Go ahead and praise Trump's new trade agreement. It only took him a year and a half to make a deal with the two countries that border his own. Maybe in another year and half, Trump will make a deal with Australia.
All joking aside, in order to think the new trade deal is all that special, you have to trust Donald Trump.
Trump called it a "brand new deal" and "the most important trade deal we've ever made, by far." Trump is right, the trade deal with far greater significance than the Marshall Plan.
"The most striking difference from NAFTA involves protections for workers in all three countries," writes Jen Kirby.
By 2023, 40 to 45 percent of workers making automobile products must make at least $16 dollars an hour. Even though no one is really sure how countries will be able to know whether or not Mexican workers are making that much, or how Mexican companies will determine how their workers will make $16 dollars an hour.
Furthermore, the new trade deal means that more than half of the workers making automobile products can still earn below $16 dollars an hour. Not to mention the high possibility that outsourced to Mexico or offshore in another country.
Trump's trade deal is being called NAFTA 2.0, because it is NAFTA 2.0.
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food and Watch, wrote in a statement:
The Trump administration released the text of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade deal that would enshrine and globalize Trump's deregulatory zealotry in a trade pact that would outlast the administration and imperil future efforts to protect consumers, workers and the environment.
According to a report by the Sierra Club, the new trade deal not only helps out polluters, but the deal doesn't even mention climate change once:
The NAFTA deal between the U.S. and Mexico would encourage further outsourcing of pollution and jobs, offerspecial handouts to notorious corporate polluters, lock in fossil fuel dependency, and extend Trump’s pollutinglegacy for years after he has left office. It not only fails to mention climate change – it would prolong NAFTA’s contribution to the climate crisis. Despite progress on a few fronts, the deal fails to adequately protect wildlife, clean air and water, or the health of communities that NAFTA has exposed to toxic pollution.
Along with the disregard for the environment, Trump's trade deal will be a disaster for consumers of medicine.
"The revised rules would further strain health care budgets, contribute to people's suffering and family financial hardship, and most likely cost people their lives, " said Peter Maybarduk, director of the Access to Medicines Program at Public Citizen.
About the access of drugs, this is what Trump said on Monday:
We want our drugs to made here. When you talk prescription drugs, we don't like getting them from foreign countries. We don't know what's happening with those drugs, how they're being made.
It's called regulations Trump, but I don't expect you to understand the words that are coming out of your mouth.
According to a report by the Associated Press, "there were 4,412 brand-name drug price increases and 46 price cuts, a ratio of 96-to-1."
Trump promised that drug prices would go down, but his policies will do the opposite.
TruthOut writes of the impacts on drug prices due to NAFTA 2.0:
The new NAFTA also grants marketing exclusivity for new uses and forms of medicines that already exist on the market. This means pharmaceutical companies can enjoy monopolies on drugs that have existed for years by developing new ways to use or administer them. For example, patents on insulin products have sent health care prices for diabetics through the roof, even though insulin has been around for decades.
I hate Trump and he deserves that hatred, but I wish he would make policies that would help the working class. We know that isn't the case.
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