JUNK TPP, OPPOSE Free Trade, FIGHT Imperialist Plunder!

Statement of the International Women’s Alliance on the signing of the TPP

The signing of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement today,  February 4, 2016 in Auckland, New Zealand will be one of the biggest signing ceremonies as ministers from participating countries are set to witness the closing of one of the largest trade pact in history.  TPP, first pushed in APEC as  Free Trade Area of Asia Pacific (FTAAP),  covers 40% of the world’s GDP or 25.5% of the total trade volume and at least 650 million of the global population.  It will bind New Zealand, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam with the United States in a perfidious deal that will ensure the strengthening of imperialist globalization and the domination of giant transnational corporations in the global trade.

The notorious clauses in the TPP include the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that gives corporations and big businesses the right  to file legal suits against a country  through a corporate tribunal if and when national laws limit the profits of corporations; and the section on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)  and the restrictions it will impose on the use of patented seeds, crops and medicines.  This will result to a do or die situation where the governments will surrender our rights as a people and as a sovereign country to mere corporations.   The TPP will secure capitalist control of the global economy by giving powers to corporations over country and its people.

The TPP will crush any protective measure fought for by the people whether in food and agriculture, in social services and in business and will result to privatization and the denationalization of state-owned and controlled corporations that mostly provide social security and services.

Crisis looms and this will have adverse effect in the lives of the women and the entire population.

The recent APEC All Leaders meeting in the Philippines that became a venue for the announcement of the signing of the TPP  coupled with additional wheeling and dealing  and  the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Kenya,  were platforms for imposing neoliberal policies and US interests.   The US is hell bent on instituting world standards in trade and investment  where the poor countries fail and imperialist countries pass, the poor countries loose and the imperialist countries profit, the poor countries remains a semi-colony and the imperialist countries gain control of  the global economy.   The US has aggressively pushed for the signing of the TPP and the approval of a legislation in the US Congress not solely for economic reasons but to also protect its geopolitical interests.  The TPP, is a twin deal to the US‘ Pivot to Asia.  US had a hand in the passage and amendment of security laws in Japan in the same way they meddled in the signing of  the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that gave anew basing rights to the US in the Philippines beside the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Mutual Defense Treaty.  The deal will also strengthen its hold in the Asia Pacific to suppress China’s growing economic and political might.

IWA calls on its member organizations to intensify opposition against Free Trade Agreements, to junk TPP and to continue to fight imperialist globalization!  Women must be at the forefront of mass mobilizations and protest actions amidst US aggressive moves for the signing of the TPP, the call for our countries to join the TPP and the approval of a legislation in the US congress or elsewhere for TPP and other free trade agreements. ###

Oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership! Say No to Free Trade!

Oppose neoliberal policies! Fight Imperialist Globalization!