Guest Post by Chris Hedges
The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared.
“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”
The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.
These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often dysfunctional democratic institutions. The agreements—filled with jargon, convoluted technical, trade and financial terms, legalese, fine print and obtuse phrasing—can be summed up in two words: corporate enslavement.
The TPP removes legislative authority from Congress and the White House on a range of issues. Judicial power is often surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.
The Sierra Club issued a statement after the release of the TPP text saying that the “deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal.”
If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP in Congress this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. Wages will decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by corporations as impeding projected profit, even a law designed to protect the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS, bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their “right” to further swell their bank accounts. Corporate profit effectively will replace the common good.
Given the bankruptcy of our political class—including amoral politicians such as Hillary Clinton, who is denouncing the TPP during the presidential campaign but whose unwavering service to corporate capitalism assures her fealty to her corporate backers—the trade agreement has a good chance of becoming law. And because the Obama administration won fast-track authority, a tactic designed by the Nixon administration to subvert democratic debate, President Obama will be able to sign the agreement before it goes to Congress.
The TPP, because of fast track, bypasses the normal legislative process of public discussion and consideration by congressional committees. The House and the Senate, which have to vote on the TPP bill within 90 days of when it is sent to Congress, are prohibited by the fast-track provision from adding floor amendments or holding more than 20 hours of floor debate. Congress cannot raise concerns about the effects of the TPP on the environment. It can only vote yes or no. It is powerless to modify or change one word.
There will be a mass mobilization Nov. 14 through 18 in Washington to begin the push to block the TPP. Rising up to stop the TPP is a far, far better investment of our time and energy than engaging in the empty political theater that passes for a presidential campaign.
“The TPP creates a web of corporate laws that will dominate the global economy,” attorney Kevin Zeese of the group Popular Resistance, which has mounted a long fight against the trade agreement, told me from Baltimore by telephone. “It is a global corporate coup d’état. Corporations will become more powerful than countries. Corporations will force democratic systems to serve their interests. Civil courts around the world will be replaced with corporate courts or so-called trade tribunals. This is a massive expansion that builds on the worst of NAFTA rather than what Barack Obama promised, which was to get rid of the worst aspects of NAFTA.”
The agreement is the product of six years of work by global capitalists from banks, insurance companies, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto and other corporations.
“It was written by them [the corporations], it is for them and it will serve them,” Zeese said of the TPP. “It will hurt domestic businesses and small businesses. The buy-American provisions will disappear. Local communities will not be allowed to build buy-local campaigns. The thrust of the agreement is the privatization and commodification of everything. The agreement has built within it a deep antipathy to state-supported or state-owned enterprises. It gives away what is left of our democracy to the World Trade Organization.”
The economist David Rosnick, in a report on the TPP by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), estimated that under the trade agreement only the top 10 percent of U.S. workers would see their wages increase. Rosnick wrote that the real wages of middle-income U.S. workers (from the 35th percentile to the 80th percentile) would decline under the TPP. NAFTA, contributing to a decline in manufacturing jobs (now only 9 percent of the economy), has forced workers into lower-paying service jobs and resulted in a decline in real wages of between 12 and 17 percent. The TPP would only accelerate this process, Rosnick concluded.
“This is a continuation of the global race to the bottom,” Dr. Margaret Flowers, also from Popular Resistance and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said from Baltimore in a telephone conversation with me. “Corporations are free to move to countries that have the lowest labor standards. This drives down high labor standards here. It means a decimation of industries and unions. It means an accelerated race to the bottom, which we must rise up to stop.”
“In Malaysia one-third of tech workers are essentially slaves,” Zeese said. “In Vietnam the minimum wage is 35 cents an hour. Once these countries are part of the trade agreement U.S. workers are put in a very difficult position.”
Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year, a new study by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty.
“Half of American workers earn essentially the poverty level,” Zeese said. “This agreement only accelerates this trend. I don’t see how American workers are going to cope.”
