Economic security

Trans-Pacific Trade Deal to Boost Food, Medicine Costs - Advocacy Group

The recently completed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement will be a disaster for agriculture and affordable medicine, activist group Global Justice Now head Nick Dearden said in a statement.

The controversial TPP deal includes the United States and 11 other nations of the Pacific Rim region, covering about 40 percent of the global economy. Streamlining the process of goods sales between participating member states, the deal is considered by critics to be biased toward multinational corporations.Dearden added that portions of the deal leaked online detail methods in which large multinational corporations could sidestep and, in some cases outright ignore, the laws of a sovereign nation in the interests of shareholder profit.

Uncertain implications for workers’ rights, employment, copyrights, sovereignty and the environment have drawn heavy criticism to the TPP from many members of government, as well as labor unions and watchdogs.