Written by Stephanie LOw   

Never heard of TPP? No surprise, but let’s start from here: it stands for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement the Obama Administration is negotiating with 10 other countries—11 if Japan joins, as is expected in July. That would make it the largest trade deal ever; covering 40% of global trade.

If you’re anything like me, trade agreements were an invisible speck on your horizon. That changed when I heard about the TPP last October. It turns out that they can have a huge effect on the environment…among many other things. For instance, under the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that links Canada, Mexico and America, an American company is threatening to sue Canada for Quebec’s moratorium on fracking and could collect a cool $250 million if the case moves forward and it wins. These cases are tried in secret international tribunals headed by three unnamed private-sector lawyers under no obligation to disclose the full terms of their decision. And the number of cases is ballooning swiftly.

But it’s no surprise if you’ve never heard of this looming threat to much of our way of life. Representatives from 600 businesses have access to texts and are actively involved in shaping the agreement--in strictest secrecy--while the public, the media and even members of Congress are given no access to it whatsoever. Finally, some small portions of its 29 chapters were leaked. What came to light reveals a Mother of All Trade Agreements (MOATA) so comprehensive and outrageous that The Nation describes it as “NAFTA on Steroids.”

Here are some of the ways this multi-limbed behemoth could affect our lives:

• Give foreign corporations the right to sue our government outside the U.S. court system for what they might make if they didn't have to obey our labor, health, safety and environmegntal laws. In recent history, this has had a chilling effect on passing such laws in the first place.
• Open the floodgates of natural gas exports, increasing fracking across the U.S.
• Offer special benefits for companies to move offshore, sending good-paying jobs to low-wage nations, lowering working conditions and labor rights all over the world.
• Prevent re-regulation of Wall Street banks, hedge funds and insurance companies.
• Extend patent expiration dates, blocking access to affordable, generic medications and costing millions of lives in developing countries where generic HIV drugs are the only affordable option.
• Displace family farmers in favor of agribusinesses, concentrating global food supplies and creating price spikes for the world’s consumers.
• Curtail Internet freedoms, forcing providers to monitor and report our activities. And downloading some music could incur the same fine as big, for-profit copyright violations!
• Limit food labeling and permit foreign food imports without any safety checks.
• Limit how our elected officials can use our tax dollars. For instance, it could ban Buy America or Buy Local initiatives.
• Threaten global financial stability, according to a new GDAE report (Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University), by outlawing the ability of participating nations to regulate cross-border finance.
• Establish the legal right to override sovereign U.S. policies at the federal, state, local and court levels. The United States of America would function as a sovereign state no longer.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS?

Before President Obama can achieve his goal of finalizing and passing this MOATA, he has indicated that he will work with Congress to pass Fast Track Authority (FTA), recently renamed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in an Orwellian twist. Fast Track eliminates Congress’ constitutional right to amend trade agreements in favor of Executive power, allowing Congress only a yes-or-no vote …which would do much to ensure TPP’s passage.

Luckily, the Fast Track expired in 2007. Now it’s up to us to both educate and pressure Congress to vote against the Fast Track. Here’s what you can do:

1) With one click, you can send an excellent online letter to your congressional rep asking for a draft of the TPP text, which should be accessible to them as well as to you, the public. http://act.stopcorporateabuse.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=11589

2) Even more important, we need to actually visit our representatives’ offices and urge them to vote against Fast Track. Emphasize that their job’s constitutionally endowed power to debate and amend trade agreements will be sidelined by Fast Track, and point out all the ways TPP could destroy the fabric of our lives.

You can use this lobbying toolkit
http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/toolkit/toolkit-2.aspx
For more talking points about “Threats Posed by TPP,” go to http://tpp2012.com (What you don’t know will hurt you) and click on Learn More: TPP.

In addition, sign avaaz.org’s 1-million-person petition (currently 731,231 names, up from 728,788 in March) http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_corporate_death_star/ to governments negotiating the TPP. This petition calls on them to make the process transparent to all and reject limits to regulate in the public interest.

You can join and take action with the Sierra Club’s Atlantic (NY) Chapter TPP Task Force by signing up at: http://nyc.sierraclub.org/tpp-resources/

Check out this great Public Citizen TPP website http://www.exposethetpp.org/
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