The cat in the bag is finally out. The notorious Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) text has officially been released. Scholars, lawyers, the media and the general public has been tearing apart the 30 chapters and the several dozen "side letters." The text is very dense and difficult to understand, however, to many its very clear: the TPP is worse than what people previously predicted.
Look, we didn't need to see the text to know that it was a horrible deal. It was negotiated over the past 10 years in complete secret and was modeled after the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA has destroyed our manufacturing industry as well as our auto sector.
The North American Free Trade Agreement has been nothing but a disaster for the U.S. Just by taking a look at the auto industry, we see how thousands, if not millions, of auto jobs have been shipped down south. Here in the U.S., the lowest paid autoworkers make $38 an hour with benefits. That is roughly four more times than the average auto worker in Mexico. It is no wonder that Mexico is the most attractive place in North America to build auto factories.
In addition, within the past two years, a whopping 8 automakers have opened plants and expansions in Mexico. Those are jobs that could've supported thousands of families here in the U.S. We were told time after time that NAFTA was going to be amazing for America.
In 1993, former president Bill Clinton, a strong supporter of NAFTA told us: "I believe that NAFTA will create 200,000 American jobs in the first 2 years of its effect. I believe that NAFTA will create 1 million jobs in the first 5 years of it's impact."
It wasn't just president Clinton who made those claims. The very conservative Heritage Foundation told us that "virtually all economists agree that NAFTA will produce a net increase of U.S. jobs over the next decade."
Not to mention that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said in 1993 that "American firms will not move to Mexico just for lower wages."
NAFTA was supported by every major corporation in America and Wall Street.
Looking at 20 years later, we see that all of these predictions were dead wrong. The Economic Policy Institute estimates a loss of 682,900 jobs to Mexico. That is the complete opposite of Bill Clinton's prediction of the creation of 1 million jobs.
We see the same exact scenario occurring with the TPP. Multinationals and Wall Street support it blindly, yet we, the people of America have been burned by NAFTA and refuse to let the same thing happen again.
Now that we have the text our in public, all our fears surrounding the TPP have been confirmed. The TPP will hurt our labor sector especially with Vietnam as a trading partner. You don't think more companies will shut down in the U.S. and move overseas? In Vietnam, the minimum wage is $0.56 cents an hour. Isn't that a huge temptation for companies to save money on labor?
Not to mention the fact that we are a so called "free country" with freedom of religion and freedom of speech, yet we are preparing to trade with Brunei, a country who still practices Sharia law which is the total opposite of what the U.S. preaches.
Come on people. We have 90 days to tear this agreement apart. You don't have to read it and understand it to know it's simply horrible for us. Contact your Reps and Senators and tell them to vote down the TPP. We need to tell Obama "you wanted the TPP to go up or down? well, here it is" DOWN!"
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