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Today's Congress defeated legislation needed to ramp up for the vote on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.
Hooray!
The TPP has been rightly called "NAFTA on steroids," and it can be very dangerous to a variety of jobs help by working Americans.
We know that NAFTA was very bad for wage-earning America. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that NAFTA and its sister agreement, the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) cost the average wage earning worker $1800 per year, year after year. It is not right that wage earning America gets the short end of the trade stick, while corporate stockholders gain ALL the net growth that has historically come from trade agreements.
In addition, TPP creates a standard of international sovereignty for large multi-national corporations that effectively gives them more rights than government. It actually allows them to sue even local governments to eliminate any law that would damage future profits derived from trade. Sadly that can include such things as worker safety and conditions of employment.
Trans Pacific Partnership is stacked in so many ways against the working families of America that the small incentives to vote for it just were not enough.
Today's vote was a reflection of the grassroots of America saying "No More!"