The Hill reports: “Trade ministers from the 12 nations will sign the TPP on Wednesday evening — 5:30 p.m. EST — in Auckland, New Zealand.” Local media report an expected 10,000 people will be protesting.
See from Politifact: “Hillary Clinton flip-flops on Trans-Pacific Partnership.”
MARGARET FLOWERS, M.D., mdpnhp at gmail.com, @MFlowers8
KEVIN ZEESE, kbzeese at gmail.com, @kbzeese
Zeese and Flowers are with Popular Resistance, which is part of the Stop Fast Track coalition. See the group’s piece: “10 Shocking Realities of the TPP; Join the Revolt.”
The group notes: “As the U.S. trade representative goes to New Zealand to sign the TPP on February 4th (which is the 3rd in the U.S.) protests will be held across the country and around the world. See map of protests flushthetpp.org/actions.
“Several hours before the signing TPP opponents in Washington D.C. will hold a protest at the White House ‘TPP is Betrayal’ that visually highlights the negative impact of the TPP on the U.S. economy, environment and workers, among other issues.”
Today, they said: “Now that the TPP has been made public we can see that it is even worse than we had seen in the leaks made public while it was negotiated. The agreement has no enforceable environmental or labor protections. It will threaten jobs by both outsourcing to countries with dramatically lower wages as well as insourcing when foreign corporations bring their business to the United States along with their employees — even if an American can do the job.
“The TPP threatens the future of Internet freedom and privacy, food safety by giving corporations the power to stop inspections if they take too long, and healthcare by pushing toward privatization and giving pharmaceutical corporations greater power in negotiating privacy as well as long patents blocking generic drugs.
“The TPP also threatens U.S. sovereignty and democracy by adding 9,000 corporations who can sue the United States if laws are passed in the public interest that undermine their profits. We recently saw the denial of permits for the KXL pipeline resulting in a $15 billion lawsuit under NAFTA. We also recently saw that U.S. laws had to be changed because of corporate lawsuits against them. This included the Country of Origination Labeling Act (COOL) which required labeling of where meats sold in the U.S. came from; and dolphin-safe tuna labeling which let consumers know that tuna they were purchasing had not harmed dolphins. We will see more of these lawsuits which are heard before trade tribunals, usually three corporate lawyers serving as temporary judges on leave from their corporate job, where corporations can seek damages including their expected loss of profits. U.S. courts cannot review the decisions of these corporate tribunals. In addition, a host of laws will have to be changed to be consistent with the TPP, for example, laws that allow for buying American-made projects will no longer be allowed. Our courts, legislatures and executive branch are all made weaker by the TPP.”