The assault on the American workforce by NAFTA—which was established under the Clinton administration in 1994 and which at the time promised creation of 200,000 net jobs a year in the United States—has been devastating. NAFTA has led to a $181 billion trade deficit with Mexico and Canada and the loss of at least 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a report by Public Citizen. The flooding of the Mexican market with cheap corn by U.S. agro-businesses drove down the price of Mexican corn and saw 1 million to 3 million poor Mexican farmers go bankrupt and lose their small farms. Many of them crossed the border into the United States in a desperate effort to find work.
“Obama has misled the public throughout this process,” Dr. Flowers said. “He claimed that environmental groups were supportive of the agreement because it provided environmental protections, and this has now been proven false. He told us that it would create 650,000 jobs, and this has now been proven false. He calls this a 21st century trade agreement, but it actually rolls back progress made in Bush-era trade agreements. The most recent model of a 21st century trade agreement is the Korean free trade agreement. That was supposed to create 140,000 U.S. jobs. But what we saw within a couple years was a loss of about 70,000 jobs and a larger trade deficit with Korea. This agreement [the TPP] is sold to us with the same deceits that were used to sell us NAFTA and other trade agreements.”
The agreement, in essence, becomes global law. Any agreements over carbon emissions by countries made through the United Nations are effectively rendered null and void by the TPP.
“Trade agreements are binding,” Flowers said. “They supersede any of the nonbinding agreements made by the United Nations Climate Change Conference that might come out of Paris.”
There is more than enough evidence from past trade agreements to indicate where the TPP—often called “NAFTA on steroids”—will lead. It is part of the inexorable march by corporations to wrest from us the ability to use government to defend the public and to build social and political organizations that promote the common good. Our corporate masters seek to turn the natural world and human beings into malleable commodities that will be used and exploited until exhaustion or collapse. Trade agreements are the tools being used to achieve this subjugation. The only response left is open, sustained and defiant popular revolt.
Multinational corporations -not American corporations or foreign corporations- have no allegiance to anyone other than themselves. They can shift themselves back and forth between countries as easily as an American citizen or resident can shift between cities and States to wherever they find the best deal.
The should be looked upon as a foreign government, a nation in their own right, by all the nations of the world and dealt with as such.
Those corporations don’t have rational minds of their own but are instruments of the the 51% owners who also own nearly every corporation that sells stock bought with the money printed by TPTB central bankers that leaves “by the secret back doors” to their minions. Those owners are not so much corporate raiders anymore as they are Rapers of the Last Civilization.
THE TRIPLE T’s
TPP Trans Pacific Partnership
TTIP Transatlantic trade & Investment Partnership
TISA Trade In Services Agreement
The global corporate empire is using the old “divide & conquer” method to pass these “Trojan Horses” into law across a greater part of the globe. You never see all three T’s discussed together, but they are all interconnected, containing supporting language throughout.
As an adjunct to the “Three T’s” woven into the fabric of each, is the really dark horse –
TISA Trade In Services Agreement
It is meant as an international legal cementing process, making it practically impossible to intercede by way of international law, into ANY aspect of the trio of agreements that make up the “Triple T Trade Pacts.
Welcome to the first concrete step in the construction of the “New World Order”.
The TPP isn’t really a “trade deal” it’s a corporate coup ‘de tat. It must be stopped. Further, once it’s stopped, I think the Justice dept should investigate those elected leaders who championed the bill and how they may have been paid off.
Perot was right, and the sucking sound only gets louder.
“Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Friday that he supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement negotiated by the White House – aligning himself more with the GOP’s establishment wing than with the social conservatives who have powered his campaign.
Mr. Carson’s backing of the 12-nation Pacific trade deal places him at odds with Donald Trump, his chief rival for support among anti-establishment Republicans. Mr. Carson had expressed skepticism about the TPP, saying in a June interview with the Huffington Post that he would not give President Barack Obama “fast-track” authority to negotiate the deal.
Now, a day after the White House posted the text of the TPP deal online, Mr. Carson’s campaign said Friday that he supports the final product.” –Reid J. Epstein
While Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has declared war on Obamatrade, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says he’s “very positive” about the President’s success in finalizing the deal.
