Don't go along with trade deal

President Obama will be traveling to Asia soon. His goal: to pressure the other countries involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks to sign-off on a bunch of U.S. corporate demands.

This proposed 12-country NAFTA-on-steroids “free trade” deal is not mainly about trade. It would implement new corporate investor rights that promote job offshoring and empower attacks on countries’ environmental and consumer safety laws, ban Buy Local policies and raise medicine prices. No wonder other countries are objecting — and many in  Congress too. It is a giveaway to multi-national corporations.

Don’t buy the bogus “foreign policy” argument. It’s meant to distract us from the real issue: the TPP threatens our jobs, access to affordable medicine, the environment, and more.

The TPP and other trade deals should be debated on the merits of actual provisions, not on scare tactic and baseless foreign policy arguments. It has been kept secret from the public. And on its merits, the TPP is not in our national interest.

Kaiser is a resident of Whitefish