Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement would be a platform for economic integration and government deregulation for nations surrounding the Pacific. The negotiating parties include the U.S., Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Vietnam, Mexico and Canada. Others may join soon. The TPP is a potential danger to the planet, subverting environmental priorities, such as climate change measures and regulation of mining, land use, and bio-technology. To avoid the most serious environmental harms, the TPP negotiators must address the following issues, among others:

• Include an environment chapter that does more than simply pay lip service to countries’ obligations to enforce domestic environmental protections and abide by global environmental agreements. It must be enforceable through international lawsuits.
• Reject the proposed TPP investment chapter that would authorize foreign investors to bypass domestic courts and bring suit before special international tribunals biased in favor of multinationals. Foreign investors could seek awards of money damages, of unlimited size, in compensation for the cost of complying with environmental and other public interest regulations. They could even seek compensation for lost future profits.
• Reject provisions of the TPP intellectual property chapter that would provide international legal protections for corporate patents on plant and animal life, granting companies ownership and sole access to these building blocks of life.
• Reject the regulatory coherence chapter that could hamstring environmental regulation. It would encourage cost-benefit analysis that exaggerates financial costs and minimizes the intrinsic value of protecting living things, wild places, and the stability of the ecosystem.

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Richard Trumka Urges Senate to Deny Fast Track Authority for TPP

Lord Rothschild

Published on Apr 21, 2015

Major labor unions and business groups argued against President Obama’s request for “fast track” authority to advance trade deals currently under negotiation with several nations. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka testified before the Senate Finance Committee against fast-track authority, saying that fast track legislation would rob Congress of a meaningful role in shaping the future of U.S. trade deals.

“The idea that fast track lets Congress set the standards and goals for the TPP is an absolute fiction,” Trumka said, referring to the pending 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Trumka said the Trans-Pacific Partnership “has been under negotiation for more than five years and is essentially complete. Congress cannot set meaningful negotiating objectives in a fast track bill if the administration has already negotiated most of the key provisions.”

The AFL-CIO has many issues with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, problems with both the substance of the agreement and the process by which it is being negotiated. Concerns with the deal include currency manipulation, failure to address and enforce uniform climate change initiatives, failure to create sustainable jobs in U.S., while discouraging purchases of American made goods.

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Prof Stiglitz on TPP 2015

M F Jorge

Published on Feb 4, 2015

Professor Stiglitz; TPP; intellectual property; access to medicines; generic drugs

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WikiLeaks Leaks Controversial Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Documents

Acronym TV

Published on Nov 13, 2013

Support Acronym TV: http://www.patreon.com/AcronymTV

The TPP is a Trojan horse that seeks to usher in a backroom secret sweetheart deal for the global elite, and President Barack Obama want the deal fast-tracked through Congress. That effort was dealt a serious blow on Wednesday, when WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire Trans-Pacific Partnership Intellectual Property rights chapter. According to the WikiLeaks press release:

“The WikiLeaks release of the text comes ahead of the decisive TPP Chief Negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents.”

Remember NATFTA? Remember the concept of Corporate Personhood from the Citizens United case? The TPP combines all of the worst elements of NAFTA and Citizens United, shoots them up with steroids, sprinkles in a speedball and codifies these principles into a trade agreement that is in fact much more than a trade agreement.

To sum up what we do know already, based on previous leaks of the working text about how the TPP would eclipse the concept of corporate personhood, I’ll quote David Swanson of Roots Action, who writes that the TPP would make popular the phrase Corporate Nationhood:

“Many of us have heard of corporate personhood. Corporations have been given the Constitutional rights of persons by U.S. courts over the past 40 years, including the right to spend money on elections. By corporate nationhood I mean the bestowing of the rights of nations on corporations (…) Treaties, according to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, are — together with the Constitution itself — the supreme law of the land. So U.S. laws would have to be made to comply with the TPP’s rules.”

How would U.S. laws be made to comply? Because, As Kevin Zeese and Margret Flowers write:

“In addition to requiring that laws conform to provisions within the TPP, corporations would be allowed to sue governments in the trade tribunal if laws interfere with their profits. Governments could not represent their interests before the tribunal or appeal adverse decisions. This would be a tremendous loss of sovereignty.”

And who is on this tribunal? Three judges, appointed by the corporations.

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U.S. Cities Fight Back Against Washington’s Secretive Trade Deal | PopularResistance.Or g

By Dana Liebelson, www.huffingtonpost.com
April 25th, 2015

Win McNamee via Getty Images
WASHINGTON — As the trade debate heats up in Washington, city councils are fighting back against controversial legislation that would grant the president the authority to fast-track international trade deals without congressional amendments.

On the Hill, lawmakers are pushing full steam ahead on legislation the Obama administration is seeking in order to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal with Asian-Pacific countries. Some Democrats don’t support the deal, arguing that certain trade provisions are worrisome and haven’t received enough scrutiny. Nonetheless, a key Senate committee moved the bill forward on Wednesday.

Across the country, city officials are making their own concerns about the legislation crystal clear. This week, San Francisco adopted a resolution opposing fast-track, following similar efforts in other cities, including Seattle and Bellingham, Washington and Fort Bragg and Richmond, California. A Pittsburgh official introduced a “Will of Council” against the deal on Tuesday. And next week, New York City officials will consider a resolution declaring the Big Apple a “TPP-Free Zone.” The sponsor expects it to quickly pass.

…(read more).

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Leaked TPP Document Reveals No Regard for Environment in Trade Agreement

TheRealNews

Published on Jan 16, 2014

President Obama’s fast track process for TPP gets dealt another blow by leaked environment chapter

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TPP/FastTrack…Hey Media, Where are You?

The Big Picture RT

Published on Feb 7, 2014

Mike Papantonio, Ring of Fire Radio joins Thom Hartmann. More and more Americans are waking up to the nightmare that is the Trans – Pacific Partnership – but the mainstream media doesn’t seem to care. Do corporate news outlets just not understand trade policy or is their almost total blackout on TPP coverage a sign that they’re up to something more sinister?

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TPP…fast track to poverty in America?

The Big Picture RT

Published on Jan 14, 2014

Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI, 2nd District) joins Thom Hartmann. Decades of so-called free trade deals have decimated the middle-class and sent millions of jobs overseas. So why is the White House trying force yet another one down our throats?

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TPP – Wikileaks has released another bombshell

The Big Picture RT

Published on Nov 14, 2013

Mike Papantonio, Ring of Fire Radio joins Thom Hartmann. Wikileaks has released another bombshell – this time publishing a portion of text from the secretly negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership. Now that the text is out in the open – will lawmakers in Washington finally realize how devastating the TPP is to the American economy?

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Yves Smith and Dean Baker on Secrets in Trade

Moyers & Company

Published on Nov 1, 2013

A US-led trade deal is currently being negotiated that could increase the price of prescription drugs, weaken financial regulations and even allow partner countries to challenge American laws. But few know its substance.

The pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is deliberately shrouded in secrecy, a trade deal powerful people, including President Obama, don’t want you to know about. Over 130 Members of Congress have asked the White House for more transparency about the negotiations and were essentially told to go fly a kite. While most of us are in the dark about the contents of the deal, which Obama aims to seal by year end, corporate lobbyists are in the know about what it contains.

And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade.

Instead, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for corporations and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental.” Yves Smith, an investment banking expert who runs the Naked Capitalism blog adds: “There would be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the interest of the public.”

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