As President Obama has made clear, past trade deals – including the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA – haven’t always lived up to the hype. That’s why he has called for renegotiating NAFTA to better address labor and environmental issues. Because TPP includes Canada and Mexico and improves substantially on NAFTA’s shortcomings, it delivers on that promise. TPP learns from past trade agreements, including NAFTA, by upgrading existing standards and setting new high standards that reflect today’s economic realities.

HOW TPP UPGRADES NAFTA

• Adopting the highest environmental standards of any trade agreement, including fully enforceable obligations prohibiting some of the most harmful fishery subsidies, creating new tools to combat illegal wildlife trafficking, and improving enforcement of conservation laws.
• Adopting the highest labor standards of any trade agreement, including fully-enforceable requirements to protect the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively, prohibitions against exploitative child labor and forced labor, protections against employment discrimination and requirements for acceptable conditions of work.
• Including the first-ever measures to ensure that state-owned enterprises compete on a commercial basis, and that the advantages SOEs receive from their governments (such as unfair subsidies) do not have an adverse impact on American workers and businesses.
• Setting standards to protect digital freedom, by preserving the free flow of information across borders, and protecting against requirements that force businesses to locate infrastructure in the markets in which they seek to operate.
• Improving protections for 40 million American workers whose jobs depend on innovation.
• Subjecting commitments in the Labor and Environment chapters to dispute settlement–the same enforceability mechanism available for other chapters of the TPP Agreement – including the availability of trade sanctions.