"...much of what's leaked about the TPP indicates that it's not about trade at all, it’s about investor rights.” -- Noam Chomsky

It's not a free trade agreement. It has virtually nothing to do with free trade... It's a protectionist agreement; it's anti free-trade. -- Noam Chomsky

“It’s designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity” -- Noam Chomsky

"I'm not against trade...but they're not really trade deals. They're really investment deals between international corporations...They're saying we want to get a race to the bottom so we can exploit the most unfortunate worker." ~ Rep. Keith Ellison

"The economy has definitely been improving, and things like the stock market are doing better, but the economy has to be good for working-class and middle-class families who work every day, send their kids to a school like is in front of my house, and they have to be able to enjoy their lives. That's why you don't pass a trade agreement that ships even more jobs overseas."
-- Russ Feingold

#TPP "This is not free trade; it’s fake trade... Listen, we are in a deep, deep hole, thanks to fake trade. ...And there’s a simple rule about holes: When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Stop digging!"
~ Alan Grayson

Call your rep & #StopFastTrack, before it's too late.
-- Daryl Hannah

Paul Krugman on TPP:

"I’m thumbs down. I don’t think the proposal is likely to be the terrible, worker-destroying pact some progressives assert, but it doesn’t look like a good thing either for the world or for the United States, and you have to wonder why the Obama administration, in particular, would consider devoting any political capital to getting this through."
-- Paul Krugman

"I will be voting to #StopFastTrack. Trade deals should create jobs, not offshore them. ~Rep Barbara Lee

"...the TPP is a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits... The Trans Pacific Partnership is the wrong remedy to the wrong problem"
~ Robert Reich

The Trans Pacific Partnership is the wrong remedy to the wrong problem
~ Robert Reich

"Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits – say, a regulation protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods, investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of Wall Street, or the environment from toxic emissions."
~ Robert Reich

"Bad trade deals like the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership are a major reason for the collapse of the American middle class and the increase in wealth and income inequality in the United States. This agreement, like bad trade deals before it, would force American workers to compete with desperate workers around the world – including workers in Vietnam where the minimum wage is 56-cents an hour. Trade agreements should not just work for corporate America, Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry. They have got to benefit the working families of our country. We must defeat fast track and develop a new policy on trade."
~ Sen. Bernie Sanders

"The TPP is another corporate-backed agreement that is the latest in a series of trade policies which have cost us millions of decent-paying jobs, pushed down wages for American workers and led to the decline of our middle class. We want American companies to create decent-paying jobs in America, not just low-wage countries like Vietnam, Malaysia or China. The TPP must be defeated."
~ Sen. Bernie Sanders

"During the debate over NAFTA President Clinton said, 'I believe that NAFTA will create a million jobs in the first five years of its impact.' WRONG. According to the Economic Policy Institute, NAFTA has led to the loss of more than 680,000 U.S. jobs. I voted against NAFTA and other bad trade agreements and am fighting to stop the TPP."
~ Sen. Bernie Sanders

"During the 1999 debate over Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China President Bill Clinton said, 'In opening the economy of China, the agreement will create unprecedented opportunities for American farmers, workers and companies to compete successfully in China's market. WRONG: Our trade deficit with China has increased from $83 billion in 2001 to a record breaking $342 billion in 2014." ~ Sen. Bernie Sanders

"Trickle-down economics is a myth. Enriching corporations — as the TPP would — will not necessarily help those in the middle, let alone those at the bottom."
~ Joseph Stiglitz
(Nobel Prize-winning Economist)

More from Nobel Prize-winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz on TPP:
Right now, there are trade proposals in the works that threaten to put most Americans on the wrong side of globalization.

There is a real risk that it will benefit the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else. The fact that such a plan is under consideration at all is testament to how deeply inequality reverberates through our economic policies.

...agreements like the TPP are only one aspect of a larger problem: our gross mismanagement of globalization.

Given that the president himself has emphasized that inequality should be the country’s top priority, every new policy, program or law should be examined from the perspective of its impact on inequality. Agreements like the TPP have contributed in important ways to this inequality. Corporations may profit, and it is even possible, though far from assured, that gross domestic product as conventionally measured will increase. But the well-being of ordinary citizens is likely to take a hit.

It’s much worse than a blank check about trade, because the trade agreement has provisions that would affect a whole set of regulations that would affect the environment, worker safety, consumer safety and even the economy...would not only become the law of the land, but every other law would have to adapt to it ... and our Congress would have given up all authority in those areas.

Matt Taibbi on TPP:
"Instead of standing in true partnership with unions and working people and employing a strategy of forcing the rest of the world to democratize and grant workers real rights in exchange for access to American consumers, they've done the opposite- beating up on the captured labor demographic as a way to reassure big business."
-- Matt Taibbi