Jeff Sessions: TPP Does Not Protect Interests of the People

Standing next to the behemoth multinational trade agreement on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sessions pointed to the length — clocking in at 5,554 page — and contents of the document as potentially deleterious to the U.S.

 

“No American has the resources to ensure that his or her interests are being protected in this document. It’s so long and the ramifications are so broad that Congress cannot do its job to ensure that the people’s interests are safeguarded by such an agreement,” Sessions said.

 

Sessions has been a vocal TPP critic — reiterating Tuesday his frustration with granting the Obama administration fast track authority to pass the deal with a simple majority and no amendments.

 

“The TPP is about a goal of creating a new global regulatory structure, what I have called a Pacific union, transferring power from individual Americans and power from Congress once more. Eroding Congress to an unaccountable, unelected international bureaucratic committee,” the Alabamian said.

 

Sessions pointed specifically to the agreement’s creation of a Trans-Pacific Partnership commission.

 

“In other words, we are empowering the Trans-Pacific Partnership countries to create really a new Congress of sorts, a group with delegates that goes and meets and decides important issues that can impact everyday life of Americans. So the American representative in this commission, which will operate in many ways like the UN, will not be answerable to voters anywhere,” he said.

 

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