You Can Help Force Obama To Expose the TPP

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tay

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May 20, 2012
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Although it is called a "free trade" agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade.

Of the TPP's 29 draft chapters, only 5 deal with traditional trade issues. Most would set rules on non-trade matters that affect our daily lives: food safety, internet freedom, medicine costs, job off-shoring, financial regulation, and more.

Our domestic policies would be required to comply with the TPP rules.



http://www.exposethetpp.org/TakeAction3.html



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The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement has, indeed, caused a "great sucking sound" of jobs being outsourced as Ross Perot predicted some years ago. Of course, since then, legislation and tax loopholes have also made it attractive for manufactures to move our good paying jobs overseas.


It has now become fashionable among our leaders, both corporate and governmental, to proliferate these trade agreements with a dizzying array of acronyms: TTP, TAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAs for Korea, Columba, and Panama. The ideas fostering these offspring are deregulation and globalization of trade--two of the most ignored reasons for our economic decline since the 1990s.

But how much are you willing to give up for those cheap clothes, flowers, foodstuffs, and other products produced overseas?

Here are some of the nasty secrets leaking out of the carefully guarded talks according to Public Citizen: the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership involves

-- some 600 multinational corporations taking part with no representation from the global citizenry

--international tribunals being proposed to allow corporations to sue governments which stray from their agreed obligations

--enabling "easier" trade by subordinating sovereign laws affecting labor, the environment, worker safety, wages, health, etc. (Have you heard of the "race to the bottom" where multinationals look to place their factories in countries with the least restrictions on them?)

--giving up a great deal of our democratically won rights to make our own laws and giving the process over to the corporate leaders.

The TTP and the TAFTA (Trans-Atlantic FTA) are scheduled to go before Congress soon and President Obama, who has adopted this ideology, is likely to request "fast-track" authority to push them through before the public is aware of what is happening. In doing so he will continue the recent trend of presidents to usurp Congressional power to write laws and set policy.

To learn more visit www.citizen.org and www.exposethettp.org

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T

tay

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As steel imports grow, as many as half a million U.S. jobs threatened








The U.S. steel industry is facing its worst import crisis in more than a decade.


In the aftermath of the Great Recession, steelmakers in other countries, backed by aggressive government support, continued to add production capacity as demand stagnated. The open and large U.S. market became the prime target for the massive excess supply stemming from this excess capacity, and, since 2011, U.S. steel imports have surged and import unit values have plummeted.




Surging imports of unfairly traded steel are threatening U.S. steel production, which supports more than a half million U.S. jobs across every state of the nation. The import surge has depressed domestic steel production and revenues, leading to sharp declines in net income in the U.S. steel industry over the past two years (2012–2013), layoffs for thousands of workers, and reduced wages for many more.




Surging Steel Imports Put Up To Half a Million U.S. Jobs at Risk | Economic Policy Institute
 
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BornRuff

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tay said:
Although it is called a "free trade" agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade.

Of the TPP's 29 draft chapters, only 5 deal with traditional trade issues. Most would set rules on non-trade matters that affect our daily lives: food safety, internet freedom, medicine costs, job off-shoring, financial regulation, and more.

Our domestic policies would be required to comply with the TPP rules.
Click to expand...

These are common parts of any free trade agreement. All of these issues can become effective barriers to trade.

On many occasions countries have used these regulations to erect barriers to certain imports. They put a certain safety regulation in place that only affects the commonly imported item and gives their domestic item an advantage.

On the flip side, they don't necessarily want to get into a race to the bottom to attract business.
 
taxslave

taxslave

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Free trade is good, as are common rules among trading partners.Too bad the provinces didn't practice it.
Steel is mostly produced because unions and environmentalists made it impractable to produce here.
 
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BaalsTears

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Obama hoped to advance the cause of the TPP during his recent visit to East Asia. However, he was rebuffed by both the Japanese and South Koreans. Maybe that's at least in part due to the fact that Congress refuses to give his "fast track authority."
 
H

Highball

Council Member
Jan 28, 2010
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Why not look at "North American Cooperative Security Agreement" too? The name keeps changing but it is still actively being pursued.
 
T

tay

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The United States is in the final stages of secret, closed-door negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade agreement with 11 other countries.

Who will benefit from it? One provision hidden in the fine print – “Investor-State Dispute Settlement” – may sound harmless, but don’t let that fool you: ISDS could let foreign companies challenge US laws without ever stepping in an American court.

That would undermine US sovereignty and tilt the playing field even further in favor of multinational corporations.

Sign my petition and spread the word: ISDS is a bad deal for America.

