Published on Nov 13, 2013
The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal is in trouble, as 170 members of the House of Representatives have balked at backing the agreement. The TPP would open up markets between Pacific Rim countries, but critics focus on the high level of secrecy surrounding the negotiations, where members of Congress are being shut out by powerful transnational corporations. The Obama administration wanted to fast track the approval of the TPP in Congress, meaning that senators couldn't filibuster the bill, nor could lawmakers amend the bill. But the 170 representatives who signed onto a letter refusing to fast track the bill could effectively kill the deal. And now the secretive negotiations aren't so secretive anymore, as whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks published the actual text of one of the chapters of the agreement. RT's Sam Sacks talks to James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, and Peter Maybarduk, program director of Public Citizen Global Access to Medicine, about the latest developments in the TPP negotiations.