As they promised, the White House released the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership today, making it the most transparent trade proposal to date. While transparency is good, it doesn’t mean the deal is loved by liberals.
2016 Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) issued a statement in which he vowed to do everything he can to defeat the TPP, saying we need trade agreements work for working families, not big corporations. “I will do everything I can to defeat the TPP. We need trade policies in this country that work for the working families of our nation and not just the CEOs of large, multi-national corporations.”
Sanders wrote, “(I)t is even worse than I thought. This trade deal would make it easier for corporations to shut down more factories in the U.S. and ship more jobs to Vietnam and Malaysia where workers are paid pennies an hour. The TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities and towns all over this country from Newton, Iowa, to Cleveland, Ohio. We need to rebuild the disappearing middle class, not tear it down.”
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Sanders charged it could allow foreign corporations to “sue federal, state and local governments in an international tribunal for passing an increase in the minimum wage or any other law that could hurt expected future profits.”
The Vermont Senator warned that the TPP would grant “new monopoly rights to big pharmaceutical companies to deny access to lower cost generic drugs to millions of people.”
“Outrageously, the proposed agreement includes violators of international human rights, like Brunei, where gays and single mothers can be stoned to death and Malaysia where tens of thousands of immigrant workers in the electronics industry are working as modern day slaves.” the presidential candidate wrote.
Sanders vowed to do everything he can to defeat it, “I will do everything I can to defeat the TPP. We need trade policies in this country that work for the working families of our nation and not just the CEOs of large, multi-national corporations.”
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