Tell your member of Congress: NAFTA should benefit people and the planet, not corporate polluters!

Donald Trump has ordered a review of all United States trade deals, including NAFTA. While Trump has pledged to remake our trade deals to benefit the United States, his promises around trade just don't add up. Instead, he's stacked his cabinet with the same corporate advisors who brought us NAFTA and other flawed trade deals.

With a formal notice to Congress announcing Trump's intent to renegotiate NAFTA expected soon, we just released an alternative vision for the trade deal.1 The eight changes we propose are centered on replacing NAFTA with an entirely new approach to trade that prioritizes the needs of people and our planet over corporate profits.

Tell your member of Congress: NAFTA should benefit people and the planet, not corporate polluters!

The climate impact of NAFTA has been enormous -- it empowered corporate polluters to challenge environmental protections, boosted destructive mining in Mexico, and contributed to the rise of Canada's toxic tar sands industry. Now Trump's corporate-driven trade agenda threatens to make matters even worse.

TransCanada used NAFTA to file a $15 billion lawsuit against the United States over President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. While reviving this and other disastrous pipelines, Donald Trump made promises to workers to build them with US steel. But he almost immediately caved on this promise -- and only then did TransCanada drop its lawsuit.

Trump's Keystone backtrack betrays his empty rhetoric on trade. With his xenophobic, anti-environment, and pro-corporate trade agenda becoming increasingly clear, there's a real chance that NAFTA will only get worse. Congress must speak out now to ensure our trade policies respect workers, communities, and our planet.

Tell your U.S. Representative that renegotiation of NAFTA should benefit people and the planet, not Trump's corporate polluter cronies!

We need a new vision of trade -- not the empty promises peddled by Donald Trump.

Sincerely,

Anthony Torres
Associate Campaign Representative, Responsible Trade Program
Sierra Club

P.S. Congress is in recess through April 22, so many members are hosting local forums and town halls. These are great opportunities to ask your representatives to support climate-friendly trade. The Town Hall Project has a list of scheduled town halls and our trade activist toolkit will walk you through best practices for participating in these events. No town hall in your area? The toolkit also includes many other opportunities for taking action locally -- from writing letters to the editor to hosting your own community event!

Sign the petition that reads:

NAFTA has been a disaster for our environment. It empowered corporate polluters to challenge environmental protections, boosted destructive mining in Mexico, and contributed to the rise of Canada's toxic tar sands industry. The Sierra Club and many of our nation's leading environmental organizations recently laid out eight essential changes to NAFTA: http://sc.org/2p7jmYv. Any renegotiation of NAFTA should be driven by a desire for climate action, clean air and water, healthy communities, and good jobs. I’m deeply troubled by the fact that President Trump is stacking his cabinet full of billionaire supporters of status-quo trade deals and climate deniers and concerned this his renegotiation could actually be worse for our environment. As we begin to renegotiate NAFTA and chart a new path for trade, I call on you to ensure that a renegotiation of NAFTA must benefit people and our climate, not multinational corporations.