Here’s how ISDS would work: Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge that regulation in a US court.

But with ISDS, the company could skip the US courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the multinational company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in US courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions – and even billions – of dollars in damages.

If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Really.

And if the tilt toward giant corporations wasn’t clear enough, consider who would get to use this special court: only international investors, which are, by and large, giant corporations. So if a Vietnamese company with US operations wanted to challenge our refusal to import a dangerous chemical, it could use ISDS. But if an American labor union or human rights group believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the American labor group would have to make its case in the Vietnamese courts – and if an environmental group thought the Vietnamese company was dumping waste in their rivers in violation of the new trade agreement, they would have to go to a Vietnamese court as well. In other words, the great deal for corporations is only for corporations – everyone else is left out.

Giving foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system would be a bad deal for America. Sign my petition to say no to ISDS.

Opposing ISDS isn’t a partisan issue – even your Tea Party relatives should be worried about this dangerous provision:

  • Conservatives who believe in US sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution, to unaccountable international tribunals.
  • Libertarians should be offended that ISDS effectively would offer a free taxpayer subsidy to countries with weak legal systems.
  • And progressives should oppose ISDS because it would allow big multinational corporations to weaken labor and environmental rules.
If a final TPP agreement includes Investor-State Dispute Settlement, the only winners will be multinational corporations. Join me in saying No to ISDS.
 
T

tay

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Nike Steps Up Role In Trans-Pacific Partnership










Later today, President Obama lands in Beaverton, Ore. to meet with Nike executives and rally support for two controversial trade issues: the trade promotion authority and TPP. If the Trans-Pacific Partnership passes, Nike announced its’ intention to grow U.S. footwear manufacturing, creating up to 10,000 jobs here at home, and 40,000 supply chain and service jobs from the expansion over the next decade.




As the Trans-Pacific Partnership is reaching the final stretch of negotiations, the public debate has also heated up, and Nike’s commitment has pulled it into the center of the conversation. The deal, a complicated 12-country agreement that includes key Pacific Rim nations from Japan to New Zealand, would alleviate much of the tariff burden on footwear. With nearly 99 percent of all footwear imported, the shoe industry is pushing for the trade deal’s passage.


“For us it’s not just a Nike or FDRA message, but it’s a 100 percent industry message. We need the tariff relief and we need this trade deal to continue job creation expansion and continue innovation,” said Matt Priest, FDRA president. “I think Nike is one of the most innovative companies in the world and had driven a lot of innovation in our industry…not just in athletic but fashion too. The loudest chorus we can have the better we can be.”


Nike’s high-profile alignment with the Obama administration on TPA and TPP has also brought it under close scrutiny. Opponents have pointed to Nike’s spotty record in factory conditions and worker safety in its overseas facilities and the huge dollars the company stands to gain from open trade.


More generally, opponents of the deal argue it will hurt U.S. manufacturing and jobs, and increase income disparity, along with a host of other concerns ranging from environmental to immigration questions.


Sen. Harry Reid, the minority leader in the Senate, has gone on record that he’ll fight the deal and also threatened to filibuster the legislation if other bills aren’t prioritized. It’s a big break for the Democrat, who is at odds this time around with President Obama.






Nike Steps Up Role In Trans-Pacific Partnership | Footwear News
 
T

tay

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Elizabeth Warren Launches Last-Minute Blitz to Stop Trade Bill








We saw what has happened to American jobs under trade deals like NAFTA: a million lost jobs and stagnant wages for decades. President Obama says this time it’s different – but you can’t see the deal. It’s classified. The Administration will release the text to the public onlyafter Congress passes Fast Track.


What does that mean? Before you are allowed to see the giant Asia trade deal, Congress must voluntarily give up its power to offer amendments and sharply reduce its ability to block a bad deal. So, for example, if this TPP deal includes a dangerous ISDS provisions that would let multinational corporations effectively challenge American laws outside of American courts, our hands would be tied.


Also, Fast Track wouldn’t apply to just this one TPP deal. It would apply to ANY trade deal cut by ANY President for the next six years. So if one of the anti-worker, climate-change-denying, Wall-Street accountability-hating Republicans gets elected President, they would have the same Fast Track power to ram bad trade deals that undermine our laws through Congress just 18 months from now.


It’s just plain irresponsible to sign a six-year Fast Track agreement – and to sign away our right to fix the TPP before the public has seen the deal.








Elizabeth Warren Launches Last-Minute Blitz to Stop Trade Bill - Bloomberg Politics
 
EagleSmack

EagleSmack

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It needs to be approved before we can see it says Pelosi.... Oooops... I mean Paul Ryan.
 
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