President Obama delivers SOTU address, mentioning trade agreements, AIDS-free generation

"President Barack Obama outlined an ambitious agenda in his State of the Union address Tuesday that included raising the minimum wage, increasing spending on infrastructure, attacking climate change and passing gun-control legislation," the Wall Street Journal reports (2/13). "Obama used his State of the Union address Tuesday night to urge the United States to pass two key trade agreements, including the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] and a new deal with the European Union that human rights [activists] say will impede access to medicines and degrade labor standards," the Huffington Post's "Politics" blog writes, noting "public health officials said they have been troubled by the [TPP], as the Obama administration has sought provisions that would increase the cost of drugs at home and abroad" (Carter, 2/12).

"In the midst of the foreign policy portion of the speech, the president spoke of addressing global poverty and other talking points often heard in the humanitarian community," U.S. News adds. "In many places, people live on little more than a dollar a day. So the United States will join with our allies to eradicate such extreme poverty in the next two decades: by connecting more people to the global economy and empowering women; by giving our young and brightest minds new opportunities to serve and helping communities to feed, power, and educate themselves; by saving the world's children from preventable deaths; and by realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation," Obama said, according to the news service (Pitterson, 2/13). The Kaiser Family Foundation's Policy Tracker includes additional information on the State of the Union address (2/13).