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Congress Asks: Who Is Writing the TPP?

In a stunning op-ed in the Boston Globe, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) pull back the curtain on the authors of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The congresswomen reveal, "powerful corporate interests have spent a lot of time and money trying to bend Washington's rules to benefit themselves, and now they want Congress to grease the skids for a TPP deal that corporations have helped write but the public can't see."

They write:

The president argues that the TPP is about who will "write the rules" for 40 percent of the world's economy – the United States or China. But who is writing the TPP? The text has been classified and the public isn't permitted to see it, but 28 trade advisory committees have been intimately involved in the negotiations. Of the 566 committee members, 480 – or 85 percent – are senior corporate executives or representatives from industry lobbying groups. Many of the advisory committees are made up entirely of industry representatives.

A rigged process leads to a rigged outcome. For evidence of that tilt, look at a key TPP provision: Investor-State Dispute Settlement, where big companies get the right to challenge laws they don't like in front of industry-friendly arbitration panels that sit outside of any court system. Those panels can force taxpayers to write huge checks to big corporations – with no appeals. Workers, environmentalists, and human rights advocates don't get that special right.

Most Americans don't think of the minimum wage or antismoking regulations as trade barriers. But a foreign corporation has used ISDS to sue Egypt because Egypt raised its minimum wage. Phillip Morris has gone after Australia and Uruguay to stop them from implementing rules to cut smoking rates. Under the TPP, companies could use ISDS to challenge these kinds of government policy decisions – including food safety rules.

Read it in full here.