The global elite strikes back

The common people in Europe, the USA and other countries are starting to revolt against international institutions—the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund—that represent the interests of an international financial elite.

The financial elite is striking back by promoting international trade agreements—the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) and the lesser-known Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) involving Canada and the European Union.

All these agreements would enact pro-business policies into international law, and would create tribunals with the power to fine governments for unjustly depriving businesses of expected profits.

Nationalists oppose these agreements because they undermine national sovereignty.   Progressives and liberals oppose these agreements because they are un-democratic.  On this issue, progressives and nationalists are on the same side because, at these moment in history, national governments are the highest level in which democracy exists.

President Obama hopes to get the Republican majority in the lame duck Congress following the November election to enact the TTP Agreement.   The Conservative Party in Britain favors the TTIP, which would subject the UK to a new pr0-business international authority.   CETA would accomplish the same goal for the remaining EU members.

If any of these agreements passes, they can be used to block legislation to protect workers, consumers or public health, or to bring banks and financial institutions under control.

Followers of Bernie Sanders in the USA and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, and progressives in other subject countries, would be stymied until they could figure out a way to roll back the agreements.

None of these agreements is needed in order to have international trade.   Rather their goal is to remove controls on the operations of international corporations.

ISDS: the worst part of the TPP

Source: What Now Cartoons.

Negotiations for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement are essentially negotiations concerning business interests.  They reportedly are running into trouble on disagreements about dairy and auto parts imports and drug patents.

But from the standpoint of ordinary citizens, the most odious part of the TPP — and its sister proposals, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement (aka TAFTA) and the Trade in Services Agreement — are the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions that allow an un-elected tribunal to penalize governments for enacting laws to protect the health and welfare of their citizens, if such laws unfairly deprive foreign corporations of expected profits.

Not compensation for actual losses, but compensation for hypothetical losses.

A letter signed by more than 100 legal scholars and former judges sums up the problem.

ISDS grants foreign corporations a special legal privilege, the right to initiate dispute settlement proceedings against a government for actions that allegedly cause a loss of profit for the corporation. 

Essentially, corporations use ISDS to challenge government policies, actions, or decisions that they allege reduce the value of their investments.  These challenges are not heard in a normal court but instead before a tribunal of private lawyers.

Barack Obama, a master of geopolitics?

Many of my Democratic friends think of Barack Obama as a well-meaning but naive and weak reformer.  I think of President Obama as a shrewd and strong defender of the status quo.

Alfred McCoy wrote a good article for TomDispatch arguing that this is just as true of his foreign policy as his domestic policy.

The greatest threat to American world power is the rise of China.  While the USA is dissipating its power through failed military interventions. China is extending its power by economic policies that add to its economic strength.

Obama hopes to counter China by leveraging American economic power through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which will create a global trade bloc from which China and also Russia will be locked out.

The question is how long this will be feasible.  China’s economic power is growing.  American economic power is a legacy from the past.

President Obama has been using America’s status as the planet’s number one consumer nation to create a new version of dollar diplomacy.

His strategy is aimed at drawing China’s Eurasian trading partners back into Washington’s orbit.

While Beijing has been moving to bring parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe into a unified “world island” with China at its epicenter, Obama has countered with a bold geopolitics that would trisect that vast land mass by redirecting its trade towards the United States.

During the post-9/11 decade when Washington was spilling its blood and treasure onto desert sands, Beijing was investing its trillions of dollars of surplus from trade with the U.S. in plans for the economic integration of the vast Eurasian land mass.

In the process, it has already built or is building an elaborate infrastructure of high-speed, high-volume railroads and oil and natural gas pipelines across the vast breadth of what Sir Halford Mackinder once dubbed the “world island.”  [snip]

The passing scene – August 6, 2015

I may add links during the day.  Feel free to use the comment thread for general and off-topic comments.

The Suicide of the American Left by John Michael Greer for The Archdruid Report.

John Michael Greer recalled a time when there were Democrats who fought for the interests of famers and factory workers against financial speculators, and Republicans who fought against foreign military intervention and excessive government power.   Now both parties are pro-corporations and pro-government power.

Hillary Clinton is an example of what’s wrong with liberals and progressives, Greer wrote.  She thinks that all she has to do to be elected President is talk about how bad the Republicans are.

Dear NYT: When the GOP Is Your Assignment Editor, You Miss Real Stories by Mike the Mad Biologist.

Seriously, what has happened to the NYT? by Joseph Cannon for Cannonfire.

HIllary Clinton

While there is much in Hillary Clinton’s record to criticize, the Washington press corps does not focus on these things.  Instead it subjects her to a constant stream of attacks based on falsehoods, trivialities or, at best, controversies that involve grey areas.

