{"id":9819,"date":"2015-01-23T09:30:08","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T14:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=9819"},"modified":"2015-01-23T09:30:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T14:30:57","slug":"nalc-trade-promotion-authority-a-k-a-fast-track","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2015\/01\/23\/nalc-trade-promotion-authority-a-k-a-fast-track\/","title":{"rendered":"NALC: Trade Promotion Authority (a.k.a. \u2018Fast Track\u2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"meta\"><small><time datetime=\"2015-01-22\">Jan 22, 2015 &#8211; NALC<\/time><\/small><\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<h4>Trade Promotion Authority (a.k.a. \u2018Fast Track\u2019)<\/h4>\n<p>Letter carriers may be hearing this week about something called Trade Promotion Authority, also known as \u201cFast Track.\u201d It may be the most important issue for America\u2019s unions in the first months of the new Congress. <a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/3-NALC-News-Small4.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6526\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/3-NALC-News-Small4.gif\" alt=\"3-NALC News Small\" width=\"254\" height=\"214\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Essentially, \u201cFast Track\u201d is a policy that gives the executive branch the opportunity to negotiate\u2014out of public view\u2014trade agreements and to send those agreements to Congress for simple \u201cyes or no\u201d votes.<\/p>\n<p>When Congress receives trade agreements under \u201cFast Track\u201d authority, representatives and senators have no ability to amend the agreement and its implementing bill. In addition, they cannot send the agreement back to the executive branch with instructions for improvement. They can only vote \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d on the proposed agreement.<\/p>\n<h4>Trans Pacific Partnership (a.k.a. \u2018TPP\u2019)<\/h4>\n<p>A pending free-trade agreement, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (also known as \u201cTPP\u201d and \u201cNAFTA on Steroids\u201d) is the reason that \u201cFast Track\u201d authority is currently on the table.<\/p>\n<p>The United States has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other countries from North America and the Asia-Pacific region: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.<\/p>\n<h4>Labor opposition to \u2018Fast Track\u2019<\/h4>\n<p>Trade itself is not inherently bad. But trade agreements negotiated in secret, with little or no input from elected representatives and the public, have the potential to cause real damage. This is particularly true when trade agreements include a focus on regulatory issues, labor law, government procurement, and other areas of economic policy.<\/p>\n<p>Trade policies adopted in the past under \u201cFast Track\u201d have cost the United States millions of jobs, have contributed to more than 60,000 factories shutting down and have exacerbated rising income inequality here in the U.S. and around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>A major concern is that the TPP would impose limits on U.S. government policies that Americans rely on for things such as safe food and a clean environment. In addition, domestic federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with TPP rules. Further, the TPP would elevate individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country\u2019s government. What\u2019s good for corporations is not always what\u2019s good for workers.<\/p>\n<p>According to Public Citizen, \u201cThe TPP would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) \u2018trade\u2019 pact model that has spurred massive U.S. trade deficits and job loss, downward pressure on wages, unprecedented levels of inequality and new floods of agricultural imports.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nalc.org\/news\/research-and-economics\/economics\/trade-promotion-authority-a-k-a-fast-track\" target=\"_blank\">NALC<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jan 22, 2015 &#8211; NALC Trade Promotion Authority (a.k.a. \u2018Fast Track\u2019) Letter carriers may be hearing this week about something called Trade Promotion Authority, also known as \u201cFast Track.\u201d It may be the most important issue for America\u2019s unions in the first months of the new Congress. Essentially, \u201cFast Track\u201d is a policy that gives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nalc-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9819"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9821,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9819\/revisions\/9821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}