Why I'm Against the TPP

The TPP is much in the news. Everyone is either for it or against it and all the “fers” and “agins” are passionate. Hillary keeps getting hammered with questions about where she stands — which, wisely, she’s ducking. President Obama and Senator Warren are at loggerheads over it. Remarkably, Obama’s efforts to get the treaty “fast-tracked” are being blocked by members of his own party who are showing a most unusual reluctance to back one of his programs.

I haven’t read it. I don’t know anything about the overall structure of the treaty, I certainly haven’t seen the fine print (no one has) and I have little or no sense of the complex, interlocking, international legal elements. But like everyone else, I have an opnion and one held passionately.

I’m against it. For one reason. The Republicans are for it. The GOP has not been for a single thing in decades that would provide a boost to the lives of ordinary Americans — or the lives of ordinary anyones living anywhere. If this treaty has anything like the impact that NAFTA did — which is why people like Warren and Bernie Sanders are concerned — then the primary effect will be to further the vast and growing economic gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us.

If the GOP’s for it, it behooves every caring person to oppose it.

Some Marxist we got in the White House, eh?