Antinuclear

Trans Pacific Partnership a global-scale corporate power grab

Last week, Wikileaks released a draft environment chapter of the TPP. Surprise: it is neither strong nor enforceable.

Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2249519/stop_the_transpacific_partnership.html   23rd January 2014  The TPP – Trans-Pacific Partnership – is far more than just a trade agreement. It is a global-scale corporate power grab – anti-people, anti-environment and anti-democratic. And it must be stopped, writes Chris Lang. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a proposed international trade agreement, involving 12 countries and covering a range of topics including intellectual property, the environment and workers’ rights. The TPP has been negotiated in secret for almost four years.

The 12 countries are: United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei Darussalam. The TPP agreement would cover 40% of global GDP and one-third of global trade.

Porky pies……Last week, Wikileaks released a draft environment chapter of the TPP. Surprise: it is neither strong nor enforceable. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, slammed the leaked draft in a statement:

“If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama’s environmental trade record would be worse than George W. Bush’s.

“This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issues – oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections – and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts.”

In November 2013 the US Trade Representative, Michael Froman, said that President Obama, “will not support a TPP agreement that does not have strong environmental provisions.”

He made his promise at a lunch hosted by World Wildlife Fund – shortly after a group of US NGOs wrote to Froman urging him “to ensure that a strong and enforceable environment chapter is included in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.”

Last week, Wikileaks released a draft environment chapter of the TPP. Surprise: it is neither strong nor enforceable. Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, slammed the leaked draft in a statement:

“If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama’s environmental trade record would be worse than George W. Bush’s.

“This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issues – oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections – and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts.”

Obama undermining Bush’s environment guarantees

In May 2007, President Bush reached an agreement with the Democrat-controlled Congress about what had to be included in the environment chapter of any US Free Trade Agreement.

This included making the environmental chapter enforceable through trade sanctions. All US trade agreements since then have complied. Until now.

Obama hopes to bulldoze the TPP through using a mechanism called ‘Fast Track trade authority’, that would allow the White House to negotiate and sign trade deals without Congressional oversight.

An ‘unlikely coalition of groups’ is opposing Fast Track – click here for more information and readers in the US can sign the petition opposing Fast Track:

 

 

January 29, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international