Community wide, we're opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. A friend in Congress asked if we would note a column by US House Rep David Cicilline on the topic. This is from Cicilline's column "A bad deal for American workers" for the Providence Journal:
Twenty one years ago, the proponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement argued it would create 200,000 American jobs in two years, open new markets for American goods, and at the same time, lift the standard of living in Mexico. Opponents of NAFTA warned that if the deal was approved we would hear “a giant sucking sound going south.”
At the time those words were hard to believe, but today they don’t sound so crazy. In the last two decades, as a result of this trade deal, over a half a million jobs in the U.S. have vanished because of growing trade deficits with Mexico, with a majority of those losses felt in our nation’s manufacturing sector.
Two decades later, as the United States considers the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, we are again faced with the same arguments. As with NAFTA, proponents of this latest trade deal are promising it will be the rising tide that lifts all boats. For hard-working Americans, there is, and should be, a great deal of concern that the TPP will destroy the manufacturing industry we have managed to retain in the United States and severely damage our growing sector of advanced manufacturing. We should not enter into another poorly negotiated and lopsided trade deal that will send more American jobs overseas.
Read the column in full and, please note, the member of Congress that asked me to note Cicilline's column is opposed to Hillary for president and thinks this issue could force a real contest for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
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