{"id":5379,"date":"2016-07-05T19:02:26","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T23:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.citizenstrade.org\/ctc\/?p=5379"},"modified":"2016-07-06T14:20:06","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T18:20:06","slug":"tpp-bad-deal-texas-mexico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.citizenstrade.org\/ctc\/blog\/2016\/07\/05\/tpp-bad-deal-texas-mexico\/","title":{"rendered":"TPP a Bad Deal for Texas and Mexico"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"SanAntonio2\"<\/a>Fair trade advocates have released a new report<\/a> which finds the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement threatens the Texas-Mexico border economy.<\/div>\n
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According to the report, the TPP would erode preferences for Mexican-made goods imported into the United States under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), displacing industry located in Mexico with less-expensive Asian-made goods and threatening Texan businesses built around servicing U.S.-Mexico trade.<\/div>\n
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\u201cTrade is good, but that doesn\u2019t mean every trade agreement is a smart deal,\u201d said Bob Cash, director of the Texas Fair Trade Coalition,\u00a0\u201cNAFTA devastated the Texas industrial sector and moved thousands of good-paying jobs to Mexico. Since the implementation of NAFTA in the mid-1990s, much of Texas\u2019 economy has transitioned from being a hub of production into a center for customs brokerage, logistics, distribution, transportation, accounting and other services that support production operations in Mexico.\u00a0As the report shows, these Texan jobs, as well as Mexican maquiladora jobs, are both threatened by the TPP.\u00a0\u00a0The TPP would erode existing preferences for Mexican industries, threatening both Mexican businesses and the Texan businesses set up to service them.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Petra Mata and Viola Casares, co-founders of of Fuerza Unida, an organization set up by San Antonio apparel workers when who lost their jobs when they were outsourced to Mexico, said, “More than 174,764 Texan jobs have already been certified as lost to offshoring or imports since NAFTA under just one narrow U.S. government program. Now we find out that the TPP would destroy more jobs on both sides of the border. We need to fix the damage caused by NAFTA, not replace it with another trade deal that is even worse.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Judy Peace, president of Communications Workers of America Local 6143, said,\u00a0\u201cWith so many of our U.S. based call center jobs being offshored to low-wage countries, the last thing we need is a new free trade agreement that will provide new layers of protections for multi-national corporations to ship jobs overseas.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The report \u201cThe TPP & the Border Economy\u201d<\/a>\u00a0discusses three specific Mexican industries that would be undermined by the TPP:<\/div>\n
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