Re: Reality

"Trade deals will happen," but it's our job as progressive, and even not-so progressive, Democrats to make sure they aren't structured as corporatist giveaways that make environmental and product safety regulation almost impossible and cede judicial sovereignty to corporate friendly arbitration processes that actually take sovereignty away from states and local governments trying to enact sensible sustainable energy and materials legal structures. TPP is not a "trade deal;" it's an anti-competitive pact designed to circumvent the regulatory ability of governments in favor of multinational big business.

Again, it's not about free trade. It's about keeping the ability to regulate the marketplace to ensure sustainability, labor standards, and sovereignty. And it is the job of the US to lead in this arena as well, and ensure that any international pacts are designed to improve trade, not make it more difficult to regulate in sweetheart deals actually written by lawyers from Big Oil, Big Pharma, etc., by and for their own interests. Which is the fact of the matter. As I've noted before, we already have free trade with almost all of the potential signatories to TPP. What we don't have is anticompetitive extralegal regimes designed to disadvantage ordinary citizens in favor of large corporate interests. And THAT we do NOT need. See citizen.org's global trade watch page. 

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 4:55 AM, Jim *+*+  wrote:

Hi,

It's nice to trash TTP, which may be a job killer, but

globalization including trade deals is hard to stop.

American weakness in education and training for

21st Century jobs is exposed for all to see: 

High school drop outs, phony Dean's Lists in

Universities where most students get A and B

grades.    And where science, math and technology

have minimal attraction to students creates issues

in the present scene of global competition.   

Look at the high-tech companies and their hiring

practices.   They cannot find nearly enough US

citizens to fill the jobs so they lobby Congress to

expand the number of visas for foreigners so they

can fill those empty positions.

Trade deals will happen.  The US in the period from

1945 to 2000 could pretty much dictate to the rest

of the world who was or who was not eligible to belong

to the World Trade Organization.   Those days are long

gone.   

The World moves on and the US must move with it

or lose.

J