Jayati Ghosh — The End of U.S.-Led Economic Globalisation?

This is really about TTP and TTIP and the way they are being sold to the public as trade deals involving liberalization that increases efficiency and benefits everyone. Nothing could be further from the truth.

These deals are about strengthening the power of transnational firms at the expense of workers, consumers, national sovereignty and democracy. Jayati Ghosh explains how the scam works to rip ordinary folks off and increase inequality, while making sure that governments can do nothing to protect their populations. Outrageous? You betcha.

Fortunately, Western voters are not buying it. So President Obama has gone into full-on spin mode to get it through on his watch, obviously to reap the rewards after leaving office, the first matter of which is funding for his presidential library. As always, follow the money.

TripleCrisis
The End of U.S.-Led Economic Globalisation?
Jayati Ghosh | Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Vasilis Trigkas — TTIP & TTP: A Race to the Bottom Not the Top

Instead of trade regionalism driven by security imperatives, the three big elephants in the room, the EU, the USA and China, should join forces and with a trilateral trade commission shape a vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The West along with China must put the welfare of the citizen above all other operations and co-decide the standards of future mass technologies and the path of humanity to a sustainable destiny.

China US Focus
TTIP & TTP: A Race to the Bottom Not the Top
Vasilis Trigkas | Onassis Scholar & research fellow at the institute for China-EU relations at Tsinghua University, non-resident WSD Handa fellow at Pacific Forum CSIS, advisor to the president of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture and a researcher at www.thinkinchina.asia – the leading community of young China experts in Beijing

Don Quijones — Uruguay Does Unthinkable, Rejects Global Corporatocracy [TiSA]

Often referred to as the Switzerland of South America, Uruguay is long accustomed to doing things its own way. It was the first nation in Latin America to establish a welfare state. It also has an unusually large middle class for the region and unlike its giant neighbors to the north and west, Brazil and Argentina, is largely free of serious income inequality.

Two years ago, during José Mujica’s presidency, Uruguay became the first nation to legalize marijuana in Latin America, a continent that is being ripped apart by drug trafficking and its associated violence and corruption of state institutions.
Now Uruguay has done something that no other semi-aligned nation on this planet has dared to do: it has rejected the advances of the global corporatocracy.…

Despite – or more likely because of – its symbolic importance, Uruguay’s historic decision has been met by a wall of silence. Beyond the country’s borders, mainstream media has refused to cover the story.…

This post is more about the spread of Global Corporatocracy through trade agreements being spearheaded by the US. It is about TiSA in particular, which includes more countries that TTP and TTIP combined.

Important.

Good summary of what we know about TiSA as the installation of neoliberal global corporatocracy and why not only Uruguay but also China and Russia are right in opposing it. It is the end of liberal democracy and the institution of plutocracy. Since the US has written the rules, it would give the US power elite and their cronies permanent global hegemony to extract rent without limitation.

The contents of TiSA would not be revealed publicly until five years after ratification.

There agreements are being designed as the final step enclosure and the suppression of democratic governance by neoliberal global corporatocracy.

This is a power play on a grand scale and little Uruguay has courageously said "nothing doing" to the gringos.

Pass this on.

Wolf Street
Uruguay Does Unthinkable, Rejects Global Corporatocracy
Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at WOLF STREET

Simon Johnson — What Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Really All About?

Simon Johnson asks cui bono?

When you strip out the distractions, TPP comes down to essentially three things:

• A free trade agreement with Japan. We need to see the details of that, including the FDI dimension, to understand if there will be GDP gains for the US or not. The impact on US inequality and median wages also remains at best unclear.
• Investor State Dispute Settlement. This is of very dubious value to residents of the United States, at least unless the administration agrees to introduce greater safeguards against abuse.
• Greater protection for pharmaceutical patents. This will almost certainly reduce access to affordable medicines, both in the US and in our trading partners.

My take. The real objective of trade agreements engineered by the US is to cement neoliberalism in place so that all countries that want to join the world economy as full partners in the future will be forced to adopt neoliberalism and basically become vassals of the empire.

It's a not so hidden agenda stated rather explicitly by President Obama when he said recently:

"If we don't write the rules for trade around the world, guess what? China will," Obama said, making his case at the Oregon headquarters of the athletic apparel and footwear company Nike. "And they'll write those rules in a way that gives Chinese workers and Chinese businesses the upper hand."

