From Our Future
On Friday the White House announced it was dropping its effort to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in the "lame duck" session of Congress. It looks like TPP is really dead. Let this be a lesson to us.
TPP "Buried By A Wave of Antitrade Political Sentiment"
On Friday the White House announced it was dropping its effort to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the lame duck session of Congress.
From the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Administration Gives Up on Pacific Trade Deal":
"The Obama administration on Friday gave up all hope of enacting its sweeping Pacific trade agreement, a pact designed to preserve U.S. economic influence in fast-growing Asia that was buried by a wave of antitrade political sentiment that culminated with Tuesday's presidential election.
"... Just over a year ago Republicans were willing to vote overwhelmingly in support of Mr. Obama's trade policy. But as the political season approached and voters registered their concerns by supporting Mr. Trump, the GOP reacted coolly to the deal Mr. Obama's team reached with Japan and 10 others countries just over a year ago in Atlanta."
(Note: the term "antitrade" in this WSJ report is a propaganda expression intended to drive support for policies that really have very little do do with trade and everything to do with corporate supremacy over government sovereignty. As if the United States is not already trading with TPP countries or will stop trading with them with TPP finally dead.)
Progressives Built That
That "wave of 'antitrade' political sentiment" that WSJ complains about didn't come out of nowhere. It showed that We the People CAN win -- CAN overcome corporate domination. It took years but progressives educated, drove awareness, organized and won. There's a lesson there.
TPP came out of an alignment of Wall Street, giant multinational corporations, most Republicans and the Wall Street-dominated Obama administration. The opposition was a worldwide coalition of millions of progressives and thousands of labor, environmental, democracy, consumer, human rights, LGBT, health and every other kind of progressive-aligned organizations, most Democrats and courageous political leaders like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), explains that, "Progressives' work ensured the votes weren't there," in "No, Trump Didn't Kill the TPP" -- "Progressives Did." (You really should read the entire piece):
"While overshadowed by the horror of Trump's election, this victory will be one of the biggest wins against concentrated corporate power in our lifetimes, and it holds lessons we should internalize as we steel ourselves for the many challenges we face heading into the Trump years.
"Under the banner reading 'A New Deal or No Deal,' the first cross-sector demonstration against the TPP in the United States was in June 2010 -- a full six years before Trump became the official Republican nominee.
"... It took years of protests at subsequent rounds in Chicago, Dallas, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Maui and elsewhere -- coupled with hundreds of other protests in cities and towns across the U.S. and around the world -- to slowly, but surely, put the TPP on progressive groups' radar.
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