Bernie Sanders is urging Democrats to oppose holding a vote on a massive Pacific Rim trade deal.
[Vicki Needham | June 27, 2016 | The Hill]
The Vermont senator wants the party’s platform to make its opposition clear on the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which the White House is trying to push through Congress before President Obama leaves office.
“The Democratic Party must go on record in opposition to holding a vote on the trade deal during the lame-duck session of Congress and beyond,” Sanders said.
Sanders has said that the TPP would have “disastrous” consequences for U.S. workers and the environment.
Presumptive Democratic presidential nomineeHillary Clinton has said she opposes the TPP in its current form and vowed earlier on Monday that if elected she would appoint a trade prosecutor to protect the United States against violations.
At a platform drafting meeting last weekend in St. Louis, Sanders said Clinton’s representatives wouldn’t go as far as refusing to hold a vote in Congress on the TPP.
Sanders’s supporters plan to bring the trade deal up again when the full platform committee meets in Orlando in early July and, if necessary, at the convention later that month in Philadelphia.
“During the next days and weeks we will reach out to a large grassroots movement of working people, environmentalists, human rights advocates and religious groups to support an amendment to the platform in strong opposition to the TPP,” Sanders said.
“If we succeed, we will be in a very strong position to stop a vote and to fundamentally rewrite our trade agreements in order to end the race to the bottom and to lift up the living standards of people in this country and throughout the world,” he said.
