Antinuclear

VIDEO: Discussion on the implications of the Trans Pacific Partnership

The first language in both these deals goes something along the lines with, “All signatories are required to make their laws and regulations conform to the standards of this agreement.” They are literally required to make their nation-based laws subordinate to the terms of these agreements. 

Quebec has an anti-fracking prohibition to protect the Saint Lawrence River Valley. There’s a US company that’s suing $250 million. And if they win that case before the special panel, the Quebec government will have to pay that amount. Under the TPP, you’ll see an enormous expansion of that kind of power.

One of the aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is it’s an everyone-but-China deal. One of the intentions of the deal is to isolate China. So if you think isolating China is a good thing, then that would be a reason to support the deal.

VIDEO: Yves Smith and Dean Baker on Secrets in Trade http://billmoyers.com/segment/yves-smith-and-dean-baker-on-secrets-in-trade/  TRANSCRIPT of VIDEO  November 1, 2013  Let’s turn now to another big story most of us know even less about than drones. TPP — the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It’s a trade agreement the United States is negotiating with Australia, Canada, Japan and eight other countries in the Pacific region. If you don’t know about the TPP, and few do, it’s because the powerful people behind it — including President Obama — don’t want you to know.

The negotiations are shrouded in secrecy, and once they are completed, Obama wants to rush the agreement through Congress — fast-tracking, they call it — with our elected representatives given the choice only of voting it up or down. Last year, over 130 members of Congress asked the White House for more transparency about what’s being negotiated, and were essentially told to go fly a kite. You can be sure of this, however: a select group of corporate partners — companies like General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant — are not likely to be in the dark. Players like these stand to be the real beneficiaries of the agreement, because like other so-called “free trade” agreements, TPP actually will reward those at the top, even as it creates rules to override domestic laws on the environment, workplace safety, and investment. Corporate lobbyists already are lining up in Washington to ram the agreement through once the White House hurries it out of the delivery room. How do we know this? Because some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the negotiations, with sources they trust, and two are with me now.

YVES SMITH is an expert on investment banking and the founder of Aurora Advisors, a New York based management consulting firm. She runs the “Naked Capitalism” blog, a go-to site for information and insight on the business and ethics of finance.

DEAN BAKER is co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He’s been a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a consultant to Congress and the World Bank. I rarely miss his blog, “Beat the Press,” and I’m a regular reader of his column in the “Guardian” newspaper……..

DEAN BAKER “………….It’s very peculiar to have an agreement of this importance be kept so much under wraps. One of the things that is known is apparently only five of the 29 chapters actually have anything to do with trade.

YVES SMITH: So really, it’s a mistake to call it a trade agreement. This is really an agreement that’s purpose is substantially to weaken nation-based regulation while at the same time strengthening intellectual property protections. So it’s basically a gimme to companies on both ends……….

YVES SMITH: Some people have seen pieces. One of the groups that’s been very on top of this has been a Washington D.C. group called Public Citizen. And from the pieces they’ve been able to put together, they see that it, for example, will allow drug companies to increase prices, to extend the term of their patent.

So the patent protection will go longer, it’ll be much longer before anything will become generic. It would restrict buying local of all sorts. So for example, governments would not be able to, you know, say, “We’re only going to be able to buy from people in state or people in the US.” It would make things like GMO labeling impermissible.

It would weaken environmental regulations. So for example, you couldn’t say, “Gee, you know, Chinese tilapia, we don’t want to import that anymore because it’s become too toxic.” That kind of restriction would not be permissible……

YVES SMITH: I think the free trade idea is what’s being used to bully a lot of the countries into it. That if you’re not part of this deal, you’ll somehow be left on the outside…….

BILL MOYERS: What is your greatest concern about this?

YVES SMITH: I think the drugs one is my biggest one. And the second one, frankly, is financial services. Because this would also basically make a lot of financial services regulation that we now have pretty much impossible.

November 2, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, secrets and lies