William K. Black — The Lie That “China Wins” if the TPP Kangaroo Tribunals are Stopped

The “serious people” of the lame stream media are encouraging the lame ducks to vote for the CEOs’ dream deal. One of their principal claims is “If T.P.P. falls apart, China wins. It’s as simple as that.” TPP is deliberately opaque, complex, and crafted in secrecy by the CEOs’ lobbyists to be the opposite of “simple.” It has nothing to do with China winning or losing. TPP is all about Article 9 of the TPP, which allows CEOs to rig the system so that the CEOs win and the people and nations lose.…

The ‘serious person’s” article never mentions Article 9, but it does include this carefully crafted attempt to mislead his readers: “[TPP] binds Vietnam to countries where the rule of law is arbiter rather than authoritarian diktat.” As Americans are now all too aware, the American “rule of law” is a threadbare pretense when it comes to powerful financial CEOs. Article 9 is the “rule of law” only in the sense that it specifies that the “rule of law” does not apply to the kangaroo tribunals that can impose billions of dollars in penalties on a nation for the high crime of trying to discourage smoking. Article 9 is designed to bypass one of the most important requisites of national sovereignty – a nation’s laws and judicial system.

Article 9 is authoritarian diktat – by the CEOs of multinational corporations. CEOs share a community of interest to block effective regulation and enforcement against corporate crimes and abuses. CEOs and their lobbyists were given unique access to craft the draft deal while the public was excluded. Everything we know from human history tells us that they would use that power and secret access to rig the system to benefit their interests and ensure that they could use Article 9 to impair the ability of nations to use the “rule of law” to prevent corporate abuses and crimes.…

We can stop the TPP. People are increasingly coming to understand that it has nothing to do with “free trade” and everything to do with CEOs’ dream of rigging the system so that they can get even wealthier through the “sure thing” of fraud and abuse with impunity from the laws.…

New Economic Perspectives
The Lie That “China Wins” if the TPP Kangaroo Tribunals are Stopped
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC