The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries reached a contentious trade pact that cuts trade barriers, sets labor and environmental standards and protects the intellectual property of multinational corporations. Now each country must sell the deal to skeptical lawmakers. My humble opinion. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and the China trade bill. He had similar speeches to both, telling Americans that these trade agreements would increase the number of American jobs, improving our economy. These were the two most detrimental agreements to the American workers that have ever been signed, and no president has fixed the problem. In fact it is getting worse, more food products are being imported from China, and the laws that ensured the country of origin of the food you eat, doesn't have to be listed, only the distributors of the food products. I don't know why our politicians are working against the American citizens, I have to assume it is the special interest groups that have paid for their campaigns in the past and in their future.
Oligarchy Rule. We worker bees (and tit-sucking parasites whose function in our society and government is only to "vote the right way"... paid for and supported by us workers, of course... and to maintain the illusion that we still have a democratic republic) are here just to support the wants and needs of high-ranking politicos and corporate bigs. TPP = NAFTA on steriods. NWO and One World Government, here we come.
I'm for free trade. The trouble is, these deals aren't free trade. They're some sort of managed trade. And according to the rules, the public is not allowed to see what's in them for 4 years. Which means we're not allowed to know what kind of secret arrangements they've made. Probably a lot of crap about global warming is in this thing.
The same thing happened in Canada. With NAFTA we lost our textile industry, completely. Good paying auto manufacturing jobs have gone to Mexico; how do you compete with $3 per hour? About an hour west of Toronto, they grow enough tomato's to sink a battleship; where do we get out tomato's from? you guessed it, Mexico. The whole thing has turned into a big joke. With this TPP agreement, Canada will have it's auto sector and dairy gutted. Thousands of solid paying jobs ($30-$50 per hour) going to places like Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia etc. How do I know this? The PM up here has already offered billions in compensation to those industries. There would be no reason for this bribe if it was a win, win for us. To put it bluntly, the industrialized nations, with a decent standard of living, just got screwed. I'm for fair trade. No such thing as free trade.