[CTC] Oppose the TPP, Protect Public Health

[Ellen Shaffer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-r-shaffer/oppose-the-trans-pacific_b_10280518.html

Oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Protect Public Health

Co-authored by Ellen Shaffer, Joe Brenner, Joshua Yang, Donald Zeigler

The U.S. electorate is massively opposed, across the political spectrum, to
the proposed Trans Pacific Partnerhsip (TPP). Hatched during the market
triumphalism of the 1980s, modern era trade agreements like the TPP have
contributed to the most lopsided inequality in income distribution since
the Great Depression. They created the commercial and legal framework for
outsourcing living-wage jobs, escalating the prices of critical medicines,
and assigning corporate privileges globally that undermine national and
local government laws and regulations on*climate and the environment, labor
standards and occupational safety and health, controls on tobacco, alcohol
and obesogenic foods and beverages, and privatizing services* such as
health, education, social services, water, and corrections.

The TPP would continue and extend these policies, which significantly
undermine the social and economic determinants of the public’s health. In
fact, even the recent analysis
<https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4607.pdf> by the usually
complacent International Trade Commission concedes that the TPP would add
virtually nothing to U.S. economic growth, while further eroding jobs in 16
out of 25 U.S. economic sectors in agriculture, manufacturing, and
services. Public health must not collude with efforts to resuscitate the
TPP.

Two recent high profile statements attempt to drum up support for the
unpopular TPP based on a faulty analysis of provisions that greatly concern
public health: tobacco control, and access to medicines.

continued at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-r-shaffer/oppose-the-trans-pacific_b_10280518.html
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-r-shaffer/oppose-the-trans-pacific_b_10280518.html>


-- 
Dr. Ellen R. Shaffer, PhD MPH
Asst. Clinical Professor, UCSF
Co-Director, Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health/CPATH
P.O. Box 29586
San Francisco, CA 94129-0586
Phone 415-922-6204
www.cpath.org
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