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TPP on death bed

TPP

Ottawa – After years of campaigning against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Council of Canadians and its international partners hope they can soon celebrate the end of the corporate rights pact. According to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration has announced that it will not present the deal to the U.S. Congress during the lame duck period before the new administration takes office.

This closes the slim window of hope for the TPP, rendering its implementation nearly impossible. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress had already indicated that they were not likely to push it through, and that they lacked the votes needed to pass it. Trump’s transition team has also said that it will withdraw from the TPP in the first 100 days.

“The TPP is in full-blown cardiac arrest, thanks to years of international campaigning against this toxic deal, including turning Senate and House elections into contests over rejecting the TPP,” said Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians. “But the one thing I know from watching trade agreements is that free trade proponents always try to resuscitate these deals under different names – CETA, TiSA and others. We need to put a ‘do not resuscitate’ order on these corporate deals once and for all.”

There is speculation about Canada joining other agreements, trying to make a TPP without the United States or negotiating separate deals.

Sujata Dey, Trade Campaigner for the Council of Canadians, said that after repeated public rejections of the TPP, governments need to start hearing the message sent by citizens: “Trump has capitalized on a major problem with the prevailing economic outlook, namely how globalization has shifted power to an elite, concentrated wealth in the hands of a few and made states powerless to act. But he is not the first, nor is he the only voice against the TPP. Despite defeat after defeat, elites continue to push the same trade remedies down our throats. At what point will they start listening to people?”

The Council of Canadians outlined its concerns about the TPP in its brief to the House of Commons Committee on International Trade.

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