Woot! No final deal on TPP during Singapore round of talks

Teamster Dairy Workers

The corporate power grab known as the TPP remained out of negotiators' reach last night, as they failed to come to a final agreement during the latest round of talks in Singapore.

The Financial Times tells us:

Talks between 12 Pacific Rim countries to create a tariff-free trade zone spanning the US, key Asian states and Latin America ended on Tuesday without a deal after the two biggest powers – the US and Japan – could not agree on allowing easier access to each other’s markets.

This is very good news for those of us who oppose the job-killing, corporate-empowering, anti-worker, anti-environment, race-to-the-bottom deal. It's especially good news for the 40,000 dairy workers the Teamsters represent. That's because one of the countries involved in the deal is New Zealand, which wants access to the U.S. dairy market. Most of New Zealand's dairy products are made by one company -- Fonterra -- that was set up by the New Zealand government.

Teamster dairy workers are very, very worried that cheap imports from New Zealand will shrink the U.S. dairy industry and cost thousands of jobs. Meanwhile, two other countries involved in the TPP talks -- Canada and Japan -- have refused to open their markets to dairy imports from the U.S.

By the way, you wouldn't know this if you got your news from ABC World News (but you would know about Taco Bell's new breakfast menu).