As it's covered in the media, free trade policy is somewhere below pit bull breeding as an interest to the American public. When I say the words free trade, I can hear people say, "That's nice" before their eyes begin to glaze over and they fall asleep. And yet everyone in America can find abandoned factories and people's lives who've been destroyed by outsourcing. In some cases, the factory equipment was literally packed up and shipped to China along with the jobs.
What you didn't know is that American governments have already had to pay foreign multinationals $350 million in damages for daring to disagree with a company on occupational safety, licensing fees, land use regulations, labor law,etc. What NAFTA has set up are international tribunals staffed by private attorneys who just happen to represent multinationals for the rest of their day jobs. Over $13 billion in potential claims against local, state, and US governmental authorities is pending with these NAFTA tribunals. But that's nothing if the Obama White House pushes Congress to adopt the Trans-Pacific Partnership (or TPP) as law.
Public Citizen, the group originally founded by Ralph Nader has just obtained and analyzed a political bombshell from a document leaked out of the office of Ron Kirk, President Obama's appointed US Trade Representative. Lori Wallach analyzed the secret final draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and she found that the proposed legislation being crafted in America by over 600 corporations and the US Chamber of Commerce is the equivalent of NAFTA on steroids.
The TPP would promote multinational supremacy over US laws with a vengeance, striping local, state, and even the US government from having any say in how supposedly foreign corporations could conduct their businesses when they set up shop here. The TPP outline showed up unannounced at the website tinyurl.com/tppinvestment, and its authenticity was confirmed. And Public Citizen has rushed an outline and analysis of the proposal onto its website.
Even more shocking is that the US Trade Representative has classified TPP's framework up until now, even resisting Congressional legislation. There are eight other countries involved in TPP. They are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Australia has already refused to go along with TPP, saying that principles of national sovereignty were involved, and other countries have tried to put forward restrictions or modifications that might lessen TPP's impact. And yet, Mr. Kirk (in cooperation with 600 corporations and the US Chamber of Commerce working on TPP) have been the agents pushing for the most harsh and severe package that will be presented to Congress as a fait accompli by President Obama unless citizens of all political persuasions convince their elected representatives in Washington that TPP is a truly bad deal.
WHAT DOES TPP PROPOSE?
To make a long story short, TPP proposes to allow any foreign corporation coming into a conflict with any level of government to file a claim for an outside decision by an international tribunal set up identical to NAFTA tribunals. In her nine page analysis, Lori Wallach details how multinationals can flaunt any labor, health, environmental, or land use law that it feels conflicts with its operations. Once such a claim is made, any American governmental authority over the multinational is effectively eliminated in this area, or it is adjusted to the lowest common denominator of regulation that the corporation operates anywhere in the treaty zone.
Even more sinister in TPP are provisions allowing its modes of corporate behavior to be expanded willy nilly all over the world through enabling clauses within its legislation.
Take for example a Peruvian subsidiary of Coca-Cola wanting to come into America to set up a bottling plant. The Peruvian Coca-Cola company could state that it is receiving unfair treatment as it does not have the ability to bottle Coke under Peruvian standards. To make matters even more absurd, a Chinese coal mining company could establish a Peruvian subsidiary and then attempt to set up shop in America. Good bye to any health or safety standards in mining for that operation if a tribunal found that the lowest common denominator was operational!
The tribunals would have the power of assessing unlimited damages and no environmental, land use, health safety, labor, or consumer law in America would be safe from multinational raping and pillaging.
I could go on and give you more policy wonk issues, and they would all horrify you even more. I suggest that you go to tradewatch.org and click on the box that talks about the Trans-Pacific Partnership.Then take action with your electeds in DC!
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Comments
And you're right - less interesting than dog breeding.
I gove up. Nobody gives a rat's ass. "My kingdon for a man or woman who will throw a rock thought the windows at Goldman".
:-)/r
And you're right - less interesting than dog breeding.
I give up. Nobody gives a rat's ass. "My kingdon for a man or woman who will throw a rock through the windows at Goldman".
:-)/r
Their cost of living is low as are their incomes and yet there is a real sense of happiness and well being there. They haven't adapted to capitalism at all; 17 years after they were almost decimated by the Balkan wars. When you compare them to Greece, their giant neighbour, they are in much better shape for the future.
Boycotting corporations as much as possible and returning to natural ways of producing food will pull the rug from under them. They may never go away but we can certainly play our part in making their lives difficult, as they have done to us for so many decades now.
Thank you for the article, it was an eye-opening read. Rated.
I'm going to dig a deep hole and bury myself in it.
Jan we only have to reelect him as the lesser of two evils if we accept the corporate lie that we have to chose from the candidates they approve; which would be giving into tyranny since they do the same thing every four years.
A better alternative is that we can put more support behind a third party candidate at the grass roots level; accepting defeat before election is submitting to corporate tyranny!
Kate we would do this because for all practical reasons the Supreme Court has declared that bribery receives more protection under the first amendment than speech does.
Globalization (corporatization) was sold as "the rising tide that lifts all boats". Ralph Nader mocked it as "the rising tide that lifts all yachts". But it's far worse than that, as I've said a thousand times already: globalization is the tsunami that sinks all life-rafts.
r.
a world trade authority would be pretty cool if it actually enforced real labor/environmental regulations like one might EXPECT of such a legal body, instead of a PARASITE FORM that destroys its host-- other countries & their middle classes.... its a race to the bottom! marx pointed this out 1.5 century ago but the public just still doesnt get it, even after they've been robbed nearly blind. kind of apt I guess. maybe they were blind to begin with.
Rated for waking sleeping dragons.
-R-
For the elections you really need a third party candidate. Obama seems to be even worse than GWB was?
Or maybe 100 million people from America should move to Siberia. There is that vast almost empty land. Many Chinese are moving there, too, but there is still room. Canada is quite empty, too.
As to whether that's a good thing... good and bad parts.
On the good side, economic integration is a form of cooperation, which would in some theories prevent war, noting Europe as an example.
On the other hand, it's not vrey democratic, and it also is probably better for some people, those who fit in the corporate world, at least not improving the welfare of those don't fit in that world, at least directly. On the other hand, there is evidence and common sense known as trade theory that costs would come down for many products, probably a good thing.