[CTC] Farm & food statements on TPP's demise

Wed Nov 16 17:19:39 PST 2016

Thanks to Patrick at Food & Water Watch for compiling...

Iowa CCI Statement on Blocking TPP Lame Duck Vote

Widespread grassroots opposition derailed the corporate trade deal; members vow to remain vigilant during the Trump administration

November 15, 2016

Des Moines, IA – Today, a diverse coalition of groups representing labor, environmental, community and others celebrated a hard-fought victory in defeating the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) from coming up for a vote in the lame duck session of Congress.  This announcement comes on the heel of signals from the Obama administration and Speaker Paul Ryan declaring the trade pact would not come up for a vote in the current Congress.

“This is proof that organized people can beat organized money,” said Cherie Mortice, Board President of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement.  “The TPP had the backing of multi-national corporations and establishment politicians, but all the organizing done here in Iowa and across the country won.”

The TPP was a massive trade deal negotiated behind closed doors between the U.S. and eleven Pacific Rim countries.  While the general public and members of Congress were left out of the negotiations, nearly five hundred corporate advisors were involved in the drafting of the agreement.

Over two years ago, Iowa CCI partnered with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) to organize opposition to the TPP, hosting town hall meetings across the state and other events to educate and mobilize public opposition to the deal.

“The TPP failed because the vast majority of Americans saw it for what it was, a privately negotiated corporate giveaway where our sovereignty and way of life was at stake,” said Steve Abbott, president of the CWA – Iowa State Council.  “We stopped it because a huge coalition of environmental, human rights, social action, religious, labor and family farm groups said collectively that we’ve had enough and we aren’t going to stand by quietly.”

“The only trade agreements we should consider are ones that put workers, communities and the environment ahead of special interests and do not give corporations special rights to sue the U.S. government over environmental and public health safeguards,” said Evan Burger with Iowa CCI.  “We will remain vigilant to make sure that any trade deal proposed by the Trump administration meets these criteria.”

LSP Applauds Defeat of TPP
November 15, 2016 
Pro-Corporate Deal Opposed by Broad Spectrum of People Across Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — The Land Stewardship Project (LSP) today applauded reports that the largest proposed pro-corporate trade deal in history is not moving forward in the U.S. Congress during the upcoming lame duck session. The controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) <http://landstewardshipproject.org/organizingforchange/tpp?cms34sid=0ek2991aetsd7580fd38q5tjd7> would have given corporations unprecedented power to control everything from environmental and health regulations, to local community governance.

“LSP is proud to have been a part of a broad coalition of labor, environmental, consumer, faith, human rights, and the many other organizations that worked tirelessly to help everyday people raise their voice and oppose the TPP,” said Mark Schultz, LSP's Policy and Organizing Program director.

Schultz added, "This is an important victory for people. The reason the TPP won’t be brought up for a vote in the lame duck session is because it would be defeated. And it would be defeated because the American people, across the whole political spectrum, have clearly and strongly rejected it. Only the corporations and their allies want it. This is a victory for American democracy."

For the past two years, LSP members from across Minnesota, working with various allies, have been participating in meetings, collecting thousands of petitions and making hundreds of telephone calls to stop the TPP. They expressed concerns that this pro-corporate policy was bad for democracy and bad for rural communities. LSP also brought farmers to meet their elected officials in Minnesota and D.C. to oppose this policy.

“This policy would have given corporations the power to sue my local township, which is against my rights and local democracy," said Nolan Lenzen, an LSP member and dairy farmer from Eagle Bend, Minn. "I worked to defeat this policy because this was not a trade deal but a corporate power grab over our democracy and our economy.”

The Land Stewardship Project is a Minnesota-based organization dedicated to fostering an ethic of stewardship for farmland, promoting sustainable agriculture and developing healthy communities. It has offices in the Minnesota communities of South Minneapolis, Lewiston and Montevideo.
November 15, 2016

Statement on Behalf of National Family Farm Coalition, Rural Coalition and National Latino Farmers and Ranchers Trade Association on the Demise of the Trans Pacific Partnership

Our organizations, representing diverse family farmers, ranchers and fishermen, farmworkers and rural communities, have worked diligently for many years to protect our communities from trade agreements written by corporate insiders seeking only corporate profits. With our counterparts in Mexico and Canada, we have witnessed and lived the devastating impacts of the North American Free Trade agreement on agriculture, workers, jobs and our environment.

For the past five years, we have joined forces with Members of Congress and a strong coalition of labor, environmental, consumer, faith, human rights, civil rights, health, progressive on-line organizations and activists to defeat the TPP. We also collaborated with our counterparts in other TPP nations to build an international movement of PEOPLE united on behalf of food, agriculture and trade policies that sustain working people and their communities. 
We thank all of you for your campaigns to educate and organize your constituents, friends and families about the many concerns raised in the Trans Pacific Partnership:  competition from imported farm and fishery products produced by corporations, not communities; the loss of good jobs with higher wages; more expensive health care; and a degraded environment.

