[CTC] Wallach || The Choice Is Not Between TPP or No Trade

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/the-choice-is-not-between_b_9541300.html <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/the-choice-is-not-between_b_9541300.html>
The Choice Is Not Between TPP or No Trade

03/24/2016 01:12 pm ET |
Lori Wallach <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach> Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
The high-profile presidential primary revolt against decades of damaging American trade policy finally has forced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) into mainstream media coverage.

The usual free-trade-agreement cheerleading squad of chronic-job-offshoring corporations, Wall Street, agribusiness and their coterie of think tanks and pundits are unnerved.

After spending billions in campaign contributions, lobbying and PR since the 1990s to enact our current trade policies, they want us to believe there is no alternative. In recent weeks, they have ginned up a PR campaign with two main themes: Critics of free trade agreements in general and the TPP in specific are protectionists who want to stop trade and/or are ignorant and misled.

The recent Washington Post piece <https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/03/23/the-new-trade-paradigm-pro-globalization-anti-free-trade-agreement/> by Vice President Biden’s former chief economist Jared Bernstein does a great job explaining why the real choice is not between TPP and no trade. As he notes, we don’t need more free trade agreements to expand trade.

Indeed, U.S. export growth to countries that are not Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners has exceeded U.S. export growth to FTA partners by 29 percent over the past decade. By the end of 2015, the aggregate U.S. trade deficit with FTA partners had increased by 418 percent since the FTAs were implemented while that with all non-FTA countries had decreased by 6 percent.

How can that be? For the same reason polls repeatedly show that most Americans are for trade and against our trade agreements: America’s trade policy and trade agreements have been hijacked by special interests.

Indeed, the TPP’s strongest opponents are not against trade and do know what is in such agreements. That is precisely why they oppose the TPP.

CLICK HERE TO READ REST OF THE STORY  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/the-choice-is-not-between_b_9541300.html <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/the-choice-is-not-between_b_9541300.html>

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