Trans-Pacific Partnership: Corporate Power-Tool Of The 1%
One of the least discussed and least reported issues is the Obama administration’s effort to bring the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to the forefront, an oppressive plurilateral US-led free trade agreement currently being negotiated with several Pacific Rim countries. Six hundred US corporate advisors have negotiated and had input into the TPP, and the proposed draft text has not been made available to the public, the press or policymakers. The level of secrecy surrounding the agreements is unparalleled – paramilitary teams scatter outside the premise of each round of discussions while helicopters loom overhead – media outlets impose a near-total blackout of reportage on the subject and US Senator Ron Wyden, the Chair of the Congressional Committee with jurisdiction over TPP, was denied access to the negotiation texts. “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, PhaRMA, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement,” said Wyden, in a floor statement to Congress....
There has never been such a sweeping corporate assault on sovereignty, and that includes US sovereignty....
Facing the emergence of strong developing economies like the BRICS group and other nations that seek greater access to industrial growth and development, the Obama administration realizes that it must offer Pacific nations – who would otherwise have greater incentives in deepening economic ties with China – an attractive stake in the US economy. As the Pentagon repositions its military muscle to the Asia-Pacific region, the TPP is clearly the economic arm of the ‘Asia Pivot’ policy, roping strategic economies into a legally binding corporate-governance regime, lured in by the promise of unfettered access to US markets. The Obama administration is essentially prostituting the American consumer to foreign corporations to usher in a deal that would impose one-size-fits all international rules that even limit the US government’s right to regulate foreign investment and the appropriation of natural resources, solidifying a long-discussed model of finance capital-backed global governance....
Due to the unconstitutional nature of the TPP, members of Congress would likely object to many of its stipulations – naturally, the Obama administration is employing its executive muscle to restrict congressional authority by operating under “fast-track authority,” a trade provision that requires Congress to review an FTA under limited debate in an accelerated time frame subject to a yes-or-no vote so as to assure foreign partners that the FTA, once signed, will not be changed during the legislative process. No formal steps have been taken to consult Congress as the agreement continues to be negotiated, and Obama looks set to subtly ram the treaty into law. Such is the toxic nature of US policies that seek to bring in disaster-capitalism on a global scale, while keeping those whose lives will be most affected by deal completely in the dark. The message behind this unfettered corporate smash and grab is simple – bend over! ...
Recent statistics claim that the combined economic output of Brazil, China and India will surpass that of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States by 2020. More than 80% of the world’s middle class will live in the South by 2030, and what a different world that would be. The United States is economically ailing, and the TPP – Wall Street’s wet dream and Washington’s answer to its own dwindling economic performance – is designed to allow US big business a greater stake in the emerging Pacific region by imposing an exploitative economic model on signatory nations that exempt multinationals and private investors from any form of public accountability.These excerpts are just a taste. Read the whole thing.
Counterpunch
Neoliberal Overload
Nile Bowie
(h/t Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism)
Dick Cheney's secret meeting with energy company executive to decide US energy policy in the G. W. Bush administration multiplied to the tenth power.
Libertarians and Objectivists will love it though.
Libertarians and Objectivists will love it though.
I think Bowie's criticisms would be more effective if he just stuck to the harmful effects of the TPP on the environment, social justice and equality, corporate governance and democratic and ordinary people instead of indulging kneejerk isolationist paranoia.
ReplyDeleteDan, I didn't realize that you agreed with Libertarians that advocate the world being ruled by capital rather than governments.
ReplyDeleteDan, I went to Dallas TPP meeting last year and protested. The problem is that we don't know what effect TPP will have on any law or regulation. The negotiations are secret and the documents are secret and the public is blocked at gunpoint from the meetings -- the only people present are hand picked representatives from corporate interests and the Obama trade office.
