Evan from Fight for the Future writes, “Ding dong! The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead. Most news articles say the cause of death was simple: the election of Donald Trump. But they’ve only got a tiny part of the story. Now more than ever, it’s critical we share the real story: creative and strategic grassroots organizing can take on concentrated wealth and power and win. I’ve got an op-ed in The Guardian today with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and actress Evangeline Lilly (Lost, The Hobbit, etc) Check it out and please share!”
Perhaps most shockingly, the TPP would have allowed corporations to sue governments before tribunals of three corporate lawyers, essentially creating an unaccountable, shadow legal system outside of our traditional courts to punish governments that pass laws that corporations don’t like.
A simple agreement to lower tariffs and other anticompetitive barriers to trade wouldn’t have been so controversial. But big business couldn’t resist the urge to abuse the extreme secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations to stuff the pact with a wishlist for policies they knew they could never pass through traditional means.
That unchecked greed was the TPP’s demise. What emerged from the closed-door negotiations was more than 5,000 pages of policy so clearly against the public interest that it awakened a firestorm of opposition that swept the globe, and in the end, sent the TPP to its grave.
The TPP wasn’t killed by Donald Trump – our protests worked
[Evan Greer, Tom Morello and Evangeline Lilly/The Guardian]
(Image: AFGE Participates in #StopFastTrack Rallies [AFGE/CC-BY)