The controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal between the United States and Asia is being signed today in New Zealand amid a new attack from a key senator who charged that it gives away American economic power.
The deal, chief critic Sen. Jeff Sessions told Secrets, “will commence decades of transferring American economic power to an ever expanding international commission, it’s just not going to stop.”
He added: “It absolutely erodes the power of the American people.”
The signing by 12 nations is the first step in putting the deal into play through legislative ratification.
It begins at 5:30 p.m. in Auckland, New Zealand, dubbed the “world’s most remote city.”
The deal, reached in October 2015, lowers trade barriers and is supposed to raise living standards and economic growth. But a newly released report from Tufts University finds it will cost 448,000 U.S. jobs.
Over the weekend, Sessions called on voters to pick a president will kill the deal. He believes it gives too much power to a new trade commission.
“We must not ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and this international commission that will be created that gives us only one vote,” said the Alabama senator. “This is the way the European Union began. We must not take this step.”
Instead, “if we elect a president that opposes it, it can be stopped and will be stopped.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
