Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal Struck As "Corporate Secrecy" Wins Again

http://wendymcelroy.com/news.php?extend.6801

From the New Zealand Ministry of Trade: Full transcript of the TPP Here is Zero Hedge's commentary on it.
Click to expand...

ObamaTrade Details Unveiled, Officials Warn "It's Worse Than We Thought"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-...-unveiled-officials-warn-its-worse-we-thought

It appears, that ObamaTrade may be a boon for factory and export economies like Malaysia and Vietnam, but - as expected - will achieve little for the average joe in America.
[...]
Of course, there is one big winner - as we detailed previously - Big Pharma...
[...]
This means the agreement will prevent more affordable biosimilars from entering the market for a longer period of time in places that previously had no bar to entry.

* * *

The earliest the TPP could come before Congress is March, just as the U.S. presidential primary season is heating up, creating the risk that the deal becomes a campaign issue. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman warned that trying to reopen the complex deal could unravel the whole package... which may not be a bad thing after all.
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The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item...orate_power_grab_in_american_history_20151106

tpp_protest_ap_590.jpg


The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared.

“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often dysfunctional democratic institutions. The agreements—filled with jargon, convoluted technical, trade and financial terms, legalese, fine print and obtuse phrasing—can be summed up in two words: corporate enslavement.

The TPP removes legislative authority from Congress and the White House on a range of issues. Judicial power is often surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.

The Sierra Club issued a statement after the release of the TPP text saying that the “deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.”

If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP in Congress this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. Wages will decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by corporations as impeding projected profit, even a law designed to protect the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS, bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their “right” to further swell their bank accounts. Corporate profit effectively will replace the common good.

Given the bankruptcy of our political class—including amoral politicians such as Hillary Clinton, who is denouncing the TPP during the presidential campaign but whose unwavering service to corporate capitalism assures her fealty to her corporate backers—the trade agreement has a good chance of becoming law. And because the Obama administration won fast-track authority, a tactic designed by the Nixon administration to subvert democratic debate, President Obama will be able to sign the agreement before it goes to Congress.

The TPP, because of fast track, bypasses the normal legislative process of public discussion and consideration by congressional committees. The House and the Senate, which have to vote on the TPP bill within 90 days of when it is sent to Congress, are prohibited by the fast-track provision from adding floor amendments or holding more than 20 hours of floor debate. Congress cannot raise concerns about the effects of the TPP on the environment. It can only vote yes or no. It is powerless to modify or change one word.

There will be a mass mobilization Nov. 14 through 18 in Washington to begin the push to block the TPP. Rising up to stop the TPP is a far, far better investment of our time and energy than engaging in the empty political theater that passes for a presidential campaign.

“The TPP creates a web of corporate laws that will dominate the global economy,” attorney Kevin Zeese of the group Popular Resistance, which has mounted a long fight against the trade agreement, told me from Baltimore by telephone. “It is a global corporate coup d’état. Corporations will become more powerful than countries. Corporations will force democratic systems to serve their interests. Civil courts around the world will be replaced with corporate courts or so-called trade tribunals. This is a massive expansion that builds on the worst of NAFTA rather than what Barack Obama promised, which was to get rid of the worst aspects of NAFTA.”

The agreement is the product of six years of work by global capitalists from banks, insurance companies, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto and other corporations.

“It was written by them [the corporations], it is for them and it will serve them,” Zeese said of the TPP. “It will hurt domestic businesses and small businesses. The buy-American provisions will disappear. Local communities will not be allowed to build buy-local campaigns. The thrust of the agreement is the privatization and commodification of everything. The agreement has built within it a deep antipathy to state-supported or state-owned enterprises. It gives away what is left of our democracy to the World Trade Organization.”

The economist David Rosnick, in a report on the TPP by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), estimated that under the trade agreement only the top 10 percent of U.S. workers would see their wages increase. Rosnick wrote that the real wages of middle-income U.S. workers (from the 35th percentile to the 80th percentile) would decline under the TPP. NAFTA, contributing to a decline in manufacturing jobs (now only 9 percent of the economy), has forced workers into lower-paying service jobs and resulted in a decline in real wages of between 12 and 17 percent. The TPP would only accelerate this process, Rosnick concluded.

“This is a continuation of the global race to the bottom,” Dr. Margaret Flowers, also from Popular Resistance and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said from Baltimore in a telephone conversation with me. “Corporations are free to move to countries that have the lowest labor standards. This drives down high labor standards here. It means a decimation of industries and unions. It means an accelerated race to the bottom, which we must rise up to stop.”

“In Malaysia one-third of tech workers are essentially slaves,” Zeese said. “In Vietnam the minimum wage is 35 cents an hour. Once these countries are part of the trade agreement U.S. workers are put in a very difficult position.”

Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year, a new study by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty.

“Half of American workers earn essentially the poverty level,” Zeese said. “This agreement only accelerates this trend. I don’t see how American workers are going to cope.”

The assault on the American workforce by NAFTA—which was established under the Clinton administration in 1994 and which at the time promised creation of 200,000 net jobs a year in the United States—has been devastating. NAFTA has led to a $181 billion trade deficit with Mexico and Canada and the loss of at least 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a report by Public Citizen. The flooding of the Mexican market with cheap corn by U.S. agro-businesses drove down the price of Mexican corn and saw 1 million to 3 million poor Mexican farmers go bankrupt and lose their small farms. Many of them crossed the border into the United States in a desperate effort to find work.

“Obama has misled the public throughout this process,” Dr. Flowers said. “He claimed that environmental groups were supportive of the agreement because it provided environmental protections, and this has now been proven false. He told us that it would create 650,000 jobs, and this has now been proven false. He calls this a 21st century trade agreement, but it actually rolls back progress made in Bush-era trade agreements. The most recent model of a 21st century trade agreement is the Korean free trade agreement. That was supposed to create 140,000 U.S. jobs. But what we saw within a couple years was a loss of about 70,000 jobs and a larger trade deficit with Korea. This agreement [the TPP] is sold to us with the same deceits that were used to sell us NAFTA and other trade agreements.”

The agreement, in essence, becomes global law. Any agreements over carbon emissions by countries made through the United Nations are effectively rendered null and void by the TPP.

“Trade agreements are binding,” Flowers said. “They supersede any of the nonbinding agreements made by the United Nations Climate Change Conference that might come out of Paris.”

There is more than enough evidence from past trade agreements to indicate where the TPP—often called “NAFTA on steroids”—will lead. It is part of the inexorable march by corporations to wrest from us the ability to use government to defend the public and to build social and political organizations that promote the common good. Our corporate masters seek to turn the natural world and human beings into malleable commodities that will be used and exploited until exhaustion or collapse. Trade agreements are the tools being used to achieve this subjugation. The only response left is open, sustained and defiant popular revolt.
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Via email:

https://www.fightthetpp.org/

Last Night, I watched President Obama give his final State of the Union address. I expected him to talk at length about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Instead, the President said just 67 words about the deal because he knows it’s become hugely unpopular with people from across the political spectrum.

We have the momentum to stop this -- but corporations and special interests will be pouring money and influence into DC to get it passed any way they can.

Click here to take action now before Congress votes on the TPP. Tell your lawmakers not to sell out the Internet and demand they vote NO on the TPP.

~Evan

..................................

There are just 3 weeks until President Obama intends to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). After that, Congress can ratify the treaty at any time.

The good news is that last night’s State of the Union address was the clearest sign yet that we have the power to stop the TPP. During the speech, President Obama talked about the Trans-Pacific Partnership for just 28 seconds. He said all of 67 words. And when he was done, only his cabinet stood to clap.

The lackluster response underscores what we’ve been hearing from allies in Washington, DC: right now there just aren’t enough votes to pass the TPP.

But the bad news is that the the State of the Union was just the beginning of the final push to approve the TPP. Soon, the MPAA, the Chamber of Commerce, and other powerful special interest groups will be pouring money into lobbying efforts to undermine our the democratic process and push the TPP through however they can.

We need to act now to get as many members of Congress on the record opposing the TPP as possible before the lobbyists and campaign contributions tip the scales.

In November, we finally got to read the full text of the TPP, and it is worse than we thought. It reads like a wish list for the most powerful companies — giving Facebook, Comcast, Wal-Mart, and Monsanto the policies they’ve always wanted.

It contains extreme copyright provisions that will lead to a more restricted, expensive, and censored Internet.1 It threatens democracy and national sovereignty by letting corporations sue governments in secret tribunals to undermine our basic rights.2

The fact that members of Congress didn’t stand up to applaud when President Obama spoke about the TPP last night speaks volumes. It says that right now, Congress is on the fence — which means all the activism, the calls, emails, and protests, have been making an impact. Activism is the reason that this morning Senator John Thune, said the TPP is, "on life support."

But we know that can change all too quickly. Remember how much momentum we had against CISA? We’ve learned to always go big or go home, and that every single call and email matters.

Click here to tell Congress: Vote NO on the TPP.

We CAN stop the TPP — but we’re going to need to step it up in the coming weeks to stave off the White House’s renewed push. So take action and send an email today, and most importantly forward this email to your friends and family and share on social media to sound the alarm.

Thanks for all you do,

~ Evan at FFTF
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J.Michael said:
Well. Hm. Unfortunately, the debate among politicians was over offering the current president and his successors unchallenged power over these so called trade deals. Not much was mentioned in terms of whether or not the negotiations or terms of the agreement were worthy of pursuing in the first place. In fact, the only public controversy among the political class in Washington that I read or heard of from western media or even the politicians themselves was premised upon offering the executive branch fast-track authority. And, of course, Obama was granted fast-track authority in June after a vote of 218-208. Republicans voting in favor at 190-50 and Democrats voting against at 28-158.

I wouldn't seal the deal just yet, though.

So much for the old consent of the governed gag, though. Heh.
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OMG, republicans helping OBAMA, switching teams, or OBAMA helping republicans...
 
Obama To Push Passage Of TPP Trade Deal Despite Rising Public Opposition
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...p-trade-deal-despite-rising-public-opposition

[...] Public opposition to the sovereignty killing corporate giveaway marketed as a free trade deal known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has become so widespread that all the leading candidates for the U.S. Presidency are publicly against it. Specifically, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are virulently opposed, while Hillary Clinton is pretending to be against it in order to harvest votes.

Essentially, the more time the American public has to learn about this scam, the more they are against it. Which is precisely why the Obama administration wants to push it through as quickly as possible.

Reuters reports:

U.S. President Barack Obama is fully committed to pushing for Congress to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal despite anti-trade sentiment gaining steam on the presidential election campaign trail, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on Wednesday.

Voter anxiety and anger over international trade and the 12-nation Pacific trade pact have helped propel the campaign of Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

"The president remains fully committed to working to achieve ratification on the U.S. side and encouraging all of our TPP partners to move through their domestic processes to do the same," Rice told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.
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In case you aren’t up to speed with how much of a corporate coup this trade deal is, see:

How the TPP Could Lead to Worldwide Internet Censorship

U.S. State Department Upgrades Serial Human Rights Abuser Malaysia to Include it in the TPP

Julian Assange on the TPP – “Deal Isn’t About Trade, It’s About Corporate Control”

Trade Expert and TPP Whistleblower – “We Should Be Very Concerned about What’s Hidden in This Trade Deal”

As the Senate Prepares to Vote on “Fast Track,” Here’s a Quick Primer on the Dangers of the TPP

You didn’t think Obama was gonna let some angry plebs prevent him from ensuring huge speaking fees upon leaving office, did you?
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Nope.
 
Idiots.

POLL: Majority of Americans support the Trans-Pacific Partnership and globalization
http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-most-americans-like-trade-deal-2016-9

Most Americans favor the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the landmark free trade agreement that's been ripped apart during the 2016 campaign, according to a poll published Wednesday from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
[...]
Americans stand in favor of the deal, the poll found. By party, 71% of Democrats are in favor while 58% of Republicans and 52% of independents approve of the agreement.

Even among Republican Trump supporters, 47% support the deal, while 58% of Republicans who backed another candidate are in favor of the agreement.

Here were some other interesting bits from the poll:
  • 65% of Americans believe globalization is mostly good for the US.
  • 70% say international trade is good for US consumers.
  • 59% say international trade is good for the economy.
  • 64% say international trade is good for their own standard of living.
  • However, just 40% say it's good for creating US jobs, and just 35% say it's good for the job security of American workers.

Much of that sentiment has been absent from the 2016 campaign, where trade and the TPP have become centerpiece issues.
[...]
But President Barack Obama, who's administration has championed the agreement, has not wavered in his support as the deal has become toxic along the trail.

The agreement still needs to be ratified by Congress, which some say could happen during the lame-duck session of Congress following the November election.
[...]
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll was conducted by an online research panel between June 10-27 among a sample of 2,061 adults above the age of 18. The margin of error ranged from 2.2 to 3.5 percentage points.
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German Economy Minister: "TTIP Talks Have Failed"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-28/german-economy-minister-ttip-talks-have-failed
In the latest blow for Obama's global trade agenda, German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that free trade talks between the European Union and the United States have failed, citing a lack of progress on any of the major sections of the long-running negotiations. "In my opinion the negotiations with the United States have de facto failed, even though nobody is really admitting it" ZDF quoted the minister, according to a written transcript of the interview to be aired on Sunday. “[They] have failed because we Europeans did not want to subject ourselves to American demands.”

He added that in 14 rounds of talks, the two sides haven't agreed on a single common item out of 27 chapters being discussed. Among the stumbling blocks is a US objection to opening public tenders to European companies. “For me, that goes against free trade," Gabriel previously commented regarding the issue.

But more than just disagreement on general principles, Gabriel singled out the US as the party making strong demands with no concessions: "We mustn't submit to the American proposals," said Gabriel, who is also the head of Germany's center-left Social Democratic Party.
[...]
With Gabriel saying the TTIP is effectively dead, Germany joins France, whose president Hollande said in early May that the "TTIP is doomed" adding that France "will never accept" challenges to its farming and culture in exchange for better access to U.S. markets. "That's why at this stage, France says no," the Socialist leader said at a conference on left-wing politics. French Trade Minister Matthias Fekl then said that negotiations "are totally blocked" and that a halt to talks "is the most probable option."

"Europe is giving a lot ... but receiving very little in return," he concluded. Which, incidentally, is precisely how the US wanted it. It remains to be seen if the US will offer concessions to Europe now that the TTIP debate is all but finished, or if the US will demand strict adherence to rules that now clearly benefit mostly US corporations.
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Yeah, TTIP was destined to fail once all of that went down with that split from the EU.

People all over the world are against this TPP. Only the drones in the U.S. are swallowing that pill. For the most part anyway.

End of the day, the TPP is an illegal transfer of power. Patently. And I can't believe that a lot of people around here are promoting this horsesht as if it's free trade. It isn't free trade at all. Well...I suppose I can believe it. It's what happens when the drones are in a hurry to get elected or to see their names counted to kind of get soem pride back from previous elections or whatever. Principles get tossed out the door.

The statesman explains it concisely.

 
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I've concluded that people who are actively promoting this TPP as if it's free trade are either stupid or are being deliberately deceptive in hopes of fooling the less aware for election purposes. I think likely the latter.
 
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