So the trade agreement is about one-upping China while the US still has the power to do so? That is the way the president is selling this plan for neoliberal globalization under transnational (read US) corporate control.

The Baseline Scenario
What Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Really All About?
Simon Johnson | Ronald A. Kurtz (1954) Professor of Entrepreneurship and Professor of Global Economics and Management, MIT Sloan

Joseph Stiglitz — The Secret Corporate Takeover

The United States and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called “free-trade agreements”; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the European Union. Today, such deals are more often referred to as “partnerships,”as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America’s “partners” are becoming increasingly resistant.

It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries’ legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions....

President Obama, Remarks by the President on Trade: "We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy."

If "America" is writing the rules, then how is it that the process is being kept secret from the American people?

If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading US legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to President Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.

Project Syndicate
The Secret Corporate Takeover

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank

Don Quijones — Obama & McConnell Pledge Cooperation; Will Fast-Tracking Secretive TPP Trade Deal Top Their Agenda?

The president has to convince the Democrats to swallow another poison pill that will further alienate labor, and the majority leader has to convince his caucus to give the president more authority through fast track. Working together they can probably pull it off, especially since Congress and the public are still largely in the dark about the specifics of the deal.

Raging Bull-shit
Obama & McConnell Pledge Cooperation; Will Fast-Tracking Secretive TPP Trade Deal Top Their Agenda?
Don Quijones

Bill Black — Will the Chilean People Save the U.S. by Electing Michelle Bachelet?

The effort by corporate CEOs to dominate the global economy and global government is reaching the end-game stage. Corporate CEOs view government and democracy as their gravest threats and are constantly seeking to discredit and hamstring government and democratic decision-making. CEOs are particularly eager to discredit, destroy, or capture regulation and they have enlisted enormous support in both major U.S. parties and many of the world’s dominant parties for these efforts. President Obama has continued and made worse the effort of President Bush to betray our nation, our democracy, and our people through the secret, draft Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. In this first column on TPP I explain that while there is no realistic chance of convincing Obama to repudiate the TPP, there is a chance that the people of Chile will save our democracy and our national sovereignty....

Once TPP is adopted, democratic rights and national sovereignty will be extinguished by corporate power which can be exerted, again in secret, before a tribunal run by private lawyers (what I call the “plutocracy panels”) with strong conflicts of interest that lead them to favor corporate interests.

New Economic Perspectives

Will the Chilean People Save the U.S. by Electing Michelle Bachelet?
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Economics and the School of Law

Bill agrees that capitalism as economic liberalism and democracy as political liberalism are incompatible. Government of the people, by the people and for the people is not compatible with concentrated class power, which concentrated wealth and control of the means of production results in.

BTW, in case anyone missed this, Bill is becoming the (MMT-savvy) successor to aging Noam Chomsky as the public intellectual on the left, ranging over the social, political and economic spectrum of affairs and carefully crafting and documenting his arguments. His grasp and treatment of the dimension of issues and their interrelatedness is indeed impressive.

Yves Smith — House Pushing Back on Trade Deal; More Detail on How Secret Arbitration Panels Undermine Laws and Regulations

Yves on TPP. It's really bad. She is appealing for action.

Now while the House pushback is promising, this isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Obama has been really keen to get these deals done. Of the roughly 170 Representatives upset enough to sign letters, roughly 150 are Democrats (the Times says an additional 40 to 50 have signaled concerns). With the opposition overwhelmingly in the Democratic party, the Administration is much better positioned to get the votes than if more Republicans were opposed.
So this is the time when it is REALLY important to call or e-mail your Representative and let him or her know how terrible this deal is and how firmly opposed to it you are. Use the link to the Public Citizen overview (http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/GlobalTradeWatch_TAFTAslides_070913.pdf) or cite other posts or articles you think they should see. Trade is normally not a hot topic for voters, so five or ten calls in a district would be a serious show of opposition. This is a case where you can have an impact. I hope you’ll act and rally any sympathetic friends and family members to take a few minutes and make your voice heard.

Naked Capitalism
House Pushing Back on Trade Deal; More Detail on How Secret Arbitration Panels Undermine Laws and Regulations
Yves Smith

Jim Hightower — The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is a Corporate Coup in Disguise

There's a reason that the transnational elite is trying to sneak this through under the radar. This is the design for global trade in the future. Legislating by treaty to create a world government of trade tribunals controlled by the corporate elite.

