To: President Barack Obama
We call on you to create a more open process for negotiating and ratifying the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a trade agreement that would encourage the offshoring of jobs to sweatshops, compromise food safety, endanger the survival of family farms, prevent financial industry regulation, threaten internet freedom, and undermine US sovereignty by prohibiting local content, Buy American, and green procurement rules.
This trade agreement will profoundly affect all of our lives. Thus, it’s only fair that you allow civil society, the public, the media, and Congress to have a say by making all negotiating texts of TPP public and sending TPP to Congress under normal rules, rather than seeking Fast Track Authority.
The Obama administration is engaged in secret negotiations with governments of Pacific Rim to create the Trans-Pacific Partnership – a massive international agreement described by public interest advocates as “a corporate power tool” that will help the 1% get richer at the expense of our jobs, health, and environment.
Representative Alan Grayson, the only member of Congress granted even limited access to the TPP negotiating texts describes the agreement as “an attack on democratic governance” and “a gross abrogation of American sovereignty…a punch in the face to the middle class of America.”
This fall, President Obama will call on Congress to vote to grant him Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority. Under Fast Track, Congress will be required to vote on TPP in a set number of days with no amendments – preventing legislators like Representative Grayson from reigning in the agreement’s most egregious provisions.
Learn more about TPP and find out how you can get take action to stop TPP and sign the Flush the TPP Pledge to commit to take action against TPP!