ReplyDeleteThe process is absolutely appalling whether or not the final treaty turns out dangerous or innocuous. Leaked documents indicate that the reason that they don't want congress or public or media involved is because they are creating rules that congress has rejected on multiple occasions. And they want to drop the entire agreement on congress as an all-or-nothing vote framed as "free trade". It isn't a trade agreement though -- it sets new rules and standards on everything imaginable from patent and copyright, agriculture, media, software, drugs, biotech and who knows what else. Once ratified by congress, and it becomes the law of the land, congress will never be able to change individual provisions.
I don't follow you Tom. Suppose we weren't talking about a free trade treaty but a treaty to regulate carbon emissions, strictly govern corporations, guarantee worker rights, establish a global minimum income and eliminate tax havens. The result would be to strengthen governments and weaken capital. Such treaties would also require the acceptance of transnational regulations and institutions of governance, and require some sacrifice of local national sovereignty for the greater global good. Should I disdain those kinds of treaties too, because they are an affront to strict and unlimited American sovereignty?
ReplyDeleteOr what about a democratic global parliament? Should we never consider such a thing because self-enclosed American nationalism must be eternal?
I have little sympathy for the rigid isolationist and nationalist rhetoric that comes from the Birchers, the militia movement folks, the New World Order paranoids, and similar dogmatists about the holy inviolability of American sovereignty and the awfulness of foreign entanglements.
A bad treaty is bad because of its effects; not because we should never make treaties. A treaty that hands power from governments to capitalists is bad for that reason; not because it requires those governments to work together and even surrender some of their own autonomy to the greater good.
Ryan, then Congress shouldn't ratify it. We should oppose it on the basis of its being a bad and awful treaty; not because treaties are bad and awful in themselves.
ReplyDeleteDan,those are international treaties among government that do affect national security.
ReplyDeleteDani Rodrik, The inescapable trilemma of the world economy
: I have an "impossibility theorem" for the global economy that is like that. It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full. (emphasis added)
But here we are talking about trade agreements (not treaties) being hammered out in secret by lobbyists and the administration instead of debating the issues in Congress with full media coverage. The procedure is anti-democratic and he substance is neoliberal globalization at it worst.
This is another instance where "what's good for America" is not good for Americans.
Dan, who said we should never make treaties. The question is about trade agreements cooked up by lobbyists and their crony politicians and then fast-tracked through Congress before the public realizes what is going on and that ordinary people are getting screwed. These are pure power plays that put transnational corps in charge of the global economy legally in a way that can't be changed without withdrawing from the agreement. That's not impossible but it's implausible politically that this would happen unless US transnationals were severely disadvantaged.
ReplyDeleteTom, now you are saying the problem is the process - and that's fine, because the process does indeed suck. When Congress eventually votes on this thing, it shouldn't be fast-tracked. There needs to be careful, wide-open, democratic deliberation. Obviously, they are stuffing the treaty with corporate giveaways and other things that will be massively unpopular, and are trying to create a process that does an end-run around the democracy.
ReplyDeleteBut before the problem was allegedly that the contents of the treaty involved a loss of sovereignty. Since that is true of almost any treaty, good and bad alike, I don't think that is something to stress. There is a long tradition of isolationist, super-nationalist right wing rhetoric surrounding treaties and almost every other aspect of US foreign policy, which quickly blends into conspiracy theories about the new Worlds Order, the Illuminati and other such things, and I don't think that strain of thought should be encouraged or validated.
The article was excellent, insightful and chilling. As seems to be the case with Dan on an increasing basis he goes on some wild tangent wholly unrelated to what the author penned in an attempt to marginalize the messenger. Fail. My guess is that's he's pissed because the author rightly concludes Obama is a complicit tool.
ReplyDeleteDan, I am opposed to both the process and the principle. But the process is key because it is undemocratic and should be prohibited by law.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the outcome goes, in a democracy if the democratic process is observed, then citizens have to accept the outcome as the law. However, they can also work to get it changed.
But it is very difficult changing international agreement owing to globally systemic effects. Better to stop such agreements before they are made.