TPP hands the power to corporations

Your August 7 editorial, “Obama is right to push for TPP,” suggests that a hostile or skeptical public simply needs some reassurance, which could be provided by more robust measures to deal with job loss, plans to enforce environmental and labor provisions, and a commitment by all parties to review provisions after three years.

Reassurances are not likely to alter the fierce opposition to the TPP. Reassurances will not prevent expanding corporate power domestically and globally. Just about the entire public interest sector — labor, environment, human rights, faith groups — is strongly opposed to the TPP. The information these groups share with their people and the public at large represents hours of painstaking work by public interest attorneys and economists who have analysed the long document chapter and verse, and found it to be more a bill of expanded rights and privileges for corporations than a trade agreement.

The TPP would strip power away from the democratic institutions of our country and transfer that power to corporate hands. We’ve gone way too far in this direction already. The middle class is all but vanished and the 1% thinks they will have their wishes granted with the TPP. We don't need more control of our economy in the hands of multinationals.

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 8:27 AM with the headline "TPP hands the power to corporations."