Democrats and the TPP: Who Speaks for the Future?
Democrats and the TPP: Who Speaks for the Future?
Robert Borosage
Common Dreams
Texas populist Jim Hightower will present the Democratic Party platform committee with a Bernie Sanders-sponsored amendment to the draft platform when it meets in Orlando this Friday and Saturday. It will read:
It is the policy of the Democratic Party that the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not get a vote in the lame duck session of Congress and beyond.
This should be a no-brainer. All of the Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination were opposed to the TPP trade deal, as of course is Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
The TPP is constructed on the same noxious frame as the North American Free Trade Agreement and other corporate trade and investment deals. It is written by, for and with the multinational banks and corporations. Like NAFTA, it is a classic example of how the rules are rigged against America’s working people. Not surprisingly, it is championed by a huge corporate lobby and opposed by virtually the entirety of the Democratic Party’s activist base – labor, environmentalists, consumer groups, farmers, progressives, public health groups and more.
Will labor stand up? That will be a key question this weekend in Orlando. If the Hightower amendment is voted down in Orlando, the Sanders delegates will demand that the full Democratic convention debate and vote on the issue. The question isn’t about deference; it is about direction. And that can’t be ducked.
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