Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP): Job Loss, Lower Wages and Higher Drug Prices

[Bill USA]

http://www.citizen.org/TPP
(all emphases my own)

Have you heard? The TPP is a massive, controversial "free trade" agreement currently being pushed by big corporations and negotiated behind closed doors by officials from the United States and 11 other countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.


The TPP would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) "trade" pact model that has spurred massive U.S. trade deficits and job loss, downward pressure on wages, unprecedented levels of inequality and new floods of agricultural imports. The TPP not only replicates, but expands NAFTA's special protections for firms that offshore U.S. jobs. And U.S. TPP negotiators literally used the 2011 Korea FTA – under which exports have fallen and trade deficits have surged – as the template for the TPP.


In one fell swoop, this secretive deal could:

* offshore American jobs and increase income inequality,
* jack up the cost of medicines,
* sneak in SOPA-like threats to Internet freedom,
* and empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards.
* expose the U.S. to unsafe food and products,
* roll back Wall Street reforms,
* ban Buy American policies needed to create green jobs,


Although it is called a "free trade" agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade. Of TPP's 29 draft chapters, only five deal with traditional trade issues. One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries. Many would impose limits on government policies that we rely on in our daily lives for safe food, a clean environment, and more. Our domestic federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with TPP rules.
(more)

[DJ13]

1. See? Its a "win-win" for the investor class......

The rest of us dont matter.

[hollysmom]

2. hard to believe that drug prices can get higher - my pills went from 5 dollars without insurance to

67 with insurance in the last year and I get the generic. so How much higher can my blood pressure medicine go?
I am going to have to shop around again and see what pharmacies give a better deal and get a new prescription.

[Recursion]

5. Not here, overseas

The worry is the IP restrictions will prevent competitors from selling generic drugs in other countries.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. Boehner and the republicans support it...

which SHOULD tell the democrats something.

[Skittles]

4. sounds like a corporate wet dream

which is exactly what it is