NAFTA Failures Fuel Congressional TPP Opposition, Says Public Citizen Report
The Obama Administration’s failure to fix endemic problems in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), including significant domestic job loss, skyrocketing income inequality, agricultural instability and health and environment damage, is fueling congressional opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), said Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in a report released on Feb. 13. “The TPP represents a stunning flip-flop that threatens to replicate the very NAFTA-style damage that Obama criticized on the campaign trail,” said the report. “But the administration and corporate proponents of the TPP will have difficulty getting the controversial deal through Congress. Twenty years of NAFTA’s damage has contributed to a groundswell of TPP opposition among the U.S. public and policymakers.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
More than 150 House members criticized in a Nov. 13 letter to President Barack Obama the opaque TPP negotiations and authoritarian fast-track mechanisms to secure the pact, in a move the Public Citizen report said illustrates growing congressional opposition (see 13111415). The report is titled “NAFTA’s 20-Year Legacy and the Fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”