My explanation is that all the legitimate grounds for attacking Hillary Clinton apply at least as much and probably more to her Republican opponents.  The only reasons for singling her out are bogus ones.  That applies to Barack Obama as well.

Donald Trump Is a Serious Candidate by Jeet Heer of The New Republic.

Koch Brothers Declare War on Donald Trump by Shannon Argueta for Addicting Info.

Donald Trump talked politics with Bill Clinton weeks before launching 2016 bid by Robert Costa and Anne Gearan for The Washington Post.  [Hat tip to Unqualified Offerings]

It’s hard for the other Republican candidates to oppose Donald Trump because he is just like them or at least just like they pretend to be, only more so.  I can see why Hillary Clinton would rather run against him than against Jeb Bush.

There are more TPPs in the pipeline

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is just the beginning.

POLITICO reported that four more trade agreements are now being negotiated.

Following Congress’ hard-fought approval of “fast-track” trade authority last week, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman vowed not only to complete the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership but an even bigger pact with the European Union and three other major trade deals — all in the 18 months remaining in President Barack Obama’s term.

It could add up to the biggest trade blitz in history, transforming the rules under which the world does business.

“We’ve got a lot of pots on the stove,” Froman told POLITICO while watching senators cast their final votes to send the legislation to the president. “We want to get TPP done and through Congress. We want to get TTIP negotiated. We’re going to finish ITA. I’m hoping to finish EGA and TISA.”

Those would be, in order: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement with the European Union, an even bigger pact than the TPP in terms of economic size; the World Trade Organization’s Information Technology Agreement, which covers about 97 percent of world IT trade; the Environmental Goods Agreement, accounting for 86 percent international commerce in green goods; and the 24-party Trade in International Services Agreement, which involves three-quarters of the United States’ gross domestic product and two-thirds of the world’s services, such as banking and communications.

via POLITICO.

I’d heard of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), but not the Information Technology Agreement or the Environmental Goods Agreement until now.

Chinese vs. American trade agreements

U.S. rivalry with China should be mainly economic, not military.   The threat to us Americans is that we shall continue to allow the hollowing out of our manufacturing industry while China grows ever more powerful.

China offers the world the chance to invest in its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which may or may not amount to anything, but potentially could help all its partners achieve their economic goals.

The US government is trying to pressure the world into joining the Trans Pacific Partnership, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trade in Services Agreement, which would require them to give up national sovereignty so that multinational corporations could operate with greater freedom.

President Obama has said that it is important that “we” rather than China get to write the rules for the international economy.  I don’t feel included in that “we”.   I think the “we” who will write the rules are the big international banks and other corporations, not us Americans.

There’s an old saying that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  Right now the Chinese government is offering honey while the U.S. government is trying to force its allies to swallow vinegar.

More toxic trade agreements are in the pipeline

Scope of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement

Scope of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Scope of the proposed Trade in Services Agreement

If Congress approves the Trade Promotion Authority, aka Fast Track, it will grease the way not only for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but for two other toxic trade agreements now in the pipeline—the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trade in Services Agreement.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is basically the same as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, except that it covers a different set of countries.

The Trade in Services Agreement is mainly about deregulation of financial services, but it also has a section on “movement of natural persons.”  In other words, TISA would cover immigrationtemporary visas for specialized workers, according to a draft released by Wikileaks.

Notice which countries are not in any of the three proposed agreements.  The BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—would retain sovereignty over their economies after United States, the European Union and their satellites give them up.

WTO overrules U.S. country of origin law

The World Trade Organization has overruled a U.S. law requiring that imported meat be labeled as to its country of origin.

The law gives an unfair advantage to domestic livestock breeders and meat processors, the WTO said.

Now the WTO is in the process of deciding what retaliatory tariffs can be imposed by Canada and Mexico if the United States does not repeal the law.

This is a sample of what can be expected if Congress approves the Trans Pacific Partnership or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreements.

The mechanism is different in the TPP and TTIP, but the purpose is the same.  Under the investor-state dispute settlement processes in these agreements, a panel of arbitrators could fine a government whose laws supposedly treated a foreign investor unfairly.  The government would have the choice of paying the fine or repealing the law.

It might be good to have a trade agreement that set minimum standards for inspection of imported meat.  But the existing and proposed trade agreements go the other way.  They restrict the power of democratically-elected governments to protect their citizens.

LINKS

WTO Rejects U.S. Appeal of COOL Ruling by Lydia Zuraw of Food Safety News.

