The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)
The Greatest Threat to Economic, Social, and Environmental Justice in a Decade
What You Should Know About the TPP

The TPP is the biggest challenge to our democracy, an even greater threat than Donald Trump. Please take the time to review the links, become informed and become active. If passed, the TPP would:

• Make it easier for big corporations to ship our jobs overseas, pushing down our wages and increasing income inequality;
• Flood our country with unsafe imported food;
• Jack up the cost of medicines by giving big pharmaceutical corporations new monopoly rights to keep lower-cost generic drugs off the market;
• Empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards;
• Ban Buy American policies needed to create green jobs,
• Roll back Wall Street reforms,
• Sneak in SOPA-like threats to Internet freedom, and
• Undermine human rights.

Each of the bullets above link to excellent Public Citizen analysis of the issue described in that bullet. This Huffington Post article provides an thorough analysis of the TPP, contrasting it with the recent Paris Climate Accord, tracing its development and describing the process that has taken place and yet ahead in the Congress.

Click here if you’d like to view a tremendous two-minute TPP video done by Robert Reich.  For those who would like to hear Bernie Sanders weigh-in on the TPP, here is a link to his June 2105 speech to Congress passionately describing the myriad of problems with the TPP.

What You Should Do About the TPP
Right now, President Obama is using his considerable popularity to lobby aggressively among members of Congress to encourage approval of the TPP.  Here is a link to how US Senators voted on legislation that would have ‘fast-tracked’ a vote on the TPP. You will see that both of our Senators, Heinrich and Udall voted no on this measure.

Here is a link to the House vote on the same measure.  All three of our representatives in the House voted against Fast Track, even Representative Pearce.

While these votes should give us some comfort, voting no on Fast Track merely reflects the desire to have a more public discussion of the TPP and should not necessarily indicate how our representatives will actually vote on the TPP, especially given the immense pressure that Obama is bringing to bear.

I suggest each of you begin by sending respectful emails to each of our representatives with “I Vote and I Oppose the TPP. Do you?” in the subject line and in the body of the email indicate your appreciation of their vote against Fast Track and your strong opposition to the TPP, citing specific reasons for your opposition from the materials presented below in this blog.

As the day for a vote nears, we will be asking our representatives to make clear their position on the TPP and bring stronger pressure, via phone, letters and email.  This link will take you to a pdf on the Retake website with contact information for all of our  New Mexico Representatives.