“Rubio voted in favor of fast-track and has struck a favorable tone toward the overall deal,” writes The Hill.
Obamatrade collectively refers to Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which is the controversial fast-track mechanism for ramming trade treaties through Congress with minimum scrutiny, and the three major trade deals that would be guaranteed these “fast-track” protections before a page of them had been made public: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).
Trade negotiators announced on Monday that they had reached an agreement on TPP.
In June of this year, Marco Rubio voted with GOP Leaders to pass fast track authority (TPA) and give Obama the power to ink globalist trade pacts before a single word of TPP, TiSA, or T-TIP were publicly available. Fast track authority lowers the 67 votes required to pass a treaty to a mere simply majority, it surrenders the 60 vote filibuster, and it forfeits individual senators’ ability to add amendments or changes to the trade deals negotiated by the president. It also allows the President to sign the agreement before Congress even votes.
Don’t think trump matters? Think again
TPP Trade Pact Would Give Wall Street a Trump Card to Block Regulations
David Dayen
Nov. 6 2015, 3:40 p.m.
Banks and other financial institutions would be able to use provisions in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership to block new regulations that cut into their profits, according to the text of the trade pact released this week.
In what may be the biggest gift to banks in a deal full of giveaways to Hollywood, the drug industry and technology firms, financial institutions would be able to appeal any national rules they didn’t like to independent, international tribunals staffed by friendly corporate lawyers.
That could nullify a proposal by Hillary Clinton to impose a “risk fee” on financial firms — or the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders plan to reinstate the firewall between investment and commercial banks.
Financial firms could demand compensation for these measures that would make them too expensive to manage.
The TPP, a 12-nation pact with countries in Asia and the Americas that requires congressional approval, includes an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system. This allows foreign companies operating in TPP member countries to enforce the agreement without using that country’s court system. Instead, corporations can sue for monetary damages in independent tribunals before corporate lawyers who can rotate between advocating for investors and judging the cases themselves.
The lawyers have an inherent incentive to encourage more challenges with favorable rulings, so they can be paid to arbitrate them. Labor unions who allege violations of the trade deal cannot use ISDS directly; only international investors, i.e. large corporations, can.
Hundreds of past trade deals have included ISDS, usually as a special insurance policy for countries operating in emerging markets. But language in the TPP could be directed to target American financial laws and regulations.
In prior deals, financial services providers were limited to making ISDS challenges based on discrimination — where foreign companies were subject to more stringent rules than their domestic counterparts — or an illegal “taking” of their investments. These types of challenges have been largely unsuccessful in ISDS tribunals.
But now, for the first time, financial institutions could make an ISDS claim based on not receiving a “minimum standard of treatment.” This is the most flexible type of claim. “Over time, tribunals have interpreted this to mean that the company gets compensation if the change in policy disappoints their expectations of future profits,” said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
Article 11.2 of the agreement confirms that financial services providers are covered under the minimum standard of treatment obligation. This means that almost any change in financial regulations affecting future profits could be challenged in an extra-judicial tribunal, even if they equally applied to foreign and domestic firms and even if they were enacted in response to a crisis.
The change to ISDS had been rumored in recent weeks but has now been confirmed by the language in the agreement.
The U.S. Trade Representative’s office claims in a fact sheet that they improved the ISDS process to ensure that countries have the right to “regulate in the public interest,” including in the financial sector. And they point to this language in the investment chapter: “The mere fact that a Party takes or fails to take an action that may be inconsistent with an investor’s expectations does not constitute a breach” of minimum standard of treatment, “even if there is loss or damage to the covered investment as a result.”
But according to Wallach, “The language the Administration has pointed to as the fix is identical to what has been in trade agreements since CAFTA,” referring to a free trade deal with Central America. “Tribunals have systematically ignored it and continue to make broad interpretations.”