If Fast Track Passes, Anything Attached to a “Trade” Treaty Will Pass by Gaius Publius for Down With Tyranny!  [Hat tip to naked capitalism]

‘Fast track’ involves more than just the TPP

The significance of “fast track” goes far beyond clearing the way for quick approval of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.

There are other TPP-like trade agreements now under negotiation, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trade In Services Agreement.

The Trade Promotion Authority bill, otherwise known as “fast track,” would govern how such agreements are negotiated and voted on in the future.

In theory this could work well.  Negotiators would pursue objectives set by Congress, the leaders of Congress would be kept informed as negotiations progress and ratification of the agreement would be only a formality.   But there is no mechanism in the current fast track bill by which Congress can call the negotiators to account or demand information.

Fast track assumes good faith on the part of all concerned, and, based on the historic record, including the way the TPP has been negotiated, I think this would be a naive assumption.

LINK

Hatch Bill Would Revive Controversial 2002 Fast Track Mechanism That Faces Broad Congressional, Public Opposition by the staff of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch division.

What’s Wrong With Wyden-Hatch-Ryan’s Fast Track Bill – The Specifics by Gaius Publius for Down With Tyranny (via naked capitalism).  [Added 4/22/2015]

Congress is waking up to what’s in the TPP

Opposition by the U.S. Congress may sink the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.  A group of 174 members of the House of Representatives have signed a letter opposing “fast track” authority to approve these treaties.

The public is waking up to the fact that these treaties, being negotiated in secret, have nothing to do with removing trade barriers.  They are simply attempts to write corporate wish lists on public policy into international law, which would be irreversible by the people or governments of individual countries.

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty would cover the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan and eight other Pacific nations.  The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, would cover the U.S. and the European Union.

These treaties are one of the Obama administration’s top priorities, and show the nature of President Obama’s basic loyalties and beliefs, which is not to represent the people who voted for him, but to serve as a buffer to protect the financial and corporate elite.

“Fast-track” authority requires that the Senate make an up or down vote on the treaty without extended debate.  Granting of fast-track authority requires a majority vote of both houses of Congress.  Fast-track authority might be justified if the Congress had been kept informed of what was being agreed to, but in fact information about the negotiations has been classified as secret.  Rejection of fast-track authority is the key to slowing down the process so that the Congress and the public can know what’s in the proposed treaties.

If Democrats in Congress approve these treaties, it will show they are not champions of the common people against the financial and corporate elite.  If the Republicans in Congress go along, it will show they are not champions of U.S. national sovereignty.  Liberals and libertarians ought to make common cause in opposing the TPP and TTIP.

I thank Wikileaks and Julian Assange for bringing information about the secret TPP negotiations to light.  If we had a well-functioning democracy, Congress and the public would have all the relevant information without resorting to whistle-blowers and leaked information.  As it is, if Wikileaks did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

LINKS

Wikileaks Disclosure of Trade Deal Shows It Will Kill People and Internet; House Opposition Is Widespread by Yves Smith.

House Pushing Back on Trade Deal; More Detail on Secret Arbitration Panels Undermine Laws and Regulations by Yves Smith.

The TPP, If Passed, Spells the End of Popular Sovereignty in the United States by Lambert Strether.

Will Democrats and Tea Partiers Derail Obama’s Secret Trade Deal? by Erika Eichelberger for Mother Jones.

There is good information in these posts, even for those who are well-informed about the TPP, and also in the links and comment threads.

A big deal: TPP negotiators meet in Peru

Representatives of 11 nations met in Lima, Peru, yesterday for the start of the 17th round of negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, a trade treaty that would give corporations  the right to appeal to international tribunals to overturn federal laws, state laws and court decisions regarding not just patent and copyright laws, but also “buy American” rules and environmental and labor laws.

The text of the draft treaty has not been made public and only limited information is available to Congress and the public.  Business representatives, however, are being consulted on the draft.   The Obama administration has stated that this is the cornerstone of its trade policy.

Once agreement is reached, the Obama administration or its successor will ask for Fast Track authority to require the Senate to vote the treaty up or down as is, without amendments.  The previous Fast Track authority has expired, and should not be renewed.

Similar negotiations are underway for a new Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty with the European Union.   This is a very, very big deal, even though there has been little reporting in the national press and network television.

Click on the following links for more information.

Political Corruption and the ‘Free Trade Racket by Dean Baker.

Upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership Looks Like Corporate Takeover by Dave Johnson of Campaign for America’s Future.

Large Corporations Seek U.S.-European ‘Free Trade Agreement’ to Further Global Dominance by Andrew Gavin Marshall for AlterNet.

The 11 nations in the negotiations are the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico, Chile and Peru.   Japan has been invited to join the negotiations.