help arial,sans-serif;”>U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued a statement today after the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was released.  Congress voted in June to fast-track TPP before a page of the agreement had been made public.  Sessions statement follows:

“The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership runs 5,554 pages.  This is, by definition, anti-democratic.  No individual American has the resources to ensure his or her economic and political interests are safeguarded within this vast global regulatory structure.  The predictable and surely desired result of the TPP is to put greater distance between the governed and those who govern.  It puts those who make the rules out of reach of those who live under them, empowering unelected regulators who cannot be recalled or voted out of office.  In turn, it diminishes the power of the people’s bulwark: their constitutionally-formed Congress.

Among the TPP’s endless pages are rules for labor, environment, immigration and every aspect of global commerce – and a new international regulatory structure to promulgate, implement, and enforce these rules.  This new structure is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission – a Pacific Union – which meets, appoints unelected bureaucrats, adopts rules, and changes the agreement after adoption.

The text of the TPP confirms our fears, plainly asserting: ‘The Parties hereby establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission which shall meet at the level of Ministers or senior officials, as mutually determined by the Parties,’ and that ‘the Commission shall’:

• ‘consider any matter relating to the implementation or operation of this Agreement’;
• ‘consider any proposal to amend or modify this Agreement’;
• ‘supervise the work of all committees and working groups established under this Agreement’;
• ‘merge or dissolve any subsidiary bodies established under this Agreement in order to improve the functioning of this Agreement’;
• ‘seek the advice of non-governmental persons or groups on any matter falling within the Commission’s functions’; and
• ‘take such other action as the Parties may agree’.

Further, the text explains that ‘the Commission shall take into account’:

• ‘the work of all committees, working groups and any other subsidiary bodies established under this Agreement’;
• ‘relevant developments in international fora’; and
• ‘input from non-governmental persons or groups of the Parties’.

This global governance authority is open-ended: ‘The Commission and any subsidiary body established under this Agreement may establish rules of procedures for the conduct of its work.’  It covers everything from the movement of foreign nationals: ‘No Party shall adopt or maintain…measures that impose limitations on the total number of natural persons that may be employed in a particular service sector. . . in the form of numerical quotas or the requirement of an economic needs test’; to climate regulation: ‘The Parties acknowledge that transition to a low emissions economy requires collective action.’

These 5,554 pages are like the Lilliputians binding down Gulliver.  They will enmesh our great country, and economy, in a global commission where bureaucrats from Brunei have the same vote as the United States.

Clearly, powerful forces will have their voices heard and find ways to profit immensely from this conglomeration.  But what of everyday wage-earning Americans?  By nearly a 5:1 margin, they believe such deals reduce wages – not increase them.  Because this deal lacks currency protections, it will further the bleeding of U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas, allowing our mercantilist trading partners to take advantage of our continued refusal to protect our own workers.

At bottom, this is not a mere trade agreement.  It bears the hallmarks of a nascent European Union.  It is another step towards a world where people, goods, and services can travel freely across international boundaries – and a world where those boundaries mean less and less every day.

Yet, because Fast-Track – or so-called Trade Promotion Authority – was adopted (without a single vote to spare), we cannot amend this deal, we cannot filibuster this deal, and we cannot subject it to the two-thirds treaty vote.

That is why I am calling today on our leaders to take the TPP off of the Fast-Track.  The vote should be held under regular Senate and Constitutional order, and it should be held when voters can hold their lawmakers accountable – not during an unaccountable lame duck session.”

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