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While trade agreements are negotiated in secrecy, behind-closed doors, we have learned enough from leaks to know that the result of passing TPA to 'fast track' these trade agreements would affect everything from food safety to environmental protection to consumer financial protections.
Engineers in the developed world should be arguing not for protectionism but for trade agreements that seek to establish rules that result in a real rise in living standards. This will ensure that outsourcing is a positive force in the developing nation's economy and not an exploitative one.
The concept of national treatment is a core component of investment and trade agreements. It promotes valuable competition on a level playing field. Investment treaties should not turn this idea on its head, giving privileges to foreign companies that are not available to domestic companies.
If we're going to do trade agreements, as we should, we need trade agreements with rules that will lift up all boats, rather than continuing to pull down U.S. food safety standards, U.S. worker wages, environment, all that these job losses and all that this has done to pull down our standards.
If we are to garner sustained U.S. domestic support for future trade agreements, we have to make sure those Americans who have suffered as a consequence of past agreements have an effective social safety net, adjustment assistance, opportunities for retraining and new job creation that enables all Americans to thrive.
I do think we need to hold countries accountable who violate trade agreements that are already in place. We need to get stronger about enforcement, that in the future if we strike a trade agreement, toughening up labor standards and environmental standards and enforcement standards is something we absolutely need to do.
I think there's a big difference between the impact of trade agreements on corporate America and the impact on Mr. and Mrs. America. Corporate America has adjusted to them by investing lots of capital offshore... What we're doing is we're exporting jobs and importing products instead of exporting products and keeping jobs.
I think that the world is going to remain a very interconnected place. I don't think there's any getting away from that. The Internet has brought us closer together. I think cross-border trade is going to continue to grow substantially. I think there may be certain trade agreements that can be renegotiated, one way or another.
TPP replicates similar language from past trade agreements that has allowed foreign corporations the right to challenge U.S. federal, state, and local laws outside of American courts. These tribunals will not meet our high standard of transparency and due process, and they will rely on weak impartiality rules for selecting judges.
What we have are - some of the big political donors behind the super PACs are big on promoting more of these trade agreements which cost us jobs - another reason that we need to end political action committees and have only individual donations with their donations being disclosed completely with names and addresses and other information.
If we're going to pass international trade agreements, as we should, they should have similar kind of rules, not as high a wage as obviously as a steelworker in the U.S. or in Lorain, Ohio, but certainly rules on the environment and worker safety. You go to Mexico, you don't see those kinds of worker protections or environmental safeguards.