Trumka Touts TPP

Labor leader calls on Obama to put stamp on Trans-Pacific Partnership, revamp nation’s trade policy in Thursday speech.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to Address Council on Foreign Relations on the Need for A New Trade Model

Washington, DC - AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will call for reform to our nation's trade policies during a conversation with the Council on Foreign Relations Thursday, March 17 at 12:30 pm. He will discuss the imperative for a new model for trade that promotes domestic economic growth and helps rebuild economic security for working people not only in the United States but around the world. Pointing to parallels between workers' calls for rights and shared prosperity from Egypt and Tunisia to the Midwestern U.S., he will outline the problems with current U.S. trade policy modeled by the Bush Administration and set out goals for a new path forward.
Excerpts:

"We are living at a time when young people all over the world are demanding good jobs, a voice at work and a voice in the decisions that impact their economies. It is no accident that newly triumphant young protestors in Egypt sent pizza to young union activists in Madison, Wisconsin, last month, just as U.S. union members had protested outside the Egyptian embassy days earlier.

These global cries for democracy challenge governments and international institutions to refound our global economic and political order on a more democratic, transparent - and equitable - basis.

Today President Obama has an opportunity to put his stamp on a major trade agreement--the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Here is a chance to make good on the President's commitment to craft a new trade policy for the twenty-first century that makes sense for working people and not just for multinational corporation.

The AFL-CIO is ready to work with the President and his team to make the TPP a new model for America's trade policy. But this will require new thinking on investment, services and government procurement, and the will to move forward on the labor and environment front -- by strengthening commitments, streamlining dispute settlement, building new institutions and improving enforcement.

Ultimately, we must change both the details of our trade policy and embed that policy in a coherent national economic strategy -- if we are going to close our current account deficit and quit borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars from the rest of the world every year."