The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
A Gosh-darn Separate Thread for: TPA TTIP TPP [TRADE]
Captain Marcus
now arrives the hour of actionRegistered User regular
now arrives the hour of actionRegistered User regular
It is my opinion that there have only been three true scandals during the Obama administration. The first was his refusal to arrest and try white-collar criminals during the financial crisis. The second, his gutting of NASA and privatizing space exploration at the behest of a focus group filled with aerospace industry executives.
The third is his trade agenda.
The Agreements
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, also known as "TAFTA", is a proposed free trade agreement between the United States of America and the European Union.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed trade regulation agreement between 11 countries on the Pacific Rim- Canada, Mexico, the U.S., Chile, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand.
The Trade Promotion Authority is a proposed renewal of a former power of the United States President. It grants him the ability to present trade agreements to the United States Congress as solely an up-or-down vote, with no filibuster or amendments allowed.
The Secrets
The agreements themselves are laundry lists of horrors:
TAFTA
a. European agribusiness has called for the repeal of the U.S. Grade A standard for milk, acknowledging that it was put in place to prevent foodborne disease [turberculosis can be gotten from milk] but stating that the standard is an "obstacle" because complying with it is "cumbersome and highly expensive".
b. European oil corporations have said "U.S. (alternative) fuel credits should become impossible in the future".
c. European pharmaceutical manufacturers want the FDA to relinquish its authority to independently approve whether medicines sold in the U.S. are safe for U.S. consumers, instead relying on a European determination of safety.
d. The E.U. has targeted U.S. states' and cities' "Buy Local" procurement policies for banning, as well as the ban of "Buy American" Federal contracts.
e. The agreement includes the odious secret tribunals of previous free trade agreements, which allow foreign corporations to challenge U.S. health, safety, and environmental laws before unelected judges and be awarded billions in your taxpayer dollars if they win.
f. Did I mention that it's a free trade agreement? Free trade with Canada and Mexico alone cost the U.S. 55,000 factories and over 3.5 million manufacturing jobs, with countless more jobs created overseas instead of at home.
g. Wall Street has teamed up with The City on this one. Volcker Rule? Gone. Glass-Steagal? Never coming back.
h. It includes SOPA, because why the heck not
TPP
a. It also includes SOPA! And the secret courts, and the banning of Buy American policies, etc etc. It's almost exactly the same as TAFTA, but for Asia instead of Europe.
b. It also forces the U.S. to allow food imports if the exporting country claims its food safety laws are "equivalent" to our own, even if the imports violate our food safety laws. Food safety rules on pesticides? Gone. On illegal additives? Gone. Country of origin labels so you can try to avoid tainted new imports? Gone.
The Scandal
The Pushback
In the last month or so the Trade Promotion Authority was up for a vote, and was narrowly defeated by House Democrats. The labor unions had threatened to support their opponents in elections if they voted Aye, even going so far as to support a Republican candidate if that meant defeating the incumbent. The Republicans themselves (with the exception of those shoved out of mainstream conservatism like Pat Buchanan) are full-on free trade and Speaker of the House John Boehner has promised a rematch on the TPA next week. The President himself is also pushing full-steam ahead on these agreements, and I'm surprised that he isn't wondering why the GOP (which has hated him for his entire administration) is cheerfully working with him on this. Maybe he doesn't care- he'll certainly lying if and when he says that the U.S. worker gets a seat at the table.
I know I can be a little John Birch-y at times, but this thing really is as bad as you think. The bit about circumventing food safety laws with no country of origin labels? That's terrifying, considering that imported seafood is already unsafe. Not to mention that the PRC busted factory owners for making soy sauce out of human hair back in 2004.
Thoughts?
The third is his trade agenda.
The Agreements
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, also known as "TAFTA", is a proposed free trade agreement between the United States of America and the European Union.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed trade regulation agreement between 11 countries on the Pacific Rim- Canada, Mexico, the U.S., Chile, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, and New Zealand.
The Trade Promotion Authority is a proposed renewal of a former power of the United States President. It grants him the ability to present trade agreements to the United States Congress as solely an up-or-down vote, with no filibuster or amendments allowed.
