TPP: Just the Facts

Watch What You Eat

The TPP will threaten food safety because both countries and corporations will be able to challenge food standards, labeling programs, pesticide regulations and more.

• Dairy standards could be challenged. New Zealand-based Fonterra, the world’s largest dairy exporter, has been banned from a number of countries because of products tainted by botulism. The ability for U.S. products to be sold as “antibiotic-free” or “hormone-free” would be challenged.
• Seafood standards could be contested. The FDA has detained hundreds of seafood exports from TPP countries because they were contaminated. For example, in 2012, the FDA detained 206 imported seafood products from Vietnam alone because of salmonella, E. coli, methyl mercury, filth and drug residues.
• LABELING laws COULD DISAPPEAR. Country-of-origin labeling now required on packages of meat, fruit, vegetables and some nuts sold in U.S. stores would be challenged. Canada and Mexico already have challenged these and other food standard rules under previous trade agreements. The TPP would allow more challenges to our laws.

Consumers who may want to avoid genetically modified foods won’t be able to determine what they can buy.

Internet Censorship

Wikileaks recently published the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. If ratified, the trade deal would

• CRIMINALIZE THE DIGITAL UNLOCKING OF MOBILE PHONES. U.S. consumers recently gained more choice and the right to unlock their phones and use other service providers with their devices. The TPP would undo those changes.
• Prevent copyrighted works – textbooks, music, art, literature, scientific research, journals — from reaching the public domains for 70 years after the author’s death. For corporate-owned works, it would take 95 years.
• Make Internet Service Providers more liable for copyright-infringing material posted to their sites, incentivizing companies like Verizon and Comcast to police the Internet.
• Enact stringent copyright enforcement measures that would make users afraid to view, share and interact with digital content online.

Read this chapter at www.wikileaks.org/tpp/#efmkCKkeK

A Bad Deal for Workers and Taxpayers

Manufacturing and service sector jobs are at risk, because TPP would provide special benefits to companies that relocate investment and jobs, especially to places like Vietnam and other extremely low wage countries. Wages in Vietnam are about 25 cents an hour.

• Foreign firms in other countries would be given equal access to U.S. federal government contracts, and provisions like “Buy American,” “renewable/ recycled” or “sweat free” could be challenged.
• Companies with poor safety or work records could not be barred from getting U.S. contracts, nor would the horrible human rights or other conditions in participating countries be a factor.
• Private corporations in other countries would be able to challenge U.S. laws and regulations, including the call center bill and those dealing with telecom, health and the environment, if they think our laws limit their “expected future profits.”
• Wages, benefits and collective bargaining rights would be eroded. We know that trade agreements have helped drive down wages and benefits and increasingly erode our collective bargaining rights. The TPP will speed up this race to the bottom by expanding corporate rights.