The Trans-Pacific Partnership Could Ban "Buy American" and
"Buy Local" Procurement Preferences
From the workers who manufacture the materials to upgrade America’s bridges and highways to those who build the cars driven by our government officials, Buy American creates U.S. jobs by recycling U.S. tax dollars back into our economy. Buy American policies require that most federal government purchases of goods go to American firms, unless a product is not made here or the U.S. product is much more expensive. Buy American is supported by four out of five U.S. voters – Republicans, Democrats and independents alike.
But Buy American would be gutted, and American jobs lost, under TPP rules requiring “national treatment” in government procurement. To implement this TPP requirement, the United States would agree to waive “Buy American” procurement policies for all firms operating in TPP countries, offshoring our tax dollars to create jobs abroad.
Some corporate TPP proponents argue that these rules would be good for the United States because they would allow U.S. firms to bid on procurement contracts in TPP countries on equal footing. The notion that this is a good trade-off for waiving Buy American preferences on U.S. procurement is ridiculous. The U.S. federal procurement market is larger than the combined national procurement markets of all other TPP negotiating parties. Even more, U.S. firms already have equal procurement access in most TPP countries under existing deals. Counting only TPP countries in which this is not true, the U.S. federal procurement market is more than 14 times the size of the total “new” TPP procurement market.
TPP Bans Buy American and Buy Local
http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPImpacts_BuyLocal.html