The Secrets
The two trade agreements above are secret. Journalists are not allowed at the negotiations. There are no outlines of the proposed deals. U.S. congressmen complain that they are denied access to even the barest details of the agreements while lobbyists for Haliburton, Chevron, and the MPAA (did I mention there's rules on intellectual property in both agreements?) are routinely consulted and were even allowed to write parts of the treaties. What little we the people know of the agreements has only been the result of leaks, not transparency.Anyone who has read the text of the [TPP] agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents ... So-called “cleared advisors” like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we’ve lodged about specific proposals and approaches ... The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen ... Only portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful eye of a USTR official ... We have to travel to certain government facilities and sign in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully edited summaries rather than the actual underlying text.
The agreements themselves are laundry lists of horrors:
TAFTA
a. European agribusiness has called for the repeal of the U.S. Grade A standard for milk, acknowledging that it was put in place to prevent foodborne disease [turberculosis can be gotten from milk] but stating that the standard is an "obstacle" because complying with it is "cumbersome and highly expensive".
b. European oil corporations have said "U.S. (alternative) fuel credits should become impossible in the future".
c. European pharmaceutical manufacturers want the FDA to relinquish its authority to independently approve whether medicines sold in the U.S. are safe for U.S. consumers, instead relying on a European determination of safety.
d. The E.U. has targeted U.S. states' and cities' "Buy Local" procurement policies for banning, as well as the ban of "Buy American" Federal contracts.
e. The agreement includes the odious secret tribunals of previous free trade agreements, which allow foreign corporations to challenge U.S. health, safety, and environmental laws before unelected judges and be awarded billions in your taxpayer dollars if they win.
f. Did I mention that it's a free trade agreement? Free trade with Canada and Mexico alone cost the U.S. 55,000 factories and over 3.5 million manufacturing jobs, with countless more jobs created overseas instead of at home.
g. Wall Street has teamed up with The City on this one. Volcker Rule? Gone. Glass-Steagal? Never coming back.
h. It includes SOPA, because why the heck not
TPP
a. It also includes SOPA! And the secret courts, and the banning of Buy American policies, etc etc. It's almost exactly the same as TAFTA, but for Asia instead of Europe.
b. It also forces the U.S. to allow food imports if the exporting country claims its food safety laws are "equivalent" to our own, even if the imports violate our food safety laws. Food safety rules on pesticides? Gone. On illegal additives? Gone. Country of origin labels so you can try to avoid tainted new imports? Gone.
The Scandal
Who is responsible for these abominations? An unknown, unelected official named Michael Froman. Froman first started out in the Department of the Treasury in the 90s, where he helped out with the "shock therapy" of the former Soviet Union by way of extreme liberal economic policies. After helping his mentor, Robert Rubin, compose NAFTA he ditched government work for a cushy, 10-million-a-year job at Citigroup. When his former Harvard classmate (and compadre at the Harvard Law Review) Barack Obama was elected Senator in 2004, Froman took it upon himself to advise the young Congressman on economic issues. A grateful President awarded him numerous positions, with the cherry on top being the U.S. Trade Representative in 2013, a powerful posting that grants full authority to negotiate and recommend trade agreements.Barack Obama, twitter wrote:Nothing secret about it.
The Pushback
In the last month or so the Trade Promotion Authority was up for a vote, and was narrowly defeated by House Democrats. The labor unions had threatened to support their opponents in elections if they voted Aye, even going so far as to support a Republican candidate if that meant defeating the incumbent. The Republicans themselves (with the exception of those shoved out of mainstream conservatism like Pat Buchanan) are full-on free trade and Speaker of the House John Boehner has promised a rematch on the TPA next week. The President himself is also pushing full-steam ahead on these agreements, and I'm surprised that he isn't wondering why the GOP (which has hated him for his entire administration) is cheerfully working with him on this. Maybe he doesn't care- he'll certainly lying if and when he says that the U.S. worker gets a seat at the table.
