Friday, March 13, 2015

Stop Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement

Stop The Fast Track To A Future Of Global Corporate Rule. The Dangers Underlying the TPP and TTIP “Trade Agreements” Posted on March 13, 2015 Written by globalresearch.ca
Sev­eral major inter­na­tional agree­ments are under nego­ti­a­tion which would greatly empower multi­na­tional cor­po­ra­tions and the World Eco­nomic Forum is pro­mot­ing a new model of global gov­er­nance that cre­ates a hybrid government-corporate struc­ture. Humankind is pro­ceed­ing on a path to global cor­po­rate rule where transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions would not just influ­ence pub­lic pol­icy, they would write the poli­cies and vote on them. The power of nation-states and peo­ple to deter­mine their futures would be weak­ened in a sys­tem of cor­po­rate rule. 
The Obama admin­is­tra­tion has been nego­ti­at­ing the Trans-Pacific Part­ner­ship (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Invest­ment Part­ner­ship (TTIP) over the past five years (and?) is cur­rently push­ing Con­gress to pass trade pro­mo­tion author­ity (known as fast track) which would allow him to sign these agree­ments before they go to Con­gress. Then Con­gress would have a lim­ited time to read thou­sands of pages of tech­ni­cal legal lan­guage, debate the con­tents and be banned from mak­ing amendments.
Fast track would drive us down a dan­ger­ous path. The TPP and TTIP have been nego­ti­ated with unprece­dented secrecy. For the first time texts of inter­na­tional agree­ments have been clas­si­fied so that mem­bers of Con­gress have had very lim­ited access and are not able to dis­cuss what they’ve read. These are more than trade agree­ments. The por­tions that have been leaked show that they will affect every­thing that we care about from the food we eat to the jobs we have to the health of the planet. The fast track leg­is­la­tion could last seven years, mean­ing that more agree­ments could be rushed through Con­gress with­out open con­sid­er­a­tion of their poten­tial impacts, cement­ing cor­po­rate rule.
Given the harm that has already been done to economies, human rights and the envi­ron­ment by neo-liberal eco­nomic sys­tems required by the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion and ‘free’ trade agree­ments such as NAFTA; this is not the time to be rush­ing into new agree­ments or to cede our power to write the future of the planet.
We are in the midst of a crit­i­cal polit­i­cal con­flict over the future of global gov­er­nance. Do we want to be ruled by cor­po­ra­tions or ruled demo­c­ra­t­i­cally? This not the time to fast track , it is the time to step back and re-think how to con­duct global trade and man­age the global econ­omy to pre­vent fur­ther exploita­tion and harm.
Twenty Years of Expe­ri­ence: Lost Jobs, Trade Deficits and Increased Inequality
Glob­al­iza­tion was ini­ti­ated in its cur­rent form by Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton when he signed NAFTA and the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion (WTO). NAFTA came into force on Jan­u­ary 1, 1994 and the WTO became law on Jan­u­ary 1, 1995. Mod­ern trade agree­ments have had seri­ous neg­a­tive effects on the US econ­omy. Reuters reports:
“Since the pacts were imple­mented, U.S. trade deficits, which drag down eco­nomic growth, have soared more than 430 per­cent with our free-trade part­ners. In the same period, they’ve declined 11 per­cent with coun­tries that are not free-trade part­ners. Since fast-track trade author­ity was used to pass NAFTA and the U.S. entrance into the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion, the over­all annual U.S. trade deficit in goods has more than quadru­pled, from $218 bil­lion to $912 billion.”
Trade agree­ments have also under­mined jobs in the United States. Reuters con­tin­ues: “Nearly 5 mil­lion U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs — one in four — have been lost since NAFTA and the var­i­ous post-NAFTA expan­sion deals were enacted through fast track.” And, the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics reports: 3 out of 5 dis­placed work­ers who found a job are earn­ing less money and one-third took a pay cut of 20% or more.
These are just two exam­ples of many of the neg­a­tive eco­nomic impacts. The impacts in other coun­tries are also neg­a­tive. The only ben­e­fi­cia­ries are trans-national mega cor­po­ra­tions which desire to move cap­i­tal and busi­nesses across bor­ders with­out restric­tions. Trade agree­ments con­sis­tently expand the wealth divide and increase income inequal­ity as transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions seek lower wages and costs in order to increase profits.