We will continue to be vigilant to end the era for trade agreements that are drafted by and for corporate interests to give working people the short, sharp end of the stick, and to create new rules to ensure that our trade policies protect the environment, address climate change, and defend labor and human rights while ensuring the safety of our food.

Again, thank you for all your great efforts and campaigns to stop the TPP. While there may no formal announcement from Congress or the Administration, please recognize this historic moment, which is more a beginning than an end. 

Food & Water Watch Applauds Demise of Trans-Pacific Partnership
People Power Stalls Corporate Power Grab
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch

Washington, D.C. — “After years of campaigning against the fatally flawed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the deal appears dead. The TPP represented the latest in a string of trade deals that put corporate interests ahead of communities, workers, public health and the environment. The broad-based, cross-border campaign tirelessly pressed elected officials to reject the TPP, preventing Congress from passing it this year. Without the environmental, labor, consumer, farm, faith, development and so many other groups that highlighted TPP’s shortcomings and organized in their neighborhoods and communities, the TPP would have sailed through Congress before the early presidential primary ballots were cast.

“Food & Water Watch was proud to be an integral part of this movement to block the passage of the TPP. Today, there is no path forward to pass the TPP in 2016. Late last week, the White House and House Speaker’s office effectively conceded that the TPP’s proponents lack the votes to pass the trade deal. We will remain vigilant to ensure that the corporate lobbyists that support the deal do not make one last try to pass it during the remainder of the lame duck congressional session or in the next Congress.

“The lobbyists who are streaming into the Trump administration supported the TPP and the corporate trade model. We will reject the same corporate trade model masquerading as new trade policy under the next administration. There must be a moratorium on pending trade deals — including those covering the services industries, various investment treaties and the pact with the European Union. Instead, we must craft trade policies for the 21st Century.

“We will continue to campaign to build a trade policy that works for everyone — both here and abroad. We need trade deals that put people before profits, communities ahead of corporations, workers ahead of Wall Street and farmers ahead of food companies. It’s time for a transparent, inclusive and equitable trade model that prioritizes human and labor rights, environmental protection and consumer safety. The success of our campaign to stop the TPP shows that the people’s movement can deliver real victories when we are united.”

Derailment of TPP is a victory for Fair Trade Advocates

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy November 15, 2016

 The derailment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the lame duck session of Congress marks powerful progress toward fair trade.  Since 2010, the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, working with a coalition of human rights, environmental, labor, and family farm organizations – indeed, nearly all of civil society – has been raising concerns about the TPP. At first, we said this deal must be unlike any previous US trade agreement. It must place the benefit of our communities ahead of corporate profit. TPP did not do that, so we opposed it in no uncertain terms. This work is not done. The worst aspects TPP may still come back in new forms and with new threats. We must remain vigilant.

President-elect Donald Trump’s reckless threats to tear up trade agreements have included no actionable policy approaches to new trade agreements that will ensure jobs, improve peoples’ lives, prevent the destruction of our planet <http://www.iatp.org/blog/201609/the-tpps-climate-blindspot>, or prevent the consolidation of power in the hands of a few corporate interests. <http://www.iatp.org/blog/201607/corporate-meats-takeover-through-ttip>

“TPP’s derailment is a victory, allowing another day to fight for trade agreements as instruments of democratic governance, rather than secret, corporate driven power grabs," according to Juliette Majot, Executive Director of IATP. 

“Rural communities, not just the administration’s corporate partners, must have a voice in determining what fair trade practices– and fair prices – look like. TPP was negotiated in secret, with corporate profits placed ahead any benefit to farmers or the environment,” says Karen Hansen-Kuhn, Director of Trade and Global Governance at IATP.

Expanding export markets under the TPP and other free-trade agreements have been falsely held out as a solution to plummeting crop prices, diminishing rural incomes and increasing hunger around the world. Family farmers and local foods movements in the U.S. and all of the TPP countries denounce these false notions and have exposed how TPP’s passage would endanger efforts to promote fair and sustainable food and farm systems.

Juliette Majot concludes, “Trade is an essential economic and political tool for improving peoples’ lives around the world. To be done right, it requires transparent, democratic, international institutions to govern it to ensure the provision of employment, product safety, fair and sustainable food systems, and environmental health, among other societal standards, for all the countries who participate in it. The TPP, from inception, through secret negotiation, and in its thousands of pages of non-trade related rules, works directly against those standards and the public good.”

###
Based in Minneapolis with offices in Washington, D.C. and Berlin, Germany, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy connects the dots of global justice to ensure fair and sustainable food, farm and trade systems.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.citizenstrade.org/pipermail/ctcfield-citizenstrade.org/attachments/20161116/cc247c91/attachment.htm>