Broad Opposition from N.Y. House Delegation Deals Blow to TPP

Nineteen of New York’s 27 delegates to the U.S. House on March 23 expressed bipartisan opposition against the Trans-Pacific Partnership in a letter (here) to President Barack Obama. The letter blasts the agreement as having no meaningful measures to combat currency manipulation, and highlights the losses of 370,000 manufacturing jobs throughout New York and 5 million across the U.S. since the NAFTA and World Trade Organization agreements entered into force in 1994. “While we recognize the difficulty in proving a causal connection between trade agreements and job losses, the federal government itself has certified more than 115,000 New York jobs under the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program as having been lost to imports or off-shoring since NAFTA,” the letter says. “TAA only covers a subset of jobs displaced due to trade, so this figure represents only a fraction of New York job losses directly attributable to trade agreements.”