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| The IAM is among over 2,000 organizations to oppose Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free trade deal that threatens American jobs, food safety, the environment and more. |
The IAM is among an unprecedented movement of labor, environmental, faith and other organizations to escalate their campaign to defeat Fast Track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with a joint 2,009-group letter urging Congress to oppose it.
Read the historic letter opposing Fast Track here.
As leaked TPP texts reveal that the free-trade pact replicates and expands on the most damaging provisions of past U.S. trade deals such as NAFTA, thousands of organizations nationwide have educated their members about the TPP’s threats to American jobs and wages, food safety, affordable medicines, the environment, financial stability and more.
“For working Americans, our corporate driven trade policies have meant the continual threat of outsourcing, stagnant wages, and declining living standards,” said IAM International President Tom Buffenbarger. “This will not change until deeply flawed free trade agreements like the TPP are negotiated not in the back room, but in the light of day.”
The Fast Track legislation would allow the president to sign and enter into the TPP before Congress approves its contents with a guarantee that the done deal would then be voted on within 90 days after it is submitted with ordinary congressional review, amendment and debate procedures forbidden.
If enacted, the legislation would also allow whomever may be president in the next six years to unilaterally select trade partners, launch new negotiation, set the terms and sign and enter into any and all agreements before Congress approves pacts’ contents or trade partners and then railroad such future deals through Congress.
“President Obama may believe the TPP is good for America, even if from what we have seen of the text we strongly disagree, but who knows who will be president next, and if Congress approves this Fast Track bill that unknown president would get unacceptable powers to unilaterally dictate trade policies that are do or die for American jobs and wages and the consumer and environmental safeguards on which all of our families rely,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
Other organizations to sign the letter include the Alliance for Retired Americans, American Sustainable Business Council, Consumers Union, Defenders of Wildlife, League of Conservation Voters, NAACP, National Nurses United and Presbyterian Church USA.
Visit nofasttrack.com to take action today.
