No vote on NAFTA ’til it’s fixed: Tuesday is National Call-In Day

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After 25 years of NAFTA empowering corporations to undermine basic labor standards, attack environmental laws, and outsource more than 1 million U.S. jobs, the revised NAFTA 2.0 deal that Donald Trump signed in late 2018 is not the transformational replacement we need. In fact, in addition to failing to include strong labor rights enforcement provisions, it includes language that the pharmaceutical companies wanted that would lock in high drug prices in the United States.

TAKE A STAND — Tuesday, Aug. 20 is National “No Vote on NAFTA 2.0 Until It’s Fixed” Call-In Day. Please call 1-855-973-4213 to leave a message for your member of Congress to promise not to support Trump’s revised NAFTA unless and until the administration fixes it. No vote should be held on NAFTA 2.0 until its Big Pharma giveaways are removed, and its labor and environmental standards are improved. Click here for more detailed instructions.

BACKGROUND — The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a 1994 deal between the United States, Canada and Mexico. At its heart are special rights and privileges for corporations that help them outsource jobs and attack domestic environmental and consumer protections.

NAFTA has resulted in the loss of more than 1 million U.S. jobs, the displacement of millions of Mexican small farmers, and downward pressure on wages in both nations. Multinational corporations have extracted hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds after attacking our laws before NAFTA Investor-State Dispute Settlement tribunals.

The labor movement supported the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from NAFTA and to renegotiate it, seeing this as an opportunity to require strong labor rights provisions and strong enforcement provisions. But the new NAFTA signed by the president in late 2018, called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, does not do this. That’s why the AFL-CIO has announced its opposition to this NAFTA 2.0 in its current form and urged Congress not to vote on it until it’s fixed. All of the Democratic candidates for president agree that Congress should not pass this NAFTA until major changes are made.

Meanwhile, healthcare and consumer groups are opposed to NAFTA 2.0 because Big Pharma convinced the Trump administration to include special monopoly protections that would lock in high U.S. drug prices. They are fighting to remove those giveaways to the pharmaceutical industry – and to ensure any new deal stops NAFTA’s ongoing job outsourcing, downward pressure on wages, and environmental destruction.

For more information, visit the Replace NAFTA website and action page.