Liberal groups and lawmakers seethed with anger over the Obama administration’s proposed trade deal with 11 other Pacific Rim nations, claiming that President Obama was selling out to business groups rather than standing by his allies.
“The Obama administration showed itself willing to risk its entire trade agenda to satisfy the avarice of the pharmaceutical lobby,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s access to medicines program.
Long-running negotiations on the deal, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, were completed Monday morning. It would lower tariffs as well as create common standards for intellectual property, labor and state-owned enterprises for the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Peru. It would cover a region comprising 40 percent of the global economy, but does not include China.
Liberal groups’ complaints over the deal run the gamut, from claims that it will damage the U.S. economy by allowing too much foreign competition and accelerating the outsourcing of jobs, to anger over protections for pharmaceutical companies’ patents, which they argue will keep prescription drugs unaffordable for low-income people, to concerns that it would allow companies too much power to challenge anti-pollution regulations.
However, the groups conceded that their fears were largely speculation because the details of the deal were not made available during the negotiations and the final text is still not public.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., complained bitterly that she and other lawmakers who are trade skeptics were not fully briefed on the details of the agreement, especially on the last-minute details. “We, like you, have had to rely on leaks,” she told reporters Monday. She said what she has learned about it has left her “deeply disappointed” and said critics would try to block it in Congress.
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, slammed the administration for not including more protections for U.S. industries and products. “Free trade without fair trade threatens manufacturing, innovation and inevitably leads to hundreds of thousands of American jobs being shipped overseas.”
Critics rejected the notion that any of their concerns had been addressed through last-minute concessions, such as limiting the period of patent protection for pharmaceutical companies from 12 years to five, arguing that was still too long. “I don’t see any improvement,” said Rep. Paul Tonko.
The Sierra Club warned that enough was known about the deal to conclude that it would “undermine decades of environmental progress and threaten our climate.”
The AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, did not immediately oppose the deal, but urged that the complete text be released immediately so the terms can be examined.
“As we’ve said, rushing through a bad deal will not bring economic stability to working families, nor will it bring confidence that our priorities count as much as those of global corporations,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the home state of Rep. Rosa DeLauro. The Washington Examiner regrets the error.