The cur­rent global eco­nomic sys­tem is unsta­ble because of the con­nec­tions between global trade and global finan­cial mar­kets. Inter­con­nect­ed­ness and a lack of reg­u­la­tion of finance cre­ated a cas­cad­ing world­wide impact dur­ing the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis. Around the world, this has led to tremen­dous eco­nomic dis­lo­ca­tion and revolts against the unfair econ­omy and the finan­cial insti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments that are responsible.
With this record it is not time to fast track more of the same rigged cor­po­rate agree­ments through Con­gress; it is time to stop and ask: How can global trade be made to work for everyone?
At a Cross­roads in Global Governance
The eco­nomic crash raised doubts about whether inter­na­tional gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions can han­dle the glob­al­ized econ­omy. It resulted in calls for trans­for­ma­tion of the gov­ern­ment and econ­omy from both grass roots revolts protest­ing lost jobs, lower incomes, aus­ter­ity, cor­rup­tion and an unfair econ­omy as well as from cor­po­rate elites.
The World Eco­nomic Forum (WEF) began a Global Redesign Ini­tia­tive (GRI) as a result of the 2008 eco­nomic crash (GRI is bankrolled mainly by Qatar).  WEF par­tic­i­pants saw glob­al­iza­tion threat­ened because there has been a loss of legit­i­macy and inef­fec­tive­ness of global gov­er­nance: Too many coun­tries, orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ple were openly crit­i­cal of glob­al­iza­tion and multi­na­tional bank­ing.  The WEF blames nation-states, the United Nations and groups like the G-8 for fail­ing to respond appro­pri­ately to the eco­nomic cri­sis. In an analy­sis of the GRI, the Cen­ter for Gov­er­nance and Sus­tain­abil­ity at the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts Boston writes:
“WEF is con­cerned that such wide­spread pub­lic skep­ti­cism can lead to wide­spread doubt about the under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples of the global sys­tem. They rec­og­nize that when cor­po­rate lead­ers are seen as lack­ing morals, it does not take much for the insti­tu­tions of glob­al­iza­tion to be seen as immoral. In this sit­u­a­tion, it would become harder and harder for the G20, for the IMF, or for indi­vid­ual cor­po­rate spokesper­sons to com­mand respect and effec­tive lead­er­ship on global mat­ters of con­cern to the Davos com­mu­nity. They know that it would be increas­ingly prob­lem­atic if impor­tant mes­sages from the world’s elite lead­ers were ignored by large com­mu­ni­ties of peo­ple around the world.”
To save glob­al­iza­tion the WEF believes gov­er­nance must be redesigned. David Sogge describes their view in “Davos Man”: “When it comes to tack­ling global prob­lems, nation-states and their pub­lic pol­i­tics are not up to the job. Their old, run-down insti­tu­tions should be re-fitted …” The WEF solu­tion is a greater role for multi-national cor­po­ra­tions in deci­sion mak­ing and the weak­en­ing of nation-states. They want the UN remade into a hybrid corporate-government entity, where cor­po­ra­tions are part of decision-making. The goal is to end nation-centric deci­sion mak­ing and include cor­po­ra­tions as deci­sion makers.
The WEF points to how trade rules have stalled in the WTO as an exam­ple of the fail­ure of nation-state gov­er­nance. They believe by mak­ing cor­po­ra­tions part­ners in deci­sion mak­ing the ‘can do’ atti­tude of busi­ness will push these rules for­ward where the ‘fail­ure men­tal­ity’ of the state-centric sys­tem stalls trade rules.  From the per­spec­tive of people’s move­ments, this is an exam­ple of why we do not want cor­po­ra­tions to replace nations as deci­sion makers.
The WTO has been stalled because their rules are opposed by peo­ple around the globe. There have been mas­sive protests at their nego­ti­a­tions because, for exam­ple, inter­na­tional trade agree­ments (mis­named “free” trade, really rigged trade for transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions) have had a dev­as­tat­ing impact on agri­cul­ture by destroy­ing tra­di­tional farm­ing, forc­ing farm­ers into cities and cre­at­ing a down­ward depres­sion of wages. Social move­ments oppose poli­cies that pro­mote pri­vate profit over pub­lic neces­si­ties.  A grow­ing world­wide move­ment led by com­mu­ni­ties most affected by glob­al­iza­tion seeks another direction.
