May, 18 2017, 11:30am EDT
Will NAFTA Renegotiation Produce TPP 2.0 and Intensify Damage? Or Fulfill Trump Promise of a 'Much Better' Deal for Working Americans? Maintaining Secretive Process With 500 Official Corporate Advisers Does Not Bode Well
Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
As a candidate, Donald Trump promised to make NAFTA "much better" for working people. Today's notice is markedly vague. But Trump's NAFTA renegotiation plan that leaked in late March described just what the corporate lobby is demanding: using NAFTA talks to revive parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), like expanded investor incentives to offshore jobs that could make NAFTA even worse for working people.
The obvious measure of whether NAFTA renegotiation is intended to benefit working people is if Trump makes clear he will eliminate NAFTA's special investor rights that make it easier to offshore American jobs and attack our laws before tribunals of three corporate lawyers who can award the firms unlimited sums of taxpayer money.
If corporate elites are allowed to dictate how NAFTA is renegotiated, the agreement could become more damaging for working families and the environment in the three countries. And modest tweaks will not stop NAFTA's ongoing damage, much less deliver on Trump's promises for a deal that will create American jobs and raise wages.
Already the 500 corporate trade advisers who got us into the TPP have been consulted on NAFTA renegotiations, while the few labor advisers were shut out of that March meeting. And the public and Congress are being left in the dark about negotiating plans and goals.
If Trump won't make negotiations transparent - by issuing detailed goals and making draft texts available - how can the public know that the deal is not being shaped to benefit Trump's many Canadian and Mexican investments, or that the Goldman Sachs team in the White House isn't turning NAFTA into TPP 2.0?
Trump's conflicts of interest and self-dealing opportunities with NAFTA renegotiation are not hypothetical; the sprawling Trump business empire has 14 Canadian and two Mexican investments. Some of Trump's clothing line is made in Mexico. Trump won't divest his business holdings or release his tax returns, so unless he reveals his full Mexican and Canadian business dealings, we won't even know in whose interest these NAFTA talks are being conducted.
Trump's broken promises on trade are piling up. Instead of punishing firms that offshore American jobs, he has awarded United Technologies 15 lucrative new government contracts even after they proceeded to offshore 1,200 of their 2,000 Indiana Carrier jobs. Instead of enacting the promised "get tough on China" trade policy, he flip-flopped on his pledge to declare China a currency manipulator on Day One and has done nothing to counter our massive $347 billion China trade deficit.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana garnered applause from a room full of bankers on Tuesday after he dismissed calls for tougher regulations following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
"There are a lot of talking heads out there who are saying that the solution is more regulation, and I strongly disagree," Daines said in remarks to the American Bankers Association's Washington Summit, an annual gathering of bank CEOs and other top executives.
The Montana Republican went on to defend a 2018 law that progressive lawmakers and experts have said is at least partly responsible for the recent bank failures. That measure, known as S.2155, weakened post-financial crisis regulations for banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets, subjecting firms such as SVB—which lobbied for the changes—to less stringent oversight and paving the way for more risk-taking and industry consolidation.
Daines, a member of the Senate Banking Committee and a major recipient of securities industry donations, called the stricter liquidity requirements and other rules gutted by the 2018 law "overreaching regulations" and claimed that efforts to revive the safeguards are creating "more worry" in the banking sector.
"This was not the cause of this failure," Daines said of S.2155, which former President Donald Trump signed into law after it passed with bipartisan support.
Watch the senator's remarks, which begin at the 1:32:04 mark:
It's unsurprising that Daines' defense of S.2155 was received favorably by a gathering of the American Bankers Association, which was one of many industry groups that lobbied aggressively for the measure.
"The lobbyists were everywhere. You couldn't throw an elbow without running into one," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who vocally opposed S.2155, told reporters last week.
Warren and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) have introduced legislation that would repeal a critical section of the 2018 law.
The Associated Pressreported Tuesday that in the hours before Congress approved the measure, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.)—one of the legislation's top Democratic supporters—"huddled with executives from Bank of America, Citigroup, Discover, and Wells Fargo, who were there on behalf of the American Bankers Association."
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"What the Biden administration is saying is that charging U.S. residents three to six times more than any other high-income country is reasonable," he wrote.
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Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, said in a statement:
Today's decision is a blow to prostate cancer patients, their families, and taxpayers. Developed with U.S. taxpayer research dollars, Xtandi costs American patients $180,000 a year—as much as six times as much as patients in other countries. This excessive price gouging cost taxpayers $2 billion to cover Medicare beneficiaries' treatment in 2020 alone. The Biden administration has missed yet another opportunity to do something meaningful to lower prescription drug costs and protect taxpayer investments.
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In a statement, Becerra said that the administration is "committed to increasing access to healthcare and lowering costs."
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As the letter lays out:
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