Trans-Pacific Partnership

Dear Friends,

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a massive "trade agreement" currently being negotiated by the United States and 11 other countries - Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and Japan.  It is already huge and is being written in a way that other countries can join.  The negotiations have been going on for a decade, but they are secret.  The public only knows some details because drafts have been leaked.  The agreement contains 29 chapters and covers everything.  It is impossible to comprehend the vastness of the agreement. The Washington Post published a short and hence not very comprehensive article in December last year entitled "Everything you need to know about the Trans-Pacific Partnership" by Lydia DePillis (here).

One way to evaluate whether the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a good thing or not is to look at who is for it and who is against it.  There are over 500 official advisors to the United States negotiators.  They are from major corporations.  Senator McConnell has been widely quoted as saying that he and President Obama have talked about and agree on giving President Obama fast track authority to get this agreement done.  In fact it appears that the establishment Republicans and Democrats, all of whom tend to do the bidding of corporate America, are in favor of this agreement but liberals and conservative Republicans are very skeptical.

If you read the official website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative (here), you will get the sense that TPP is the greatest thing since sliced bread and will make all Americans rich.  I have not read anything that refutes the contention that  TPP will be good for American businesses and the economic elite.  However, it appears that there will be a negative impact on American jobs and American startup companies.  The Center for Economic and Policy Research released a study a year ago indicating that TPP would have a negative impact on most American workers (here).

TPP is being challenged by a wide variety of groups.  One very vociferous group is Public Citizen.  The first part of its website (here) about TPP reads:

Have you heard? The TPP is a massive, controversial "free trade" agreement currently being pushed by big corporations and negotiated behind closed doors by officials from the United States and 11 other countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. In one fell swoop, this secretive deal could:

offshore millions of American jobs, roll back Wall Street reforms, sneak in SOPA-like threats to Internet freedom, ban Buy American policies needed to create green jobs,

jack up the cost of medicines, expose the U.S. to unsafe food and products, and empower corporations to attack our environmental and health safeguards.





Although it is called a "free trade" agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade. Of TPP's 29 draft chapters, only five deal with traditional trade issues. One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries. Many would impose limits on government policies that we rely on in our daily lives for safe food, a clean environment, and more. Our domestic federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with TPP rules.
The TPP would even elevate individual foreign firms to equal status with sovereign nations, empowering them to privately enforce new rights and privileges, provided by the pact, by dragging governments to foreign tribunals to challenge public interest policies that they claim frustrate their expectations. The tribunals would be authorized to order taxpayer compensation to the foreign corporations for the "expected future profits" they surmise would be inhibited by the challenged policies.
We only know about the TPP's threats thanks to leaks – the public is not allowed to see the draft TPP text. Even members of Congress, after being denied the text for years, are now only provided limited access. Meanwhile, more than 500 official corporate "trade advisors" have special access. The TPP has been under negotiation for six years, and the Obama administration wants to sign the deal this year. Opposition to the TPP is growing at home and in many of the other countries involved. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation does not like TPP either.  The first page of its website about TPP (here) reads:

 The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretive, multi-national trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement. The main problems are two-fold:

(1) IP chapter: Leaked draft texts of the agreement show that the IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate.
(2) Lack of transparency: The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy. 

Joseph Stiglitz wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times critical of TPP last spring (here) entitled "On the Wrong Side of Globalization".  I have reprinted a few of his conclusions below:

There is a real risk that it will benefit the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else. The fact that such a plan is under consideration at all is testament to how deeply inequality reverberates through our economic policies.

One of the worst is that it allows corporations to seek restitution in an international tribunal, not only for unjust expropriation, but also for alleged diminution of their potential profits as a result of regulation. This is not a theoretical problem. Philip Morris has already tried this tactic against Uruguay, claiming that its antismoking regulations, which have won accolades from the World Health Organization, unfairly hurt profits, violating a bilateral trade treaty between Switzerland and Uruguay.

But the TPP would make the introduction of generic drugs more difficult, and thus raise the price of medicines. 

Critics of the TPP are so numerous because both the process and the theory that undergird it are bankrupt. Opposition has blossomed not just in the United States, but also in Asia, where the talks have stalled.

If you have time to listen to a podcast from Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, I highly recommend one interviewing Lori Wallach of Public Citizen here.

However, the most important thing to do is to tell President Obama (here), your Senators and your Representative to get rid of the veil of secrecy surrounding TPP, make TPP work for working Americans and have a full debate of TPP (no fast track authority).

Thank you for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal