In its urgency to reach agreement on an ambitious international trade agreement, the Obama administration may give up on key environmental protections, documents obtained by Wikileaks reveal. Obama has indicated that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping deal being negotiated between the U.S. and eleven other Pacific Rim nations, is a top priority, and the push to fast-track the negotiations, the leaked documents indicate, appears to be coming at the cost of protections such as legally binding pollution control requirements, logging regulations and a ban on harvesting shark fins.
While the U.S. has been pushing for tough environmental provisions, the other nations working on the deal, which include Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Peru, oppose them. And they currently have the upper hand [...]