Trump kills the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal.
President Donald Trump has fulfilled one of his main campaign pledges by signing an executive order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The trade deal, a project that ex-President Barack Obama has worked on for nearly his entire term in office, was signed by 12 nations. The TPP would have included the US and 11 countries in Asia, South America and the south Pacific, and was designed in large part to curb the growing economic influence of China. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was the biggest trade deal that was ever created, which will impact the lives of over 800 million people all across the world, 40% of world's economy and 12 counties including the US, Australia, Japan, Canada and Mexico, was drafted behind closed doors and in complete secrecy, away from the public eye and scrutiny. There was a good reason for keeping it such a secret. Advisers who were asked by the US government to review it in secret have slammed it as being extremely pro corporations and not in the interests of the US and other countries which will sign it. Michael Wessel was one of the advisers who was asked by the US government to review what he said were woefully inadequate portions of the document. Wessel said the thrust of the TPP does nothing for Americans or people living in other countries. “This is about increasing the ability of global corporations to source wherever they can at the lowest cost,” he said. He also added that "We should be very concerned about what's hidden in this trade deal—and particularly how the Obama administration is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to provide advice". TTP would have allowed foreign corporations to sue countries for actions that undermine their investment “expectations” and hurt their business in secret interantional courts ("Investor-state dispute settlement") that were accountable to no one and had no public oversight. This trade agreement would have essentially transferred power from nation states to multi national corporations resulting in the underming of their sovereignty and would have given multi national corporations the ability to intervene and influence the legislative process in their favor, all under the guise of "free trade".
