Another NAFTA or Obama's New Trade Model?

[Elwood P Dowd]

Email I received today from Public Citizen.........



Action Alert - Will the TPP be more of the same?
Trans-Pacific Partnership: Another NAFTA or Obama's New Trade Model?

Urge Congress to ensure any Obama trade deal moves away from the disastrous NAFTA model and toward a new American fair trade agenda

Dear Supporter,

Candidate Obama promised to fix NAFTA and craft a new job-creating trade strategy going forward. He promised his trade agreements would put working people, the environment, family farms and consumers first. Now the moment of truth is upon us: the Obama administration has begun negotiations with seven Asian/Pacific countries on what could be its first trade agreement - known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The usual suspects - Big Pharma, agribusiness giants and chronic offshoring multinationals - are hell-bent on more NAFTAs. And unfortunately, there are some in the administration happy to forget President Obama's fair trade commitments.

Urge Congress to ensure that any Obama trade deal reflects his promises to ditch the NAFTA model and craft a new American trade agenda that works for us.

Thanks to your good work, fierce efforts by the backwards corporate crowd to pass Bush's leftover NAFTA-style pacts with Colombia, Panama and Korea were repeatedly derailed. As a result, TPP talks have become the venue in which Obama's trade policy will take shape. The next round of TPP negotiations is set for June in California.

If the TPP becomes the first Obama trade deal, it must live up to his pledges to end the NAFTA nightmare and craft a new trade policy that creates - not destroys - the dreams of America's working families. With attention in Congress focused on other matters and the TPP being conducted behind closed doors by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), it is critical that we alert our Representatives and Senators today about the TPP!

Write to Congress urging them to ensure any Obama administration trade deal reflects the president's promises to ditch the NAFTA model and craft a new American trade agenda that works for us.

TPP negotiations currently include the U.S. and Australia, Chile, Singapore and Peru, New Zealand, Brunei, and Vietnam. The final deal may allow other Asian/Pacific countries to join on as well.

The TPP presents both promise and peril. If pro-NAFTA elements in the Obama administration get their way, the TPP would replicate the worst provisions of past NAFTA-type deals. But if we keep up the pressure, TPP negotiations could be used to create a new standard for future trade deals that work for workers, the environment, family farmers, and consumers worldwide. Congress must act to make sure that any TPP represents the trade reform we've been promised and deserve.

Write to your Representative and Senators today and tell them that you oppose any trade deal that fails to deliver on Obama's fair trade campaign promises.

Recently we informed you that the TRADE Act - the comprehensive trade reform bill - has won majority support from House Democrats. With a growing consensus that the TRADE Act is the best pathway out of our job-killing trade policy past, it should also serve as a starting point for the future - and for Obama's TPP negotiating positions.

Congress and the U.S. public won't settle for anything less than a wholly new trade model - one that creates jobs, protects against climate change and environmental destruction, ensures food and product safety, and doesn't allow corporations to challenge our laws in foreign tribunals.

Write to your Representative and Senators today, calling on Obama to negotiate a TPP in tune with the TRADE Act that echoes his fair trade campaign pledges.

Thanks for all you do,

James Ploeser - Senior Organizer
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch