Trans Pacific Partnership

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denjohn
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Fri May 15, 2015 5:23 am

You Can’t Read the TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015 ... tions-can/
So who can read the text of the TPP? Not you, it’s classified. Even members of Congress can only look at it one section at a time in the Capitol’s basement, without most of their staff or the ability to keep notes.

But there’s an exception: if you’re part of one of 28 U.S. government-appointed trade advisory committees providing advice to the U.S. negotiators. The committees with the most access to what’s going on in the negotiations are 16 “Industry Trade Advisory Committees,” whose members include AT&T, General Electric, Apple, Dow Chemical, Nike, Walmart and the American Petroleum Institute.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by Amskeptic » Mon May 18, 2015 7:30 am

denjohn wrote:You Can’t Read the TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015 ... tions-can/
So who can read the text of the TPP? Not you, it’s classified. Even members of Congress can only look at it one section at a time in the Capitol’s basement, without most of their staff or the ability to keep notes.

But there’s an exception: if you’re part of one of 28 U.S. government-appointed trade advisory committees providing advice to the U.S. negotiators. The committees with the most access to what’s going on in the negotiations are 16 “Industry Trade Advisory Committees,” whose members include AT&T, General Electric, Apple, Dow Chemical, Nike, Walmart and the American Petroleum Institute.
There is some very aggressive behavior going on at the top. Brazen. And Obama is doubling down on passing this wretched thing.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Mon May 18, 2015 12:35 pm

Elizabeth Warren Details Obama's Broken Trade Promises
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/1 ... 02734.html
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) issued a report Monday morning detailing decades of failed trade enforcement by American presidents including Barack Obama, the latest salvo in an ongoing public feud between Warren and Obama over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Obama is currently negotiating the major trade pact with 11 other nations. While the text of the TPP agreement remains classified information, it is strongly supported by Republican leaders in Congress and corporate lobbying groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The deal is opposed by most congressional Democrats, along with labor unions, environmental groups and advocates of Internet freedom.

Obama has repeatedly insisted the TPP will include robust labor protections, and has dismissed Warren's criticisms as "dishonest," "bunk" and "misinformation." On Monday, Warren fired back, showing that Obama simply has not effectively enforced existing labor standards in prior trade pacts. According to the report, a host of abuses, from child labor to the outright murder of union organizers, have continued under Obama's watch with minimal pushback from the administration.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Tue May 19, 2015 8:22 am

Congress plots to pay for a trade deal by raiding Medicare
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik ... tml#page=1
Medicare means many things to many people. To seniors, it's a program providing good, low-cost healthcare at a stage in life when it's most needed.

To Congress, it's beginning to look more like a piggy bank to be raided.

That's the only conclusion one can draw from a provision slipped into a measure to extend and increase the government's Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides assistance to workers who lose their jobs because of trade deals. The measure, introduced by Rep. David Reichert (R-Wash.), proposes covering some of the $2.7-billion cost of the extension by slicing $700 million out of doctor and hospital reimbursements for Medicare.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Tue May 19, 2015 9:43 am

From 5/19 Democracy Now
WTO Ruling on Meat Labels Shows Free Trade Pacts Can Trump Safety Rules

In a blow to consumer advocates, the World Trade Organization has struck down U.S. labels on meat products indicating where an animal was raised and slaughtered, saying they put Canadian and Mexican products at a disadvantage. The case was brought by Canada and Mexico alleging violations of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The ruling validates the concerns of critics of another free trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, who say it would undermine food safety rules to benefit corporations. In a statement, Food and Water Watch said the ruling "proves that trade agreements can and do trump U.S. laws. This is a chilling reminder that our very democracy is at stake in these trade deals," they said. Last week the Senate advanced a bill to give Obama fast-track authority to present the secretive TPP to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no amendments. But Obama faces opposition from fellow Democrats, including Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who issued a report Monday highlighting how the United States has broken its promises to enforce labor standards in past trade pacts, allowing child labor and violence against union organizers to continue abroad. Meanwhile, another spat has shown how free trade pacts may undermine U.S. financial regulations. Canada’s finance minister has alleged the Volcker Rule restricting U.S. banks trading foreign debt violates NAFTA, and has demanded an exemption for Canada.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Tue May 19, 2015 11:31 am

I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned.
You need to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago,” a frustrated President Barack Obama recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He’s right. The public criticisms of the TPP have been vague. That’s by design—anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be jailed for disclosing its contents. I’ve actually read the TPP text provided to the government’s own advisors, and I’ve given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can’t share my criticisms with you.

I can tell you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her criticism of the trade deal. We should be very concerned about what's hidden in this trade deal—and particularly how the Obama administration is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to provide advice.

So-called “cleared advisors” like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we’ve lodged about specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific. Instead of simply admitting that he disagrees with me—and with many other cleared advisors—about the merits of the TPP, the president instead pretends that our specific, pointed criticisms don’t exist.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... z3abJOV5aP
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Wed May 20, 2015 7:24 pm

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... e_tpp.html
ELIZABETH WARREN: I've joined with Senator Heitkamp, Senator Manchin and a number of other senators to propose a simple change to the fast-track bill, a change that would prevent Congress from using this expedited process on any trade deal that includes so-called investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, and I come to the floor today to urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

ISDS is an obscure process that allows big companies to go to corporate-friendly arbitration panels that sit outside any court system in order to challenge laws they don't like.

These panels can force taxpayers to write huge checks to those big corporations with no need to file a suit in court, no appeals and no judicial review. Now, most Americans don't think that the minimum wage or anti-smoking regulations are trade barriers, but a foreign corporation used ISDS to sue Egypt after Egypt raised its minimum wage.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by asiab3 » Thu May 21, 2015 6:37 am

denjohn, THANK YOU for providing these links. I know we don't typically just post without commentary here, but your links are helping me find information on what our congress is doing with this whole pile.

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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Tue May 26, 2015 6:06 am

Different trade agreement, same smell:

EU dropped pesticide laws due to US pressure over TTIP, documents reveal
EU moves to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility were shelved following pressure from US trade officials over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal, newly released documents show.

Draft EU criteria could have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). But these were dumped amid fears of a trade backlash stoked by an aggressive US lobby push, access to information documents obtained by Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe show.

On 26 June 2013, a high-level delegation from the American Chambers of Commerce (AmCham) visited EU trade officials to insist that the bloc drop its planned criteria for identifying EDCs in favour of a new impact study.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... nts-reveal
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:12 pm

FastTrack TPP passed, interested in how your Senators voted?
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/r ... =00218#top
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by denjohn » Fri Jul 17, 2015 5:01 am

Senators Up In Arms Over State Department Plan To Deliberately Ignore Malaysian Mass Graves Just To Get TPP Deal
from the maybe-fast-track-wasn't-such-a-good-idea,-huh? dept
Earlier this week, we wrote about a troubling move by the US State Department to "upgrade" Malaysia from a "tier 3" country to a "tier 2" country regarding human trafficking. This move came despite a near total lack of evidence of any improvement by Malaysia. In fact, just two months ago 139 mass graves were discovered for migrant workers who had been trafficked and/or held for ransom. And the US ambassador to Malaysia had publicly criticized the country for failing to tackle its massive human trafficking problem.

So why would the State Department magically upgrade Malaysia? Well, because of a tiny provision in the fast track "Trade Promotion Authority" deal that Congress recently passed. It noted that fast track authority would not apply to trade deals involving countries that were categorized as "tier 3" by the State Department. In other words, this should have given the US tremendous leverage to push Malaysia to really tackle the problem. Instead, because it appears that the administration is so focused on getting the TPP officially finished and ratified, it got the State Department to just magically upgrade Malaysia, and effectively spit on the graves of those murdered migrant workers.

It appears that this may have been a move too far for some Senators, as 19 of them are demanding some answers from Secretary of State John Kerry about this decision to "upgrade" Malaysia.

In the letter, senators said that upgrading Malaysia would weaken the U.S. government's international credibility on human rights issues.

"Fighting human trafficking is one of the great moral challenges of our time," the senators wrote. "It is therefore with grave concern that we now hear Malaysia may be upgraded in this year’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report based on developments that occurred after the end of the review period. A premature upgrade of Malaysia would undermine the integrity of the TIP report process and compromise our international efforts to fight human trafficking."

You think? But, really, to this administration is the integrity of a program on things like human trafficking really that important when compared to getting the TPP agreement and its bundle of gifts to corporations moving forward again? In the grand political calculus, migrant workers in Malaysia get screwed over again. But, no worries, at least Phillip Morris can sue countries that try to warn people about the dangers of smoking. Either way, it's just poor helpless people getting totally screwed over, while giant corporations get richer. No big deal, I guess.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150 ... deal.shtml
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by Jivermo » Fri Jul 17, 2015 5:51 am

We have an interesting hypocrisy here in South Florida with our Cuban senators and representatives. They all scream and cry about normalization of relations with Cuba, and sound off about Cuba's human rights violations. But nary a word about this or about China's recent roundup and imprisonment of lawyers and dissidents. There may be a clue in that all of these people have strong ties to the pre-Castro Batista government. Ros Lehtinen's father was a member of Batista's congress, and the Diaz Balart mafia's aunt is Fidel Castro's sister. All of these folks have an ax to grind with Fidel, and their decisions are not based in the best interests of America or of the average Cuban on the street.

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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by Randy in Maine » Fri Jul 17, 2015 8:04 am

Let me get this straight.....there is no agreement as of right now.

Congress just voted to allow for the administration to negotiate an agreement to be presented to the Senate for ratification with an up or down vote, but they cannot make any changes to it. Isn't that correct?

I think I will wait to see what the document actually says before I form an opinion on it.
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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by Jivermo » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:26 am

Oh, hell, Randy...where is the fun in that? There is nothing quite like getting strongly opinionated before the facts are in.

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Re: Trans Pacific Partnership

Post by Randy in Maine » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:44 am

I am getting old. I may not have that many opinions left in me. I have to choose the ones to go off on anymore.

I am reminded of comments Benjamin Franklin made during the final days of the constitutional convention onparts of the draft document he did not like....
“I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them. For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”
— Benjamin Franklin, 1787
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