<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><a href="https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2020/05/catholic-groups-convey-hopes-concerns-about-u-s-british-trade-talks/" style="color: purple;" class=""><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2020/05/catholic-groups-convey-hopes-concerns-about-u-s-british-trade-talks/</span></a><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div></div><div class=""></div></div><div class=""><h1 style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 24pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 33pt; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(37, 40, 42);" class="">Catholic groups convey hopes, concerns about U.S.-British trade talks</span><span style="font-family: Domine, serif; color: rgb(37, 40, 42);" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></h1><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" class="">by Nick Mayrand</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></div></div><div class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;" class="">05/17/2020</span></div></div><div class=""><div class=""><div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt;" class=""> </span></div></div><div id="Signature" class=""><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Catholic organizations have joined labor unions and environmental advocates in an effort to shape the early negotiations of a major new trade deal between the United Kingdom and the United States.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">In a letter sent May 4 to the UK Secretary of State for International Trade and the U.S. Trade Representative, sixty-nine organizations, including three Catholic advocacy groups - Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, and NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice - called for a transparent, democratic negotiation process based on “ambitious environmental and social aims.”</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><em class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">“</span></em><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">The U.S.-U.K. trade deal is an opportunity to acknowledge the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor and to create a new way of living and interacting, with stronger climate and labor standards, and protection of safeguards for consumer health and safety,” Susan Gunn, director of Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, told <em class="">Crux</em>.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">“We are concerned the U.S.-UK trade deal could privilege corporate profits at the expense of people and the planet, especially poor, marginalized communities,” she added. “A trade deal between two of the most powerful nations in the North would create rules that both countries could use in negotiations with countries in the Global South. We need to get the rules right.”</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">The </span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><a href="https://columbans.co.uk/columbans-support-uk-us-trade-agreement-based-on-environmental-and-social-aims" style="color: purple;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(203, 0, 0);" class="">letter</span></a></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""> argues that any new trade agreement must contribute to the fulfillment of the Paris Climate Agreement - the U.S. formally notified the United Nations of its withdrawal from that pact in November 2019 - and listed demands about labor protections, digital privacy rights, farm policy, and universal access to health care.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Other signers included the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which represents more than 700,000 people, the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), which includes 400,000 active members, and the Sierra Club, an environmental group with 3.8 million members.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Advocacy coordinator for the Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach, Rebecca Eastwood, told <em class="">Crux</em> that the Columbans attend closely to trade policy because their missionaries routinely see how “free trade agreements have real human consequences.”</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Active among vulnerable populations in fifteen different countries, the Columbans have witnessed firsthand the human and environmental costs of previous trade agreements that have “happened under the radar,” explained Eastwood.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">“You’d think you would include the people who will be most impacted by the negotiations in the process, but rarely does that happen because it’s mostly been corporations and government officials negotiating in a fair amount of secrecy,” she added.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Laura Peralta-Schulte, senior government relations advocate for NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, said that true transparency will require a “sea change in the way these negotiations move forward” because the early negotiation process currently privileges the input of “working groups that are so pro-business that there’s not really an institutional place for other voices.”</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">The groups issued their letter at this stage, she explained, because any concrete trade agreement ultimately will need congressional approval, where “the administration is going to be required to take our input.”</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Efforts to influence the direction of major trade deals are nothing new for these Catholic groups. In late 2019, all three were involved with a broader coalition of U.S.-based faith groups monitoring the negotiations of the “new NAFTA,” formally known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">“The Trump administration, to their credit, when they first negotiated the new NAFTA, had some improvements over what we had seen in democratic administrations, but they had stuck some benefits in for the pharmaceutical industry that would make medicines more expensive and put some labor standards in but nothing that could hold governments accountable,” Peralta-Schulte said.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">“We worked really hard with our members of Congress to make sure that before the agreement could go forward, it would be the kind of agreement we could all get behind,” she continued.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Eastwood hopes that the new negotiations between the U.S. and the UK will build on some of the progress that they saw in those negotiations for the USMCA, which goes into effect July 1.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">For example, the final version of the USMCA contains a significant shift away from provisions that had made it easy for companies to sue foreign governments to recoup lost profits - TransCanada sued the U.S. for $15 billion when the U.S. halted the Keystone XL pipeline, for example - and had subsequently produced a “chilling effect” on governments’ ability to enact domestic policies to protect environmental or labor rights, Eastwood said.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">While the USMCA did not completely remove those provisions, also known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, the fact that it curtailed them significantly suggests to Eastwood that the upcoming U.S.-UK agreement is a chance to enshrine that progress by excluding ISDS entirely - one of the May 4 letter’s twelve demands.</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">Signaling that the letter was just the start of the coalition’s efforts, Peralta-Schulte told <em class="">Crux</em>, “We’ve sent this strong letter up front to make our demands, but as they negotiate you’ll continue to see letters, and then we’ll ultimately work the issue at the congressional level as well.”</span><span style="font-size: 15pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class=""><o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p style="line-height: 18pt; background-color: white; outline: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;" class=""><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(62, 62, 62); letter-spacing: 0.4pt;" class="">“Trade is a good thing… when we trade with each other, we’re not shooting each other, we’re sharing, and we’re doing things that are a positive for both sides, but it’s important that rules be in place to uphold human dignity and the viability of our planet” she added. “We have a real opportunity here to move from a model of trade that prioritizes corporations to a model that prioritizes people.”</span></p></div></div><div class="">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; " class=""><div class="">Arthur Stamoulis</div><div class="">Citizens Trade Campaign</div><div class="">(202) 494-8826</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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