Saturday, June 30, 2012

Trans-Pacific Partnership

Trans-Pacific Partnership = TPP. It is the dream of the 1%. With 600 U.S. corporations as officials advisors, this stealthy international agreement has been negotiated behind closed doors over the past two years – with talks heading to San Diego in July.

What would TPP mean for the 99%? Millions more American jobs offshored. Backdoor deregulation for financial firms to wreck the economy again. Floods of unsafe food and products. Higher medicine prices. A ban on Buy America policies needed to create green jobs and rebuild our economy. Foreign corporations empowered to attack our environmental and health policies in foreign tribunals.

Closed-door talks are on-going between the U.S. and Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam; with countries like Japan and China potentially joining later. The 600 corporate advisors have access to the draft text of this deal that could change all of our lives. The public, Members of Congress, journalists, and civil society are excluded. Until now… get involved!


Source: Public Citizen | TPP 2012

8 comments:

  1. Over the past 30 years, American trade negotiators have played an important role in prying open foreign markets for U.S. tobacco companies, which have used the same marketing tactics to addict a whole new generation of global smokers that worked so well back home.

    Source: In the War Against Smoking, America Is on the Wrong Side

    ReplyDelete
  2. A 16th round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations is underway in Singapore this week. Canada and Mexico join the nine other TPP countries for the second time since the U.S. government invited its NAFTA partners to join late last year.

    Since NAFTA was signed almost 20 years ago, all three North American countries have seen good jobs vanish, worsening income inequality, public services weakened through underfunding or offloaded to the private sector, increased food insecurity (in particular in Mexico), and ecosystems on the point of breaking. NAFTA promised a flourishing North American economy that would benefit all.

    In Jan. 2014, NAFTA has been in place for 20 years and the promised trickle down benefits have not been realized by communities.

    Like NAFTA, the TPP will handcuff our ability to set regulations in key areas like finance, industry, the environment, public procurement and fostering programs to create jobs at home. Free trade offers corporate subsidies for the rich and cut-throat competition for everyone else. So it should come as no surprise that communities across the continent and the Western Hemisphere are mobilizing in what can be expected as the battle against the TPP.

    Source: Facing The Threat of the Trans-Pacific Treaty

    ReplyDelete
  3. The TPP negotiations, which currently involve eleven Asia-Pacific countries, are being conducted in secret, but leaked texts reveal the most aggressive intellectual property (IP) measures ever suggested in a trade deal with developing countries. The U.S. proposals threaten to roll back internationally-agreed public health safeguards and would put in place far-reaching monopoly protections that keep medicine prices high and out of the reach of millions in the Asia-Pacific region.

    “Too many people already die needlessly because the medicines they need are too expensive or do not exist, and we cannot stand by as the Trans-Pacific Partnership threatens to further restrict access to medicines in developing countries,” said Dr. Unni Karunakara, International President of MSF. “We are gravely concerned about countries like Thailand, where MSF started treating HIV/AIDS more than a decade ago and then transitioned its programs to local authorities with the confidence that they would be able to continue providing lifesaving treatments. Now Thailand is on the cusp of joining a dangerous deal that could jeopardize its ability to maintain, let alone scale up, vital, life-saving health programs for its people.”

    Source: Doctors Without Borders - As Clock Ticks Toward Trans-Pacific Trade Pact Deadline, U.S. Must End Stall Tactics on Access to Medicines

    ReplyDelete
  4. For the first known time in the three years that the secretive TPP deal has been under negotiation by the Obama administration, said administration has finally allowed a member of Congress to view three chapters of the bracketed negotiating text. But is that really good enough?

    Senator Elizabeth Warren weighs in on the lack of TPP transparency. VIDEO: Elizabeth Warren Opposes Obama's Nominee for Trade Representative

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think yesterday's news says it all about how much our elected representatives care about the amount of secrecy, and the lack of transparency in Government. The Senate confirmed White House adviser Michael Froman as the new US trade representative on Wednesday.

    According to that news report - "Froman, who succeeds Ron Kirk as trade representative, was confirmed by a 93-4 vote, with three Democrats including Warren and independent Senator Bernie Sanders voting "no.""

    ReplyDelete
  6. Duh! Via professor Joseph Stiglitz - So-called free trade talks should be in the public, not corporate interest. Instead a negotiation process that is neither democratic and or transparent is likely to perpetuate a managed trade regime

    ReplyDelete
  7. I keep trying to convince people that we don't live in a Democracy anymore, but that we live in a Corporatocracy, but no one cares, no one wants to listen. They just can't seem to put down those cell phones that rubs their balls and makes them pancakes, and to look up and see what's happening around them.

    And as the large corporations (and their enablers) continue to rewrite the laws of our country to give them even more power over us, we're in serious danger of losing our Constitutional Republic too. You know, the one in which you pledge allegiance?

    As much evidence that I've posted in support of my claim, it doesn't seem as most people understand, or care to understand, that the TPP provides the best evidence of Corporatocracy that I've presented yet.

    According to what I've read so far, this secret trade pact undermines the "peoples'" Constitutional Rights, gives corporations power over any Government sovereignty, and gives them immunity from prosecution. They'll have carte blanche to do whatever they please to people throughout the world.

    And while this pact undermines the rights of the "people", the President of the United States, the Constitutional scholar and "Democrat" supposedly on the side of us "people", continues to allow this pact to operate in secret and continues to push for it's enactment.

    This is scary stuff folks, and you should be outraged about it.

    Here's a great interview of Lori Wallace on Democracy Now! explaining what's currently occurring with this corporate Trojan Horse, also known as the TPP.

    ReplyDelete