The Trans-Pacific Partnership deal is more about Corporate Empowerment, than it is about "straightening Trade" -- between Nations.
Or so all these very smart economics people, are saying ...
Stop Calling the TPP a Trade Agreement – It Isn’t.
by Dave Johnson, Moyers & Co. -- billmoyers.com -- May 27, 2015
This is a message to activists trying to fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Stop calling the TPP a “trade” agreement. TPP is a corporate/investor rights agreement, not a trade agreement. Trade is a good thing; TPP is not. Every time you use the word trade in association with the TPP, you are helping the other side.
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TPP extends patents, copyrights and other monopolies so investors can collect “rents.”
TPP elevates corporations and corporate profits to and above the level of governments. TPP lets corporations sue governments for laws and regulations that cause them to be less profitable. Enabling tobacco companies to sue governments because anti-smoking campaigns limit profits has nothing to do with trade. Enabling corporations to sue states that try to regulate fracking has nothing to do with trade.
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When you've lost Paul Krugman's trust, well you've kind of lost the "leveling the playing field" gambit.
This Is Not A Trade Agreement
by Paul Krugman, NYTimes.com -- April 26, 2015
[... Paul Krugman: ]
For this is not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharma companies and firms that want to sue governments.
Those are the issues that need to be argued. David Ricardo is irrelevant.
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And when a hard-nosed bean-counter from the International Monetary Fund has serious doubts this Agreement, is actually being about "improving Trade" -- well International Corporate Lawyers, you just might have a problem ...
Former IMF chief economist on the problems with TPP
by Cory Doctorow, boingboing.net -- May 21, 2015
[... Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the IMF and now scourge of bankers and lobbyists everywhere: ]
The Trans Pacific Partnership is a notorious, secretly negotiated trade deal; from leaks we know that it continues "Investor State Resolution" clauses that allow foreign companies to sue to overturn national labor and environmental laws. Johnson's analysis stresses that trade agreements can be good for countries, but they aren't necessarily good -- and when they're negotiated in secret, they rarely go well.
The TPP is not only -- perhaps not even mostly -- about freer trade, and thus who gains and who loses is very much dependent on what exactly are the details of the agreement. The exact nature of the provisions matters and at this point, because the TPP text is not available to the public, we cannot be sure whom this trade agreement will help or hurt within the United States or elsewhere.
Outside of agriculture, international trade is already substantially liberalized, and thus the gains from further reductions in tariffs are most likely limited by the fact that tariffs are already quite low.
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They tell us it's
'about Trade', so that all the honorary members of 'Flatter World' society, will simply nod their heads, and as this latest wealth-siphoning give-away goes into action, without hardly any of them ever really noticing.
But thankfully, other observers of global economics, are not so easily swayed:
Julian Assange On TPP: Only 5 Of 29 Sections Are About "Traditional Trade," Covers "Essentially Every Aspect Of A Modern Economy" (with Video)
by Tim Hains, realclearpolitics.com, May 28, 2015
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JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS: First of all, it is the largest ever international economic treaty that has ever been negotiated, very considerably larger than NAFTA. It is mostly not about trade, only 5 of the 29 Chapters are about traditional trade.
The others are about regulating the internet, and what information internet service providers have to collect, they have to hand it over to companies under certain circumstances, the regulation of labor conditions, regulating the way you can favor local industry, regulating the hospital, health care system, privatization of hospitals, so essentially every aspect of a modern economy, even banking services are in the TPP.
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Well the TPP gives the constructor of the private hospital the right to sue the government over the expect loss, the loss in expected future profits. This is an expected future loss, this is not an actual loss that has been sustained, this is a claim about the future.
We know from similar instruments where governments can be sued over free trade treaties, that that is used to construct a chilling effect on environmental and health regulation laws. For example, Togo, Australia, Uruguay are all being sued by tobacco company Phillip Morris to prevent them from introducing health warnings on cigarette packaging...
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But it is only multinationals that get this right. U.S. companies that operate in the U.S. in relation to investments that happen in the U.S. will not have this right.
If you think Global Multi-national Corporations are already powerful enough, you just might want to
wake-the-hell-up -- and realize the last thing the TPP is about
is "freer and fairer" Trade.
Especially for those at the "bottom end" of their global economic wealth-siphoning equations.
Afterall in their 'flattened' Multi-national-empowered World -- someone's always going to have to Lose.