In light of the fail­ure of the WTO, the elite’s push toward global cor­po­rate rule is now being cod­i­fied into law through inter­na­tional agree­ments like the TPP and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Invest­ment Part­ner­ship. Under these agree­ments cor­po­rate sov­er­eignty will increase while the sov­er­eignty of gov­ern­ments shrinks and peo­ple lose their abil­ity to influ­ence pub­lic pol­icy. These cor­po­rate trade agree­ments will cre­ate a series of laws designed to aid cor­po­rate prof­its over the health, safety, income and well-being of most peo­ple and fur­ther under­mine the already at-risk ecol­ogy of the planet.
National and local laws will be required to be rewrit­ten to be con­sis­tent with trade agree­ments nego­ti­ated in secret. This “har­mo­niza­tion” will require a new bureau­cracy to review all laws and reg­u­la­tions for consistency.
The prof­its of transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions will become so impor­tant that gov­ern­ments can be sued if their laws to pro­tect pub­lic health, safety or the planet inter­fere with expected prof­its. The cases will be heard in spe­cial trade tri­bunals, staffed mainly by cor­po­rate lawyers on leave from their cor­po­rate jobs. Their deci­sions can­not be appealed to any other courts. This makes the pub­lic inter­est sec­ondary to the mar­ket inter­ests of big business.
The WEF sees itself as the model for future gov­er­nance writ­ing “The time has come for a new stake­holder par­a­digm of inter­na­tional gov­er­nance anal­o­gous to that embod­ied in the stake­holder the­ory of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance on which the World Eco­nomic Forum itself was founded.” The Cen­ter for Gov­er­nance and Sus­tain­abil­ity describes this in the con­text of the UN:
“This inte­gra­tion of global exec­u­tives with UN diplo­mats and civil ser­vants was seen as a way to reju­ve­nate the accep­tance of glob­al­iza­tion. The think­ing is that, if glob­al­iza­tion lead­ers were more involved in the pol­icy devel­op­ment and pro­gram imple­men­ta­tion of the UN, then orga­ni­za­tions and peo­ples through­out the world may well look more favor­ably on the legit­i­macy of their com­bined efforts.”
Peo­ple will react in hor­ror to the dystopian idea of the UN becom­ing a corporate-government hybrid. Peo­ple already see cor­po­ra­tions wield­ing too much influ­ence at the UN and within nations. The WEF approach will inflate cor­po­rate power, cre­at­ing a cor­po­rate neo-feudalism that will kill democ­racy and the body politic.
How did the WEF arrive at this pro­posal that so nar­rowly focuses on build­ing the power of cor­po­ra­tions, while weak­en­ing national sov­er­eignty? The Cen­ter for Global Gov­er­nance and Sus­tain­abil­ity describes the process:
“A key con­straint for the broad accept­abil­ity of WEF’s new sys­tem is the nar­row band of experts they con­vened to develop their pro­pos­als. WEF did not call openly for pro­pos­als. It did not invite a num­ber of key inter­na­tional con­stituen­cies to par­tic­i­pate in the process. And it did not even estab­lish a web­site for pub­lic com­ments. WEF selected its friends to work on its Global Redesign Ini­tia­tive. Over 50% of WEF’s experts were work­ing in the US while advis­ing World Eco­nomic Forum on this project, hardly an indi­ca­tion of a geo­graph­i­cally well bal­anced team. Even though GRI’s finances came heav­ily from non-OECD coun­tries, only 2% of its experts were work­ing in devel­op­ing coun­tries at the time. Of WEF’s friends, only 17% were women. This nar­row base has seri­ous con­se­quences. It under­mines the WEF claims that it truly under­stands a multi-polar world and that it has the abil­ity to pick the global lead­ers of today and tomorrow.”
This process is exactly what must be avoided in the debate on global trade and why we mustn’t allow new agree­ments to be fast tracked through Con­gress. The cur­rent sys­tem has already been too dom­i­nated by the inter­ests of multi-national cor­po­ra­tions and has excluded the voices of those who are harmed by its impacts.
We need a broader debate on how glob­al­iza­tion should be han­dled. What is the role of transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions? How can transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions with larger wealth than some nations be reg­u­lated? How do we ensure the planet’s ecol­ogy is pro­tected at this crit­i­cal time of the cli­mate change tip­ping point, mass species die-off, oceans under severe stress, deplet­ing aquifers, floods and increas­ing deser­ti­fi­ca­tion? How do we shrink the wealth divide that is impact­ing almost every coun­try, cre­at­ing wide­spread poverty and strife?
