http://nymetrocommunistparty.org/?p=811

An amazing line-up of Members of Congress, union activists, environmental leaders, people of faith, small business and community leaders stood together on Capitol Hill today to show the broad and growing opposition to Fast Track authority for trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“America will never see a raise for American working families if we continue to make trade deals like we have in 20 years since NAFTA,” CWA President Larry Cohen said. “80% of Americans have had no raise in 30 years. . . . We have to stop trade deals that only move in one direction.”

Watch President Cohen’s remarks.

More than 18 congressional representatives and leaders from the NAACP, Food and Water Watch, Sierra Club, Consumers Union, the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby NETWORK, and other groups joined the event, calling for the defeat of Fast Track.

NETWORK’s Executive Director Sister Simone Campbell, popularly known as the leader of “Nuns On The Bus,” said the effects of our past trade deals have been coming home to roost. She pointed out that children from Central America swarmed the U.S. borders last year directly because the Central American Free Trade Agreement disrupted the economies in rural areas of those countries.

“I’m here today to oppose fast track because we know from Catholic sisters in Central America, my sisters in Mexico, that these trade agreements create a huge imbalance and disequilibrium, especially in rural communities,” she said.

An alliance of Big Business and White House negotiators are scrambling to push fast track authority through Congress. Why Fast Track enables supporters to push through trade deals which no one in Congress has read with a majority vote. In the Senate, nearly all others bills require 60 votes and most of our issues have been blocked by this super majority requirement. Yet fast track only requires a simple majority of the House and Senate.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who is leading Democratic House members in the fight against Fast Track, said she is not going to stand for a bill that allows bad trade deals to be crammed down the throats of Americans without Congress examining them. American workers, she said, have suffered great harm under the North American Free Trade Agreement and other deals like it and their representatives in Congress have the Constitutional duty to consider carefully the consequences of future deals.

“This coalition exists because trade deals affect everything. We need to be able to scrutinize the text of these deals page by page, line by line, word by word. . . . We need to read this bill as we would any piece of legislation, let alone legislation with such far reaching implications,” DeLauro said.

CWA is part of a 100- group coalition that is fighting back against Fast Track, and the next 100 days are critical. Fast Track authorizing legislation is expected to come before Congress in March.

Cohen said the road forward is daunting but winnable if the coalition functions as one.

“We’re prepared in every district to work as a coalition, not silo-ed as labor, or farmers, or consumers, or environmentalists, but together to talk about what the global economy should be and how it could work for all of us,” he said. “We are humble about what we face but we are tens of millions of Americans and we are committed that we are not going to have another raw deal on trade. We’re going to come to the 21st Century and negotiate trade deals that work for tens and millions of Americans, not just for hundreds of corporations.”

CWAers and activists from coalition members will participate in National Call-In week, beginning Jan. 26, to let members of Congress know that Fast Track must be stopped. Check out www.stopthetpp.org for more information.

Now or Never: Fight Back Against Fast Track

An unholy coalition of President Obama, Majority Leader McConnell, Speaker Boehner, the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable are working together to pass Fast Track authorization for the largest trade giveaway ever, the Trans Pacific Partnership, in the next 100 days.

The president will focus on Fast Track, now known as Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), in his State of the Union address. McConnell will continue to announce that he will work with the White House. And make no mistake about it, the version of Fast Track or TPA that will pass the House will be Boehner Trade, acceptable to the Republican majority and its Speaker.

Overwhelmingly, House Democrats will fight back. More than three-quarters of the House Democrats have written to the president opposing Fast Track and the TPP for a multitude of reasons:

1. Vietnam is the leading partner, with 90 million people, an average wage of 75 cents an hour, no worker rights or environmental or consumer protections and a command economy where the government and its allied organizations control virtually everything.
2. Like NAFTA, TPP has much more to do with protecting the investment of multinational corporations, particularly those based in the US. Those investment issues dwarf lowering trade barriers. These are the very corporations that have moved millions of jobs out of the US because every trade deal since NAFTA has allowed them to sue nations that adopt legislation that limits future profits, not simply safeguards their initial investment. Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) virtually unchanged is in the TPP, and the WH defends it and brags about it to corporate audiences. Currently, multinationals have 500 pending secret arbitration lawsuits against governments regarding environmental protection, workers’ rights, health and consumer issues, to name a few.
3. Brunei, with strict Islamic law, is another of the 12 nations in TPP. Republican conservatives are horrified by the treatment of Christians and other religious minorities there. Most of us would include homophobia, misogyny and other gross human rights violations as reason enough to avoid a major economic partnership.
4. Currency manipulation, by central banks and controlled economies, has been a major concern of House and Senate Democrats. It is now virtually certain this will not be addressed at all in TPP.

Except for corporate management and their large shareholders, the rest of us will lose big if Fast Track is adopted, making TPP a certainty. Passing Fast Track means a guaranteed vote in the House and Senate on TPP within a short period of time and with no amendments allowed on a 2000 page Trade treaty that has been negotiated in almost total secrecy. In the Senate it means passage by a majority, not the 60 votes required on almost everything else that has blocked President Obama’s core agenda for six years, even when the House overwhelmingly supported real change from 2009-2011.

There is no point in speculating further on why the WH is collaborating with Boehner and others who have ruined the Hope and Change that the President ran on in 2008. Candidate Obama clearly stated his rejection of the Clinton and Bush trade deals, yet now he is promoting a TPP that is far more ruinous for our jobs and wage levels than its predecessors. Pay for tens of millions of Americans has been stagnant due to job export and direct pay comparisons with poorer nations, with no limits on the ability of GE or IBM, Microsoft or Amazon to export the tradable jobs or cut the pay of those that remain.
Time for action, not more talk!

1. Virtually all Americans oppose Fast Track but we need to be organizing, shouting and fighting back, particularly with 75 swing House Democrats and Republicans. At least 190 House Democrats and Republicans will vote “No.” These 75 are key.
2. Starting with the State of the Union address, in two weeks, we will face an avalanche from the president, Republican leaders and Big Business. We must mobilize now and like never before!
3. Our coalition includes virtually every environmental group, labor union, and consumer organization. The WH says Walmart sells cheap goods thanks to these trade deals but most consumer groups know that TPP means less labeling and less safety for imports, and that when wages fall consumers are priced out. Immigrant rights activists know how NAFTA and CAFTA have devastated their home communities in Mexico and Central America. Community organizations and faith groups realize that the loss of millions of factory jobs has devastated most of our cities.
4. But these broad coalitions, including conservatives who do not believe nations should trade their sovereignty for secret corporate tribunals, must mobilize now. We need Days of Action in the key communities in the swing districts. We need massive mobilization days in Washington. We need millions of emails reminding the president of what he said when he campaigned, versus the reality of this TPP, which is nothing different and in many ways is worse than NAFTA and other trade deals. We need to shout to the president, “Don’t roll your own caucus for Boehner Trade.”
5. Organizations like my own need to commit real time and resources to this fight and not back up out of loyalty to President Obama. We have stood with him on nearly every issue but not this one. He needs to stand with us and the Democrats in Congress.

We are under attack!
What do we do?
We Stand Up and Fight Back!
Now!