Donald Trump pulled the plug on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal last week – with apparently the rather elderly North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade In Services Agreement (TiSA) possibly next on his list for dispatch.
While progressives will support these outcomes we must not be lured in somehow believing that there is some mileage in a “my enemy’s enemy must be my friend” strategy.
Although he has vociferously opposed the trade deals, says he will re-negotiate NAFTA and has made promises he will find it hard to keep – to create US blue collar and middle class manufacturing jobs, Trump will, in the long run, prove to be the most anti-union and anti-worker US President in living memory.
His appointment of CKE Restaurants Inc. CEO Andrew Puzder – who has outsourced jobs and opposed minimum wage increases – as Labor Secretary provides confirmation.
Although the TPP and other trade deals look like they may ‘wither on the vine’ and Theresa May is busy cobbling together potential trade deals with the USA and Turkey, (no doubt with few worker protections) unions must continue to oppose the deal with Canada, the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA).
CETA will allow US corporations a backdoor into the ISDS, now rebranded as ICS, ‘quasi-courts’ via their Canadian subsidiaries. If CETA is passed it will lock the UK into its terms for years to come regardless of Brexit.
It is all the more disappointing then that the Labour member on the EU International Trade Committee, David Martin MEP, recently voted with UKIP and the Tories to support CETA (calling it ‘a good deal for Europe’) with the key vote due perhaps on 15th February.
TPP, TTIP, NAFTA, TiSA and CETA were proposed, negotiated and introduced for the benefit of the 1% and multi-national corporations.
The Campaign For Trade Union Freedom is clear we continue to oppose these deregulatory new generation of free trade treaties – and we oppose Trumpism in equal measure.