Twenty years into mod­ern cor­po­rate glob­al­iza­tion, we need to stop, think, dis­cuss and debate, not blindly fast track more of the same failed sys­tem. Fast track would per­mit pres­i­dents to approve secretly nego­ti­ated trade agree­ments and rush them through Con­gress with­out trans­parency, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion or real con­gres­sional review for the next seven years. This is the oppo­site of is needed.
Sim­i­lar Rhetoric, Dif­fer­ent Visions for the Future
There is a shared frus­tra­tion in the global com­mu­nity with the inabil­ity of gov­ern­ments and inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions to respond to the global finan­cial cri­sis. The United Nations has short­com­ings. As the Cen­ter got Global Gov­er­nance and Sus­tain­abil­ity puts it:
“Some are frus­trated with the inter­na­tional sys­tem because urgent state func­tions in the inter­na­tional arena are not solved by the UN sys­tem. There are wars and the UN can­not stop them. There are major eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phes and the inter­na­tional sys­tem can­not get relief sup­plies into the affected areas fast enough. There are starv­ing peo­ple in Africa and the IGOs do not pre­vent their unnec­es­sary deaths.”
The WEF uses lan­guage very sim­i­lar to what social move­ments use. For exam­ple, the WEF claims it seeks “bottom-up” decision-making, but does not define what that would look like. For social move­ments, this means less hier­ar­chy, pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion, trans­parency, democ­racy and gov­ern­ments lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple at the bot­tom, rather than tak­ing their cue from the elites at the top.
The WEF pro­motes a phi­los­o­phy couched in the con­cept of “multi-stakeholderism,” another idea con­sis­tent with the view of social move­ments that the world is not unipo­lar, it has many actors.  The WEF uses this con­cept to give transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions, unde­mo­c­ra­tic non-state actors, decision-making power, while social move­ments see big busi­ness already hav­ing too much influence.
Multi-national cor­po­ra­tions wield great influ­ence over the global econ­omy. They decide the dis­tri­b­u­tion of vital neces­si­ties, e.g. the prices and quan­ti­ties of food and med­i­cine, how much work­ers will be paid as well as the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth and the selec­tion of prod­ucts to be man­u­fac­tured and where. Con­trol of inter­na­tional mar­kets is more in the decision-making power of transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions than of gov­ern­ments. WEF sees this as a rea­son to for­mal­ize the deci­sion mak­ing power of transna­tional cor­po­ra­tions, mak­ing them part of gov­ern­ment, while people’s move­ments see a need to expand pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in gov­ern­ment to act in the pub­lic inter­est rather than the pri­vate inter­est for com­mer­cial profit.
Which Path For­ward? What You Can Do
David Sogge writes in the “State of Davos” that “By cus­tom and by law, the for­mal man­age­ment of inter­na­tional affairs is a mat­ter for sov­er­eign nations and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives.” He points out “the UN Char­ter begins with ‘We the peo­ples’ and affirms the ‘equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.’”
As glob­al­iza­tion begins its third decade, the ques­tion before us is, do we want cor­po­rate rule or people’s rule? Is the wealth of a few more impor­tant than human rights?  What can be done to empower peo­ple? Should the nation-state become a thing of the past and cor­po­rate sov­er­eignty reign, or is there another path? This is a debate that can­not be fast tracked; it must be brought into the open before trade agree­ments cement cor­po­rate rule for decades to come.
We urge peo­ple to put their effort into stop­ping fast track leg­is­la­tion in Con­gress. This will not be easy because it is high on the president’s agenda, many pro-business leg­is­la­tors and enti­ties like the Cham­ber of Con­gress. It can only be stopped if peo­ple work together per­sis­tently to oppose it. Get involved here.
We expect that as fast track leg­is­la­tion moves through Con­gress, the White House and cor­po­rate lob­by­ists will inun­date mem­bers of Con­gress with promises in exchange for votes. In the past, votes were held open past the legal time limit as mem­bers of Con­gress were picked off one by one until there were enough votes to pass.
We need to main­tain per­sis­tent pres­sure on Con­gress to oppose fast track. When we stop fast track, there should be a broad dis­cus­sion of our vision for a glob­al­ized world struc­tured to sup­port uni­ver­sal human rights and pro­tec­tion of the planet.
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