I know I can be a little John Birch-y at times, but this thing really is as bad as you think. The bit about circumventing food safety laws with no country of origin labels? That's terrifying, considering that imported seafood is already unsafe. Not to mention that the PRC busted factory owners for making soy sauce out of human hair back in 2004.
Thoughts?
Captain Marcus on
+7
Posts
I'm not anti free trade most of the time, but this thing is a rough beast slouching toward Washington to be born.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
As Krugman always remarks, it's not even about free trade. Trade barriers are pretty low, and what the agreements are about is intellectual property and dispute settlement.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I object more to the OP being written like a campaign ad, complete with soundbites about "unelected judges."
But they are unelected! They're not even judges, the tribunal boards are made up of executives from global business organizations like the International Chamber of Commerce. Like I said, I can get a little hysterical at times, but this ain't fearmongering- it really is that bad. Everyone on the internet hates SOPA and SOPA's just one of the many, many bullet points they're coming up with. I'd link you to the treaties themselves, but like they said, they're secret and I'd go to prison even if I had access to them.
edit- Australia says U.S. only has a "few weeks" to pass TPP Hopefully the stonewalling keeps up and other countries start dropping out. You can tell how worried the corporations are by the plethora of "Why Democrats shouldn't let The Unions Sink the TPP" and "U.S. forgets Free-Trade Benefits" editorials written by ex-CEOs and think-tankers that are cropping up everywhere.
The expert consensus in favor of trade agreements is broad and durable. There must be more to be said for these deals than is being said here. Maybe they really will ruin Joe Worker just to enrich those fat cats, but that result is surely not obvious.
So far as all the stuff about the US not being able to do this, that, or the other thing: that's what international agreements do. They restrict the freedom of the signatories. That said, just because various European industries want the US to change laws about milk or drug approval does not mean these provisions will be in the agreement. I find it really unlikely that the FDA will lose independent control over drug approval in the US market, whatever European pharmaceutical companies want.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
As regards the actual trade section of the agreement, the consensus here seems to be an expectation that the US, and Japan are unlikely to remove tariffs or subsidies on industries in which we trade, so it seems very much a large number on concessions for very little actual gain- though that's based entirely on leaked information.
It's certainly amusing to read some the editorials on the subject from 2013, when the Tea Party budget rebellion was the reason TPA couldn't be passed through your congress.
TOKYO — With President Obama’s trade agenda in jeopardy in Congress, the nations of Asia are weighing the potential impact of a failed deal on local jobs and exports, but also something else: American influence in the region.
For many here, the defeat of a sweeping trade and investment pact being negotiated between the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations would weaken Washington’s already strained claim to leadership in Asia and undermine a commitment by Mr. Obama to devote more attention and resources to a group of countries contending with the growing power of China.
Congress rejected legislation on Friday that is crucial to completing the trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, throwing its future — and its potential to bind together countries friendly to American interests — into doubt.
“If this collapses, Pacific Rim countries will be aghast,” said Shunpei Takemori, a professor at Keio University in Japan, the largest economy in the would-be trade zone after the United States. “China is pushing, and if the U.S. just stands aside, it would be a tragedy.”
The White House and its Republican free-trade allies in Congress are searching for ways to revive a bill that would extend aid to workers displaced by global trade agreements. By rejecting that measure on Friday, Mr. Obama’s fellow Democrats in the House effectively scuttled legislation granting him the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress.
Without such trade promotion authority, analysts in the region said, it may be impossible for Mr. Obama to persuade governments to make the concessions needed to close a deal that would affect 40 percent of the global economy.
The death of the Trans-Pacific Partnership would be a new setback for American economic diplomacy in Asia after a failed attempt to thwart a Chinese state-run infrastructure investment fund that some see as a competitor to American-dominated institutions like the World Bank. The Obama administration has also struggled to respond to blunter assertions of Chinese power, such as Beijing’s efforts to strengthen its territorial claims by building islands out of reefs in the South China Sea.
etc etc
the source of the quote from the Singapore foreign minister in the NYT article. expanding a bit:
Generally the details of these sort of agreements are kept behind closed doors throughout the negotiation process. Having sensitive negotiations open to the public tends to impact the negotiations themselves, and weaken the negotiating positions of one or both parties. In THEORY, assuming the priorities of these negotiations are good and the negotiators are acting in good faith, a lot of the concerns around the secrecy are unfounded and full open and public negotiations on this scale would be unprecedented.
