After spending billions in campaign contributions, lobbying and PR since the 1990s to enact our current trade policies, they want us to believe there is no alternative. In recent weeks, they have ginned up a PR campaign with two main themes: Critics of free trade agreements in general and the TPP in specific are protectionists who want to stop trade and/or are ignorant and misled.
They want more international protection when it comes to their intellectual property and other assets. So they’ve been seeking trade rules that secure and extend their patents, trademarks, and copyrights abroad, and protect their global franchise agreements, securities, and loans.
But they want less protection of consumers, workers, small investors, and the environment, because these interfere with their profits. So they’ve been seeking trade rules that allow them to override these protections. …
In other words, the TPP is a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits.
We have suffered the net loss of nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and more than 57,000 factories, and seen millions of higher-wage service sector jobs offshored.
Americans face flat median wages despite significant productivity gains as those losing jobs to bad trade polices join the glut of Americans competing for non-offshorable service sector jobs. This has been a major contributor to the worst U.S. income inequality in the last century.
Which candidates will promise today not to send the TPP to Congress for approval if elected? Which candidates will promise today that he or she will not sign the TPP into law if Congress approves it?
Bernie Sanders has made that promise. He also has been a leader on this issue in Congress, spotlighting the fact that the job-killing deal is rotten to the core. The TPP is packed with hundreds of pages of new corporate privileges and rollbacks of the basic consumer and environmental safeguards on which we all rely. Think NAFTA on steroids, but covering 12 nations and 40 percent of the world’s economic activity and open for China and more nations to join.
Negotiators announced an "agreement in principle" for something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), meaning TPP will soon move to Congress for approval. The TPP would expand the same failed "free trade" policies to 12 other nations that have already cost millions of jobs and shuttered tens of thousands of factories across the United States.
Make no mistake: if TPP passes, it will further hurt consumers and cost American jobs. So we must stop it, together.
In the Senate, Bernie will do all that he can to defeat this agreement. But he needs you at his side in this fight, because we will be going against some of the biggest, strongest corporations in the world.
Our nation’s infrastructure is collapsing, and the American people know it. Every day, they drive on roads with unforgiving potholes and over bridges that are in disrepair. They wait in traffic jams and ride in railroads and subways that are overcrowded. They see airports bursting at the seams.
For too many years, we have dramatically underfunded the physical infrastructure that our economy depends on. That is why I have proposed the Rebuild America Act, to invest $1 trillion over five years to modernize our infrastructure. It would be paid for by closing loopholes that allow profitable corporations to avoid paying taxes by, among other things, shifting their profits to the Cayman Islands and other offshore tax havens.
Importantly, the Rebuild America Act will support more than thirteen million good-paying jobs – jobs that our economy desperately needs.
— Senator Bernie Sanders
Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.
We must also establish equal pay for women. It’s unconscionable that women earn less than men for performing the same work. [...]
Lastly, we must support and strengthen the labor movement to ensure that workers have a say in their own economic futures. That’s why Bernie has been a strong supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Bernie Sanders: On the Issues. Sincere Beliefs and Principles.
Bernie Sanders: Sincere Beliefs and Principles. No Flip flops. #NotMeUs #StillSanders
Bernie Sanders. Sincere Beliefs and Principles. On War and Peace and Other Issues. #StillSanders
Bernie Sanders: People Before Polluters. Sincere Beliefs and Principles. Consistent. Credible.
Bernie Sanders: Poverty, Jobs, Minimum Wage, Rebuild America. Sincere Beliefs and Principles.
Bernie Sanders: Racial Justice and Criminal Justice Reform. Sincere Beliefs and Principles.
Bernie Sanders: Strengthen and Expand Social Security. Sincere Beliefs and Principles.
Bernie Sanders: Fighting for LGBT Equality. Sincere Beliefs and Principles.
Bernie Sanders: Make College Tuition Free and Debt Free. Sincere Beliefs and Principles.
Where is Bernie Sanders on the Issues? Where he’s always been.
His positions are not a matter of convenience or getting elected.
Bernie’s positions are founded on his sincere beliefs and principles demonstrated by a lifetime of action.
Click the links below for more information on Bernie’s positions on the issues.
With Bernie Sanders you know what you are getting.
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