Debt slavery

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would make it easier for corporations to offshore our jobs. It’s based on the NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Korea Free Trade Agreement. It has the same provisions that give companies who offshore, who relocate their investments, special privileges and protections that make it cheaper and safer to move our jobs to low-wage countries. TPP includes a lot of low-wage countries, which means our wages will get pushed down, when Americans are made to compete, for instance, with workers in Vietnam who are making less than 60 cents an hour.

Basically, the entire agenda that is necessary for a decent life and livelihood and health of America, and the people in the 11 other countries, is being rolled back in the name of a trade agreement that really is just a corporate Trojan horse tool negotiated for six years in secrecy. Our so-called free trade, policies have been a disaster for the United States since NAFTA was enacted. We’ve lost the jobs, and we’ve also gone deeper and deeper into debt. What happens is, the TPP, fast track, the Transatlantic version of TPP, these dramatically increase the amount of countries with whom we have this relationship—they quadruple them—and they put us on a fast track to hell, where America is nothing but cheap labor and debt slavery.

Ted Rudow III, MA