certificate, but it was working people and our progressive allies who killed this unfair agreement. For years, we have mobilized and organized in opposition to the TPP, winning the debate in Congress and on the campaign trail.
While the 2016 election was full of division, Americans across the political spectrum are united in their desire for trade deals that create jobs and empower people, not corporations. With the TPP now off the table, the next step is to renegotiate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement. As always, the devil is in the details.
Having failed to make an economic case for corporate trade deals like the TPP and NAFTA, free trade fundamentalists are hoping to convince us what’s bad for working people is actually good foreign policy, especially as it relates to China.
Trump pulls the plug on TPP: Our view
But here’s what they’re not telling you: The TPP and agreements like it would actually speed up China’s growing dominance and give Beijing access to trade benefits without asking for anything in return.
In fact, the same global firms that set the disastrous terms of the current U.S.-China trading relationship wrote the rules of the TPP. Among other giveaways, the TPP would have made brand-name drugs less affordable and given foreign corporations the power to sue governments in private tribunals over regulations they didn’t like.
In addition, the TPP did nothing to address critical bread-and-butter issues like currency manipulation and little to ensure workers’ rights would be protected and enforced.
The plain truth is the TPP-NAFTA model has weakened our position with China by holding down wages, stifling investment and exploding inequality.
This is a moment to come together and advance a new trade agenda that benefits working people at home and strengthens our position in the world.
Richard Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation.