Not if it has trademark and patent protections that will put important cultural and scientific progress such as needed medicines out of the financial reach of many of us including our government that insures us. Did you listen to the whole thing. He talks about a hepatitis medicine that costs $25,000 and that can be produced in India for $1,000. Excessive patent and copyright protection is another problem with the TPP. And by the way our Constitution gives to Congress the authority to establish copyright and patent law. I would not want to change that.
Then the agreement will still set up these special commercial courts that give companies the ability to sue say Los Angeles where I live if it denies the companies the ability to frack within our city. Dean Baker specifically explains that while as Obama claims, the court cannot order the city of LA to allow fracking, it can fine us to the point that we have no choice but to allow fracking in our area which is highly susceptible to earthquakes.
No. We should enter into trade agreements that support human rights and that allow us to protect, yes, protect, the American economy and the American people.
Thus far, our trade agreements have caused serious damage to our economy and our country.
And the worst of it is that we provide and pay for an inordinate amount of the military monitoring of the seas and trade routes while other countries do not.
I am for trade but only on terms that protect our Constitution, our democracy (what we have left of it) and our ability to protect the human rights of others, as well as our economy.
We are a huge market. And what makes our market so attractive is that we have essentially one unified communication system, a fairly uniform culture, and one dominant language that is pretty universally understood within our borders. That makes it easy to market products here. Products can be packaged and then sold in our markets with great ease. We don't have a lot of dialects and other problems that make selling here more costly. Our market is very attractive. We should use that fact to leverage influence for us and to improve the world. Right now we are throwing ourselves at the world and wondering why we get no respect.
No to the TPP. I do not like the concept of free trade. We are putting our market out there like a harlot. Trading it for far less than it is worth. And giving away our economic future. It is simply morally wrong for us to do that to our children and grandchildren.
And the high-sounding rhetoric is empty because it is really just a lot of noise covering up a lot of pay-offs and corruption. Shame on President Obama for even thinking about this horrible agreement.
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