NO BACK-ROOM DEALS FOR THE 1%!

Help Drag the TPP Out of the Shadows

REGISTRATION DEADLINE: Wednesday, August 15

Trade negotiators and corporate lobbyists from the United States and throughout the Pacific Rim will be meeting at a fancy resort outside of Washington, DC from September 6 to 15 to advance the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade Agreement — an international corporate power grab that would affect the economy, the environment, public health and democracy itself for decades to come.

U.S. negotiators have granted approximately 600 corporate lobbyists access to the negotiating texts, but have flatly refused to tell the public what they have been proposing in our names. In fact, they don’t intend to tell us what they’ve been working on after the deal is signed and completed — at which point it is virtually impossible to make any substantive changes.

Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world have already called on our trade representatives to release the texts through emails, letters and petitions. We need your help on Sunday, September 9 in Leesburg, Virginia to bring our demands to them in person.

How to Get Involved

We need you to join us for a rally in Leesburg , Virginia on Sunday, September 9 at 3:00 pm — and we’re asking you and your friends to please pre-register as an “official stakeholder” with the U.S. Trade Representative so that you can gain legal access to the building where the negotiations are taking place. That way, in addition to attending our rally outside, you can also go inside the building to personally deliver our message to TPP officials. Registration is a simple two-step process:

(1) Register with the U.S. Trade Representative online right now. The registration form is very short and only takes a minute. (Feel free to put “private citizen” in the lines for title, organization and employer if you’re not representing a group, and to answer “no” regarding tabling and presenting.) The final deadline for registering is 5:00pm on Wednesday, August 15 — so please register now, even if you’re unsure whether you can ultimately participate.

(2) Let us know you’ve registered through this online form. We’ll use the information you provide to help with carpooling, printing up t-shirts and sending you reminder messages and other action items. (You won’t be added to any long-term lists.)

Labor, environmental, consumer, family farm and other social justice organizations will be holding a rally outside of the negotiations on Sunday, September 9 at 3:00pm. Registering with USTR will get you credentials that allow you legally join us inside and present our demands to TPP negotiators face-to-face. This is crucial to making sure we are heard. Please register now!

Background: What Is the TPP?

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is poised to become the largest Free Trade Agreement in U.S. history. The massive trade and investment pact is currently being negotiated behind-closed-doors between the United States and countries throughout the Pacific Rim. TPP countries currently include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, but the TPP is also intended as a “docking agreement” that all Pacific Rim nations will join over time.Powerful corporate interests want to use the TPP to:

Offshore good-paying jobs to low-wage nations and undercut working conditions globally

to low-wage nations and Create new tools for attacking environmental and consumer safety standards

Expand the deregulation of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies

Further concentrate global food supplies, displacing family farmers and subjecting consumers to wild price fluctuations

Institute longer patents that restrict access to affordable, generic medications

Instead of being debated out in the open, the TPP has thus far been negotiated in the shadows. Approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have been given access to the TPP negotiating texts. A handful of civil society groups also have access to the texts, but they are vastly outnumbered and are legally prevented from sharing what they’ve read. Meanwhile, the people whose lives will be affected by the TPP have been barred from even reviewing what negotiators have proposed in our names.

The fourteenth major round of TPP negotiations — and perhaps one of the last — is taking place in Leesburg, Virginia from September 6 to 15. We cannot afford to let this massive pact to continue moving forward in the shadows.

Please register as an “official stakeholder” with the U.S. Trade Representative now at:

And let us know you’ve done so at: