Media Advisory: “No Vote Until NAFTA 2.0 Is Fixed” Rally with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Rep. Rosa DeLauro
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Democratic Representatives Headline Event With Activists Delivering Hundreds of Thousands of Petitions Demanding No Vote Until NAFTA 2.0 Is Fixed
WHAT
Press event for “No Vote Until NAFTA 2.0 Is Fixed” Day of Action. Petitions will be delivered to Congress from hundreds of thousands of Americans demanding fixes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) revision Donald Trump signed last year. Members of Congress, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka — fresh off a Midwest NAFTA rally tour — and civil society leaders will discuss improvements needed to NAFTA 2.0. The deal Trump signed would not stop ongoing NAFTA job outsourcing and would lock in high drug prices at home and abroad.
House Democratic leaders have made clear that the prospect for a vote on a revised NAFTA relies on whether the administration removes new monopoly protections for pharmaceutical corporations that would lock in high drug prices and strengthens labor and environmental standards and enforcement in the text to counter outsourcing. The last four U.S. free trade pacts that were approved had to be altered after signing to obtain congressional majorities.
That congressional Democrats, unions and others who have opposed past pacts seek improvements to the 2018 text rather than the deal’s demise reveals there is a path to build broad support. However, Trump could derail that prospect by prematurely pushing for a vote before the agreement’s text is fixed or by continuing to threaten to upend the new pact’s terms with anti-immigrant tariffs against Mexico.
Petition signers’ demands echo those made by congressional Democrats: that new monopoly protections for Big Pharma be eliminated from the NAFTA 2.0 text and that strengthened labor and environmental standards and enforcement be added to counter jobs and pollution outsourcing. The U.S. government has certified almost one million American jobs lost to NAFTA with more jobs outsourced to Mexico weekly.
WHEN
12 p.m. EDT Tuesday, June 25
WHERE
House Triangle, U.S. Capitol (Corner of Independence Ave and First St. SE).
WHO
Speakers include:
- U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
- Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO
- Others to be confirmed