It's also of note that just because points are open for negotiation doesn't mean that they are going to be in the final agreement. Usually, both parties will go into negotiations with a laundry list of things they want, even some that are extremely unlikely to make it through the agreement, simply because that lets them give more concessions and allows more horse trading. If you're going into mediation, you go in demanding 'everything we want plus our legal fees', knowing that by the time you arrive at a settlement you'll probably end up somewhere in the middle.
Now, I'm no fan of these trade agreements, seeing as how NAFTA and CAFTA screwed us over pretty badly. Some of these terms listed above - if they actually are in the final agreement(s) - are terrible, but some of them seem reasonable or at least not awful depending on what the US gets in exchange or how watered down they really end up being.
Then again, if the GOP / business is for it and the Democrats / unions are against it, I'm going to be very, very wary and take a 'fuck this' position. I have no idea what Obama's angle is on this, or what he's getting in return, but at this point and after the past six years I would be working against the GOP - out of spite if nothing else. If they are making some sort of promises of support elsewhere, I'd make sure there was no way at all to back out before getting locked into anything.
That's a huge concern here in the UK. US Big Pharma suing the UK Government, or the National Health Service, is a terrifying proposition. As for Monsanto... 'nuff said, really.
Steam | XBL
Which, sure, ok. But maybe you should've made a better effort to get something people wanted to support, Obama.
idk though
i'm just some dude on the internet
But when they want congress to start voting on it they need to tell us what the hell is actually being negotiated for.
Country of origin, pharma and food safety laws need to be strong and very explicitly spelled out if you are making this kind of deal. 'Criticisms can not be shared with the public?' What the...
Consumers choosing where they buy things from is a powerful tool to force companies to do business in a responsible manner.
I am on the maybe you should actually have a reasonable deal if you want it to pass bus.
Just how similar is that stuff in question, for those more familiar with the stuff that's leaked out?
- Tobacco companies are specifically excluded from the arbitration panels to prevent them from harassing countries that pass ant-smoking laws.
- Seems everyone will adopt the US's nutty copywrite protections
- Biologics will only be secret for 5-8 years, rather than the 12 under current US law
- Separate agreements with Myanmar, Vietnam, and Brunei will allow the US to reimpose tariffs if they are found in violation of the agreement's human trafficking provisions
- The US will dismantle its tariffs against Japanese cars. Japan will remove its blocks against US cars and light trucks
- Bunch of stuff about dairy markets I don't really car about
My view of this agreement is largely favorable so far.
So the deal has been secured. Congress time!
edit: Super beaten!
Not necessarily on Mr. Obama's end (I'm not sure what he negotiated for), but Mr. Harper decided to ram it through parliament without haggling on the behalf of Canadians for a half decent deal. Surprise surprise, this means we got the short end of the stick.
The copyright deal in particular is total horse shit. We should never, ever have agreed to that.
Eh, it still has to be ratified in Parliament, and depending on how the election goes that might not happen, so hold on to hope.
My gut reaction is to be against it since it is secret and doesn't have to go through Congress.
Honestly, it will probably be a good deal for America. Mr. Obama is a pretty good negotiator, and I can't fault him for looking out for his own interests.
If you don't have someone like Mr. Obama at the helm, though, you tend to get dicked over in these agreements.
Good news then. The Congress does have to ratify it, being a treaty and all. And it has to be not secret for at least 60 days before they can.
EDIT: Congress, not just the Senate. Durr.
I thought they fast tracked it this summer, ceding their authority to the president for approval.
Which seems like a pretty good idea, regardless of what's actually in the thing.
Fast track just means it gets a straight up or down vote. Letting Congress amend a multinational agreement would be pretty stupid after all. Standard move for trade deals.