Public Citizen estimates that ISDS rulings carried out under U.S. free trade agreements and bilateral treaties have ordered over $3.6 billion in compensation to investors. To use one example, Exxon-Mobil won $17.3 million from Canada this year in an ISDS tribunal, after claiming that a law forcing offshore oil drillers to spend a percentage of revenues on local economic development violated the North American Free Trade Agreement. With the far larger amounts at stake in U.S. financial regulations, the compensation awards could be much higher.
Importantly, there is no ability to appeal an ISDS ruling, so even if countries believe it has been interpreted poorly, they cannot change the outcome and would owe potentially billions in compensation.
“We don’t see that this ISDS is watered-down at all,” said Celeste Drake, trade and globalization policy specialist for the AFL-CIO. “It actually doubles down by providing more access to challenge laws, especially financial services.”
The text is frustratingly circular about a country’s right to regulate. For example, there’s this sentence in the financial services chapter: “For greater certainty, nothing in this Chapter shall be construed to prevent a Party from adopting or enforcing measures necessary to secure compliance with laws or regulations that are not inconsistent with this Chapter.”
In other words, the TPP member country can adopt or enforce any law or regulation it wants — but only as long as it’s consistent with the agreement. This logic offers no additional protection beyond the agreement itself, and does not obviate the minimum standard of treatment obligation.
Excessive awards for violations would be likely to lead governments to repeal laws and regulations, as the U.S. is in the midst of doing with country-of-origin labeling for meat and poultry. In that case, the World Trade Organization ruled that the U.S. would face $2 billion in retaliatory tariffs unless it repeals the law. While the tariffs aren’t the same as the direct compensation to corporations under ISDS, the resulting financial pressure would similarly lead lawmakers to move to repeal.
Extending minimum standard of treatment in this fashion protects all of Wall Street, not just foreign firms, as domestic mega-banks would benefit from any repeal as much as their foreign colleagues.
The big takeaway is this: Former Citigroup executive Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative, negotiated an agreement that will give Citi and all other banks a shot to undermine every future financial reform enacted.
“Expanding the financial chapter is an enormous expansion of the scope of the investor-state dispute system,” Lori Wallach concluded. “It opens up a Pandora’s box for financial services regulation.”
Public Citizen also estimates that over 1,000 new corporations from TPP member countries, representing over 9,200 subsidiaries in the United States, would now be able to launch ISDS cases. This nearly doubles the companies eligible for the ISDS process. It comes as ISDS cases have surged, with as many claims launched in the last four years as in the previous three decades.
The TPP, in fact, essentially acknowledges the dangerous threat ISDS represents to domestic laws by carving out tobacco companies from using the process to attack public health regulations. Other industries that spew carcinogens into the atmosphere, or harm citizens through other means, are not similarly restricted. “Tobacco is not the only dangerous thing in the world,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “You could get a tobacco company to make the same point and they would be right.”
Constitutional Ammendment by treaty. The .01% have finally bought enough of the politicians to kill the Republic. It is all over but the shouting or is that shooting. Are we in for a krystalnacht?
This is much, much worse than the UNaffordable Care Act
Maybe a Reverse Krystalnacht?
@ rhs jr…One can only hope so.
I had to read the article and all the additional imput by Admin a couple of times to get my head wrapped around it. How in the hell can TPTB spin this as a ‘good thing for the people’? They probably don’t even give a shit. With this, the gloves come off TPTB, and it’s time once again boys and girls for Feudalism!, the fun game everyone can play, but only 1% can win.
The Triple T SECRET Part
TRIPS – Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights
You don’t hear too much about this part of the “Triple T Pacts” that’s because it’s kept low profile.
This strips not only people’s rights but the rights of countries. It is woven into the fabric of all three “T’s” and is meant as an international legal cementing process, making it practically impossible to intercede by way of national or international law, into any aspect of the trio of agreements that make up the “Triple T Trade Pacts”.
You WILL NOT find all three “T’s” and “TRIPS” mentioned together in one article in the main stream media. The presstitutes have been told to keep their heads down or else!
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