TPP -- email from my rep, Chellie Pingree
(bf mine)
Thank you for sharing your thoughts regarding Trade Promotion Authority, also known as "Fast-Track" and U.S. trade policy. I appreciate hearing from you and share your concerns about this issue.
As you know, the United States is currently engaged in negotiations of several large free trade agreements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Modern free trade agreements like the TPP and TTIP aim at removing "non-tariff barriers" in member countries. Non-tariff barriers include a number of laws and regulations affecting labor, patents and copyrights, food safety, natural resources, and government procurement policies, as well as financial, health care, energy, e-commerce, telecommunications, and other service sector regulations. If enacted, these agreements would become the largest and most significant free trade agreements in history.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has essentially been negotiated in secret, and Fast-Track authority would allow it to be rushed through Congress without the chance to debate and amend it. Congress shouldn't be a rubber stamp for a deal that could send American jobs overseas and put health, labor and food safety standards at risk. That is why on April 15, 2015, I joined twenty of my colleagues in sending a letter to United States Trade Representative Michael Froman inviting him to speak at a Congressional Progressive Caucus member meeting about the ongoing TPP negotiations. Additionally, on April 22, 2015, I joined more than thirty of my colleagues in a letter to President Obama to express our concerns about policies within the TTIP negotiations. It is critical that the public and policymakers have sufficient time to review the proposals and provide meaningful input before these negotiations are sent before Congress for a vote.
NAFTA went into effect 20 years ago and we can see the damage it's caused, particularly on manufacturing jobs in Maine and around the country, and I strongly opposed the Colombia, South Korea, and Panama Free Trade Agreements when they moved through Congress under Fast-Track in October 2011. These are bad deals for American workers and I'm concerned that some of the new deals being negotiated could be much worse.
I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue, and I will keep your thoughts in mind as I work with my colleagues in the 114th Congress on trade policy. Thank you again for being in touch and I hope to see you in Maine soon.
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