8860-16 Oppose Trans-Pacific Partnership

Home Browse Search

DEFERRED 3/21/16. RESOLUTION NO. 8860 -16 BY: Anderson, Bullock, Litten, Marx, O'Leary, O'Malley. A RESOLUTION Opposing the Trans - Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) WHEREAS, U.S. trade agreements for the past 25 years have ignored the impact on American workers and communities like Lakewood, skewing the benefits to global corporations while requiring working families to bear the brunt of such policies; and WHEREAS, Growing trade deficits, driven by the North American Free Trade Agreement, China's accession to the World Trade Organization, and the U.S. -Korea Free Trade Agreement, have displaced 700,000 jobs and 3.2 million jobs, and 75,000 jobs respectively; and WHEREAS, U.S. employment in manufacturing dropped by 5 million from 2000 to 2015; and WHEREAS, In 2015 alone, Ohio lost 112,500 jobs due to trade with countries that are a part of the Trans - Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement; and WHEREAS, Jobs lost due to trade devastate families and communities like Lakewood and can permanently reduce lifetime earnings for hundreds of thousands of workers; and WHEREAS, The offshoring of manufacturing and service jobs deprives local and state governments of sorely needed revenues, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of public servants as well as construction workers whose jobs depend upon infrastructure building, repair and maintenance; and WHEREAS, Under NAFTA -style trade rules, the U.S. annual trade deficit has increased dramatically from $70 billion in 1993 — the year before NAFTA went into effect — to more than $508 billion in 2014; and WHEREAS, NAFTA and all but two of the U.S. trade deals that followed it include special legal rights for foreign investors, known as "investor -to -state dispute settlement" or ISDS, that allow foreign firms to bypass state and federal courts to challenge state and local laws and regulations; and WHEREAS, The TPP includes provisions locking in monopoly protections for expensive specialty drugs called biologics and constraining Medicare's ability to limit spending on drugs, potentially increasing drug costs for the government and all Americans; and