Hi John,
Hi Supporter,
Climate disaster, a massive medicine bill for the NHS, and pesticide residues in our food: the starting gun has been fired on a trade deal with the US and it looks like a bonanza for big business.
Boris Johnson and trade minister Liz Truss have given the official go ahead for trade negotiations with the US. And already, our governments have been meeting for three years to ‘prepare’ for a deal. The papers from these talks, leaked last year, show the ground has been laid for a deal to benefit big corporations on both sides of the Atlantic.
But the fight back has already started. Thousands of us have already signed the petition to say we don’t want a toxic trade deal with Trump. Can you join them?
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Trump’s administration has told us exactly what it wants from a trade deal. It wants Britain to allow more steroids, hormones and antibiotics into our food production. It wants us to leave big pharmaceutical corporations free to dictate astronomical prices for medicines, and to further open up the NHS to US corporations. And it wants to prevent any attempt to regulate the actions of Silicon Valley digital giants like Google, Amazon and Facebook.
Boris Johnson's government sees a trade deal with Trump as a key prize of the type of Brexit it wants. The government can use this deal to give big business what they’ve been asking for for years: deregulating and slashing existing UK standards meant to protect people like you and me.
In a globalised economy, a US-UK trade deal impacts the whole world. Giving corporations free rein here in the UK increases their power and ability to act with impunity across the whole world. A lack of corporate accountability in countries like the UK, makes it near impossible to put limits to corporate power in countries in the global south.
Not only would corporate power, fuelled by the US-UK trade deal, mean widening inequality around the world, it would also block further action on the climate emergency, preventing stricter rules for dirty fossil fuels. At a time when corporations are burning the global south for profit, a trade deal would impose ‘business as usual’. And if regulations to support climate action ever are introduced, then as the icing on the cake, US companies could also sue us in corporate courts if they think it will affect their profits.
This is going to be a toxic trade deal, We need to stop that happening. As a first step, can you sign the petition against such a deal?
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We know we can win, because we’ve done it before. We fought hard a few years ago to defeat TTIP, the proposed trade deal between the US and EU. And we succeeded!
Together with our allies we have already had some significant wins on this deal. Johnson and other ministers have made pledges on the NHS, medicine prices and chlorine chicken. These are important promises that ministers would never have made if it was not for public pressure. 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.
With all the support that has already come together on this, we stand a good chance of stopping the toxic US-UK trade deal. But it’s going to take all of us and things are moving fast. I hope you’ll help us succeed.
Thank you for making a difference.
Best wishes
Jean Blaylock
Trade campaigner at Global Justice Now
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