“We are optimistic that the TPP agreement will increase USA agricultural exports, which not only increases farm incomes, but also generates economic development in rural communities”, said Bowling. The TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities and towns all over this country from Newton, Iowa, to Cleveland, Ohio.
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First initiated in 2008, the agreement underwent several rounds of talks before a preliminary deal – to which negotiating countries agreed – was released in early October.
Dingell said the deal threatens American jobs.
“As always with these wide-ranging and comprehensive agreements, twelve countries have to ratify the agreement”, Robb said on Friday.
“Now that the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership has finally been released, it is even worse than I thought”.
The National Council of Textile Organizations, based in Washington, D.C., and representing US textile mills, said in a statement that it would start an in-depth review of the agreement.
Thursday, NPPC President Ron Prestage returned positive comments, noting that free trade agreements like the TPP work “not just for pork producers and US agriculture but for the entire USA economy”.
“The TPP includes the strongest labor standards in history, from requiring a minimum wage and worker safety regulations to prohibiting child labor and forced labor”.
Business and labor groups are squaring up for a battle in Congress over the secretly negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership now that US officials have unveiled the details of the 12-country trade deal. “The alternative to renegotiation may very well be no TPP at all”, he said.
Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist for IHS Global Insight, says Vietnam would be a big victor as tariffs on garment exports to the United States would disappear.
But Obama faces fierce resistance to the deal from within his own party, and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton opposes it.
A few pro-trade Republican lawmakers are also wary of the deal, heralding a tough fight to get the deal through Congress. Republican White House contender Donald Trump has labeled it a “disaster”.
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He said failing to secure 12 years’ patent protection for next-generation biological drugs could make it hard for innovators to recoup investment in new products, drive companies out of the industry and leave American consumers subsidising cheaper medicines in other countries.
