Hi John,
It’s real – the starting gun has formally been fired on trade talks with the US. Today, the trade minister, Liz Truss, announced the UK’s initial negotiating objectives for a trade deal with the US, and things can officially get underway.
It could move fast from this point, and a trade deal with Trump is going to be bad for people and planet. Can you join with thousands of others in speaking out to say this deal is not in your name?
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Truss’s trade objectives are comfortably vague – nothing more than a set of reassuring platitudes that claim her trade plans will do everything for everyone. Unfortunately for her, we already know a lot about what is on the table in a deal with the US.
The US’s own objectives are a lot more down to earth, detailed and aggressive, while leaked documents from the preparatory talks that have been underway for more than two years reveal what has been going on.
And what it looks like is a bonanza for big business:
- Energy companies want a deal to ensure they can keep trading fossil fuels regardless of the climate crisis we are all facing. Boris Johnson is already floundering around trying to organise for the climate COP in Glasgow, but in the meantime a trade deal with Trump could undermine anything that conference might achieve.
- Agribusiness wants to undercut our existing food standards to allow not just the dreaded chlorine chicken, but also pesticide residues in baby food, hormones in beef and pus in milk.
- Silicon Valley big tech platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google want the deal to block regulation of the internet and prevent attempts to make them pay their taxes.
This is going to be a toxic trade deal, which Johnson and Truss can use to spearhead a shock doctrine remaking of our society. We need to stop that happening.
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We’ve already had some wins. These objectives insist that the NHS, medicine prices, animal welfare and food standards will be safe from a trade deal. Those are important promises that ministers would never have made if it was not for public pressure from people like you. Sadly, we’ve seen ministers make such promises before and then break them, so we can’t let up on trying to keep them to their word, but we do already have something to build on.
Now that objectives are out, the first round of formal negotiations could come any time soon. We don’t know exactly when because of the secrecy surrounding them, but we need to be ready. This is going to take all of us, acting together.
Can you join the movement and sign the petition to oppose a toxic trade deal? Help us reach over a hundred thousand signatures before the first round of formal negotiations.
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Thank you for all your support,
Jean Blaylock
Campaigner at Global Justice Now
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