(Newswire.net — April 21, 2015) — Washington, DC. – Trade unions, populist activists, and many Democratic lawmakers rallied on Monday at US capitol to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade treaty. They claim this secretive treaty is harmful to US workers, the economy, and the environment.
The protesters chanted, “This is what hypocrisy looks like!” They carried signs. One sign stated, “Dump TPP: Don’t trade away our future,” Russia Today reported. Activists protested against Congress providing President Obama unfettered authority to “fast-track” the treaty.
What is TPP?
According the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a “multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.”
Why protesters oppose TPP?
Protesters claim the TPP treaty is being kept very secretive from the US public since the treaty has not been released to the public. However, some pages were leaked to the public. The leaked pages caused various concerns, including the claim the US government is acting in violation of the constitution due to its secrecy. Additionally, it is unclear whether the TPP treaty protects the public or corporate interests or whether citizens of the countries signing the treaty will then have the right to bring intelectual property claims in US courts.
What else is wrong about TPP?
Though protecting of intellectual property by itself is a good thing, there are some serious issues with this treaty. According EFF, “leaked draft texts of the agreement show that the IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples’ abilities to innovate.”
Who benefits from TPP?
A few US senators are joining activists demanding the release of the entire treaty. Many senators are concerned the treaty was written by corporate lobbyists thereby providing corporations the benefits of the treaty while shouldering the cost of the treaty on the backs of workers and taxpayers. Allegedly, only five of TPP’s 29 chapters are about trade while others focus on patent protection, financial deregulation, internet privacy restrictions and litigation, RT reported.
“It is absurd that a trade agreement of such enormous consequence has had so little transparency,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, at Monday’s protest.
Is TPP dangerous to a middle class?
Transparency, however, is not the main problem. According to Senator Sanders and the union leaders TPP is not only about intellectual property, it also regulates legislations, which is a back door to outsourcing American jobs to cheap labor sources in less developed countries. That means fewer jobs in US.
“We’ve lost 60,000 factories since the year 2000,” AFL-CIO union head Richard Trumka told Vox.com. “When you lose industries, you lose the R&D that goes along with those. You lose the cutting edge; we’re no longer the leader in anything.”
“One of the key reasons why the middle class in America continues to decline and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider is because of disastrous trade agreements which have sent millions of decent-paying jobs to China and other low-wage countries,” Sen. Sanders said.
Is TPP worse than ACTA?
According to Webpronews.com, it is. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is an agreement to create new global intellectual property (IP) enforcement standards that go beyond current international law, shifting the discussion from more democratic multilateral forums, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), to secret regional negotiations, EFF explains.
According to Wikipedia, countries that ratified ACTA in 2011 are Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. According the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EU didn’t sign the agreement. In fact, the EU parliament rejected ACTA in summer 2012 by a “crushing” 92% majority of the European Parliament, EFF claims.