The TPP has drawn the ire of Democrats including Elizabeth
Warren who object it will destroy jobs, limit online freedom, increase outsourcing
and derail climate agreements. Ironically, it has made allies of his GOP
rivals.
The Trans Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement so significant
and important, its details can’t be disclosed.
The TPP, sure to make an appearance during tonight’s State
of the Union, is a 21st-century trade agreement involving 11 Asian countries
along the Pacific Rim, and said to cover 40% of the world’s economy.
The TPP is a subject close to the heart – and the economic
plans – of President Obama. In a November trip to Beijing, he urged other
world leaders to finalize the agreement,
calling it a “high priority” that would strengthen American leadership
in the Asia-Pacific region and lead to growth, investment and job prospects
for more workers.
The administration has argued that the deal will allow
lower tariffs for American exports, in an environment of increasing competition,
especially from China. Obama is also touting the deal as a boon for small
businesses. When 98% of the US’s exporters are small businesses, new trade
partnerships will help them create even more jobs, he proclaimed in last
year’s State of the Union address. “Listen, China and Europe are not standing on the sidelines.
Neither should we.”
Right now, American citizens will have to take those
promises about the impact of the TPP on faith.
The TPP is one of the largest international trade agreements
the US will sign, yet most of it is mired in secrecy. Congress won’t have
access to the TPP before it is signed, and the terms won’t be publicly disclosed
– ironic since the negotiations include 600 corporate advisers, including
representatives of Halliburton and Caterpillar.
A chunk of the trade deal was leaked most recently by a Wikileaks
release. “Everything we know about it are from document leaks,” says Maira
Sutton, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
That sets light to the anger of Senator Bernie Sanders,
who has called the TPP “disastrous” and “written behind closed doors by the
corporate world”. He denounced its purpose “to protect the interests of
the largest multinational corporations at the expense of workers, consumers,
the environment and the foundations of American democracy.”
It’s not just Sanders, who is among the most progressive
in Congress. Democrats have long expressed their opposition to the deal, even though 14 unions and
consumer groups and environmental groups are also involved in the negotiations.
No matter: the president says he is ready to defy his fellow
Democrats to push through the TPP. In a case of odd bedfellows, Obama has
found new Republican allies in pursuing the deal.
US trade representative Michael Froman promised
that the Trans Pacific Partnership was on course and due in as little as two
months.
Obama’s State of the Union address should give the TPP another
push – even as public interest groups, trade experts and digital freedom
advocates voice their criticism of the agreement, particularly its
secrecy.
What makes the TPP distasteful to experts is its resemblance
to the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), signed in 1994 between
the US, Canada and Mexico.
Post-Nafta, the US saw a mass exodus of jobs, with nearly
700,000 jobs offshored, 60.8% of them in manufacturing.
Now as the Obama administration uses the same verbiage as the Clinton administration
used two decades ago, trade experts are alarmed at what is to come. The incentives
of the Trans Pacific Partnership are going to cause millions of additional
jobs to be lost, says Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch.
Wallach quotes the Department of Labor statistics to
show that the workers in the US who lose their jobs to trade agreements in
the manufacturing sector when re-employed earn only three-quarters of
their original earnings, in three out of five cases.
“The opposition to the trade agreement comprises unions,
environmental, consumer groups – in other words, the entire Democratic
base,” says Wallach.
Wallach says that the agreement is based on the terms of
the US-Korea free-trade agreement, which were derived from Nafta. The complications
include limits on food safety and a ban on the export of gas derived from
fracking – which “would limit our ability to have energy policies to combat
the climate crisis”, Wallach says.
Another complication: the terms of the TPP won’t be open
to debate. A fast-track treatment is likely, with Congress implementing the
deal without changes.
“The president wants the authority to railroad through
Congress to sign the agreement even before Congress,” explains Wallach, saying
it delegates congressional authority to the president.
Yet Obama insists that the TPP’s terms are new and improved.
The president’s only advice to critics: “Don’t fight the last war.”
‘It copies and pastes US law into
international law’
The Trans Pacific Partnership, although billed as a trade
agreement, includes provisions on intellectual property and copyright
that are usually outside the boundaries of trade, critics say.
For instance, there is a scuffle around the TPP’s rumored
treatment of Digital Rights Management tools, which corporations use to
limit access to digital devices – often to prevent piracy.
TPP has provisions that make it a crime to break these
locks, and to do things that aren’t even copyright infringement.
“These DRM laws prevent us from doing that research
legally,” says Maira Sutton, a policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“That’s our main concern.”
Sutton objects that the TPP will extend problematic US
laws into international law. One example: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act,
which prosecutors used to hound open-web advocate Aaron Swartz.
“Similar provisions in the TPP that will prevent
whistleblowers and journalists from accessing or ‘disclosing’ trade
secrets through a computer system,” Sutton says.
Sutton adds that the recent Sony hacks would not be
reported freely under the provisions of the TPP, says Sutton.
The third issue the EFF is concerned with is that of intermediary
liability, which burdens ISPs and websites with stricter copyright
infringement laws in a way that is veiled censorship, cautions Sutton.
Climate activists up in arms
Climate activists have been the most vociferous in opposing
the TPP’s many terms. As John Fullerton wrote in the Guardian: “What few seem
to realize is that this agreement, if approved as is, could make it virtually
impossible for the United States to meet its current and future climate
pledges.”
Elizabeth Warren too has come out against the deal. In a
letter to Froman last year, Warren and two other Senators objected that
the TPP “could make it harder for Congress and regulatory agencies to prevent
future financial crises”.
Warren and others
have raised concern over a provision called “investor-state dispute settlement”
which gives foreign corporations the political power to challenge US
laws in front of a small private group of attorneys that answers to no
country.
“If the foreign country
prevails, the panel can order compensation from American taxpayers without
any review by American courts,” Warren warned. One such panel in 2006 forced
the Czech Republic to pay $236m to a Dutch bank for not providing it with a
bailout, Warren wrote.
Even though dissent
is plenty, the means for these public advocates to get involved in the TPP
are few.
Public interest
groups that want to be on trade advisory committees in order to participate
in the negotiations are required to sign non-disclosure agreements, which
robs them of the voice to object.
Sutton, of the EFF,
says it is the organization’s responsibility to share information with the
public and to do public advocacy.
“If we were to sign on
to this trade advisory committee to influence the text, then we tie our
hands behind our backs to do the work that we need to do,” she tells the
Guardian.
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