Dear President Obama,

You should be ashamed to be supporting the current secret trade negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) which is another pro-corporate measure to continue to destroy American jobs and throw away the ability of Congress to have any input on a major treaty that governs 40% of U.S. imports and exports.Congress has a legal obligation to oversee trade agreements and this treaty only allows Congress to vote it up or down with no democratic input into the specifics of TPP.

Since 2001, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. has lost 2.7 million jobs due to trade deficits with China, which, interestingly, is not a country covered by TPP.  More importantly, because of the TPP definition of “domestic product,” much of the material used in manufactured products coming through TPP countries actually comes from China; isn’t this sweet?

Thanks to President Clinton’s approval of our country’s U.S. trade agreement with Mexico (NAFTA), we suffer a $60-70 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico, which by this summer will accumulate a current account loss with Mexico under NAFTA of over $1 trillion.  Oh, by the way, NAFTA has cost this country about 700,000 jobs.

Sadly, this is corporate legislation; make no doubt about it.  It is strongly supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents the largest global corporations, which pay the least amount of taxes in this country.  TPP simply allows large corporations to continue to dominate the global economy by achieving the ultimate package of benefits:  cheap labor, cheap natural resources, and access to the most lucrative consumer markets in the world.  Well, isn’t that what it’s all about?  That’s why corporate executives get paid those big bucks and our country loses good, well-paying jobs.  No problem, I guess, since we will create more service jobs paying minimum wages with no benefits.

I urge you to open up these secret trade negotiations to the public, eliminate fast track authorization, and make this a transparent process so that the American people through our elected officials can make informed decisions that affect our economy and American labor.

Sincerely,

 

John Harrington

mln

cc:  Congressman Mike Thompson
Senator Diane Feinstein
Senator Barbara Boxer