It would create a virtually permanent corporate rule over the people.

AlterNet
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is a Corporate Coup in Disguise
Jim Hightower

Is it impossible to stop? Nope. There is also a broad, well-organized and politically experienced coalition of grassroots groups, which has stopped other deals and will do it again. We the people can protect our democratic rights from this threat of corporate usurpation. Check out globaltradewatch.org.

Pass it on.

Jim Hightower — The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It's a corporate coup d'etat--against us!

TPP is not just another trade deal. First, it is massive and open-ended. It would hitch us immediately to 11 Pacific Rim nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam), and its door would remain wide open to lure China, Indonesia, Russia, and other nations to come in. Second, note that many of those countries already have trade agreements with the US. Hence, THIS AMAZING FACT: TPP is a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. In fact, of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters!

The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism. They create sweeping new "rights" and escape hatches to protect multinational corporations from accountability to our governments... and to us. Here are a few of TPP's provisos that would make our daily lives riskier, poorer, and less free....

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's superb research and activist group, Global Trade Watch, correctly calls the Trans-Pacific Partnership "a corporate coup d'etat." Indeed, nations that join must conform their laws and rules to TPP's strictures, effectively supplanting US sovereignty and cancelling our people's right to be self-governing. Worse, it creates virtually permanent corporate rule over us--there's no expiration date on the agreement, and no provision in it can be altered unless all countries agree. Thus, even if Americans voted in an election to make changes, any other TPP country could overrule us by not agreeing.

Well, you might think, we'll still have our courts to redress corporate misuse of TPP's provisions. Uh... no. One of the deal's chapters creates a monstrous monkey wrench called the "Investor-State Dispute Resolution" system. In this private, supra-legal "court," corporations are empowered to sue TPP governments over environmental, health, consumer, zoning, or any other public policies that the corporations claim are either undermining their TPP "rights" or diminishing--get this--their "expected future profits."This elevates thousands of private, profit-seeking entities to the legal status of sovereign nations. Under the investor-state system, a smaller version of which was included in NAFTA and other free-trade schemes, the deck is stacked for corporate interests. Cases are decided behind closed doors by three-person international tribunals of private attorneys who often have a glaring corporate bias. The same lawyers who represent corporations in these cases routinely switch over in other cases to serve as "judges." Holy revolving door!

These "tribunalists" are not accountable to any electorate, and their decisions are final--there's no appeal to a real court. If a corporation wins a case, taxpayers of the government being sued lose, for they must pony up cash to compensate the corporation for its "loss" of profit....

WARNING--BUCKLE UP BEFORE READING THIS: Last year, Obama's top trade rep, Ron Kirk, declared that locking out the people is necessary, because the deal's details would outrage Americans and spook Congress from rubber stamping it. In short, to win public approval of TPP, the Obamacans say they must keep it hidden from the public. 

Where, you might ask, is Congress? In the dark.

Even though the Constitution says Congress has exclusive authority "to regulate commerce with foreign nations," the White House has repeatedly rejected pretty-please requests by lawmakers merely to attend negotiations as observers, and congressional leaders have not been allowed to review, much less have any meaningful input on, the draft texts of TPP's 29 chapters. (Update: In June, our progressive friend, Rep. Alan Grayson, who has been a tenacious critic of the shady process, was finally granted a peek at the full draft--though not allowed to take a copy. "It's easy to understand why [it's] been kept secret," Grayson says, confirming that "It puts corporate interests ahead of American interests.")...
There are, however, 600 or so "outsiders" who've been welcomed inside to help write TPP. They are handpicked members of the 16 Industry Trade Advisory Committees--practically all of them corporate executives.

Wait. It gets worse!

In addition, Obama has now named one of their own to replace Kirk: Michael Froman, an Obama classmate in law school and a protege of Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration. Post-Clinton, Froman traipsed along with Rubin to Citigroup, which made him a Wall Street multi-millionaire. From there, he went back to Obama in 2004 as a senate campaign advisor and money-bagger (including introducing the rising political star to Rubin). Now he's been brought in to wire all these connections to the TPP sovereignty bomb.

These are just the highlights. You need to read the whole thing and let your congressional representatives know what you think of it.

Hightower Lowdown
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It's a corporate coup d'etat--against us!

Edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer