On the very same day President Obama received great accolades for
rejecting the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, the country's Commander In Chief made another announcement on the
White House official website that is sure to come with mixed reactions. The highly anticipated Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has been officially released to the public, and it's off to the races.
Here's the deal: the Trans-Pacific Partnership
President Barack Obama
November 6, 2015 at 10:15 AM
When we have a level playing field, Americans out-compete anyone in the world. That’s a fundamental truth about our country.
But right now, the rules of global trade put our workers, our businesses, and our values at a disadvantage.
If you’re an autoworker in Michigan, the cars you build face taxes as high as 70 percent in Vietnam. If you’re a worker in Oregon, you’re forced to compete against workers in other countries that set lower standards and pay lower wages just to cut their costs. If you’re a small business owner in Ohio, you might face customs rules that are confusing, costly, and an unnecessary barrier to selling abroad.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership will change that -- and you can read the complete text of it right here.
The TPP is the highest standard trade agreement in history. It eliminates 18,000 taxes that various countries put on American goods. That will boost Made-in-America exports abroad while supporting higher-paying jobs right here at home. And that’s going to help our economy grow.
I know that past trade agreements haven’t always lived up to the hype. So I want to tell you a little bit about what makes this trade agreement so different, and so important.
The TPP includes the strongest labor standards in history, from requiring a minimum wage and worker safety regulations to prohibiting child labor and forced labor. It also includes the strongest environmental commitments in history, requiring countries in one of the most biologically diverse areas on Earth to crack down on illegal wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and illegal fishing. These standards are at the core of the agreement and are fully enforceable -- which means we can bring trade sanctions against countries that don’t step up their game.
And for the first time ever, we’ll have a multilateral trade agreement that reflects the reality of the digital economy by promoting a free and open Internet and by preventing unfair laws that restrict the free flow of data and information.
In other words, the TPP means that America will write the rules of the road in the 21st century. When it comes to Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing regions, the rulebook is up for grabs. And if we don’t pass this agreement -- if America doesn’t write those rules -- then countries like China will. And that would only threaten American jobs and workers and undermine American leadership around the world.
That’s why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read and explore.
There’s a lot in here, so we’ve put together summaries of each chapter to help you navigate what’s in the agreement and what these new standards will mean for you.
Read it all in full right here.
I know that if you take a look at what’s actually in the TPP, you will see that this is, in fact, a new type of trade deal that puts American workers first.
Take a look. Then make up your mind.
President Obama also discusses the TPP deal with the American public via his October 10, 2015 weekly address on this
youtube video.
Rohan Patel, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, wrote a piece about the agreement titled, What Environmental and Conservation Advocates Are Saying About TPP’s Environment Chapter. Patel includes quotes from conservation, environmental, and wildlife organizations:
By embedding conservation commitments in the core text of the agreement and making them subject to the TPP’s dispute resolution mechanisms, the TPP provides new leverage to advance vital environmental objectives.
-The Nature Conservancy
No major trade agreement before this one has gone so far to address growing pressures on natural resources like overexploited fish, wildlife and forests.
-World Wildlife Fund
We commend the Obama Administration's efforts, including those of the U.S. Trade Representative, to use all the tools available to combat illegal wildlife trafficking and its commitment to solving this crisis as a top-level priority.
-World Animal Protection
There are more
more pro-TPP commentaries found on the WhiteHouse.gov website.
But there are some very powerful progressive voices that greatly disapprove of this world trade deal, and one of them is Presidential Candidate/Senator Bernie Sanders. Here is an excerpt from his comments today:
"Now that the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership has finally been released, it is even worse than I thought. It is clear to me that the proposed agreement is not, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.
This much-debated trade agreement between major countries around the world has been a hot issue before anyone in the public had a chance to read it. The good news: the public finally gets to read it for themselves. The bad news: the agreement includes 30 chapters of governmental and legal verbiage that may be too much for the average American to consume. Many people will be depending upon news, commentary, and hearsay for analysis. With something this important, it's hoped Americans will consider the source, consider the source's motives, and keep an open mind.