Menendez Urges House To Keep Malaysia Out Of Obama’s Trade Deal
(Huffpost) – Citing Malaysia’s abysmal slavery record, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) urged the House on Monday to ensure his provision blocking the country’s membership in the Trans-Pacific Partnership makes it into final legislation that would give the president fast-track authority on such agreements.
The bill in question would give President Barack Obama expedited powers to push through Congress trade deals like TPP, which he hopes to seal with 11 Pacific nations.
It’s a change of tune for Menendez, who had worked out a deal with Obama to include modified language in the Senate bill. The newer language, which didn’t make it into the Senate-passed bill, would have allowed Tier 3 nations — the lowest rank that a country engaged in modern-day slavery can receive from the State Department — into Obama’s trade deals.
Malaysia, one of the countries expected to be party to the deal, is a Tier 3 human trafficking nation and has done little, if anything, to fix it.
In an op-ed published in Roll Call on Monday, Menendez said the discovery last week of 139 graves at a prison camp run by human traffickers along the Thailand-Malaysia border should “strengthen our resolve to add this fundamental human rights principle to our trade policy.”
