Next week in Dallas, negotiations for what's likely to be the largest Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in U.S. history will continue in near total secrecy, despite growing demands for an open process. The darkness surrounding the talks isn't surprising, considering the American public's increasing disapproval of FTAs and the laundry list of corporate handouts under discussion. What is surprising is United States trade representative Ron Kirk's growing crackdown on public involvement, despite claims of "unprecedented transparency."
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP) is being negotiated as a nine country FTA between the U.S., Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Canada, Japan and Mexico are all expected to join talks, and many see more Pacific Rim countries including China and Russia eventually signing on. With floundering WTO talks, the TPP could very well establish U.S. trade policy for the next generation, yet all talks are happening behind closed doors and public influence has been increasingly suppressed.
Just this February, during unannounced TPP meetings in Los Angeles, the USTR apparently strong-armed the host hotel into canceling a health group-sponsored luncheon seeking to expose how Big Pharma's patent rights demands challenge AIDS treatment worldwide. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox, itself lobbying for severe copyright measures, were permitted to give trade negotiators a multi-hour tour of their film-production facilities.
This lopsided allocation of influence has been standard for the TPP. Corporations and their lobbyists have seen consistent access to the negotiations -- about 600 corporate advisors can review and comment on working TPP texts -- and trade negotiators from partner countries. The Washington International Trade Association's "World Trade Reception" for Trans-Pacific FTA negotiators featured the A-Team of corporate lobby groups and some of the most powerful corporations in the U.S. hobnobbing amongst trade ministers, with nary a voice for the public, unions, environmental or public health groups.
So, what exactly is the USTR hiding? Well, there are quite a few damning secrets:
Secret No. 1: The TPP is covertly attacking the same internet freedom rights that spurred online protests over ACTA and SOPA.
Secret No. 2: The TPP would make it more enticing for corporations to offshore jobs by opening our market to Vietnamese labor, which has significantly lower average wages than China.
Secret No. 3: The TPP could be a death sentence to patients with AIDS, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases around the world.
Secret No. 4: The TPP would ban capital controls and impose limits on financial regulation, including post-recession checks on firm size and risky investments.
Secret No. 5: Americans hate FTAs! Recent polls have found more than twice as many Americans think FTAs hurt than help, and 69 percent of Americans think they cost jobs, which they do.
The list goes on, as there are 26 separate negotiating chapters, covering issues as diverse as labor, environmental, and procurement rules, which just drew the ire of 69 Members of Congress.
Congress has also lamented the continued secrecy of the negotiations. After proposing Senate amendments forcing TPP transparency, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) told Kirk, "I feel very strongly with respect to TPP about getting the proposals that you're looking at... online so that the public can have a chance to be heard on it," during a March Senate Finance Committee hearing.
None of this has dissuaded the USTR from the non-democratic nature of the talks. Starting in Dallas, he's actually doubling down by eliminating the day-long stakeholder presentation program, leaving civil society just a side tabling session.
The only way the corporate shopping list that is the TPP can get past public scrutiny is if no one ever hears about it. Fortunately, activists are fighting back May 8 to 18 in Dallas, and an online petition has already garnered thousands of signatures calling on Kirk to release TPP proposals.
We've learned from past FTAs that exposure to the light of democracy can stop them in their tracks. The TPP is no different. Please help return democracy to trade talks by signing the petition and sharing this article.
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Mr. President:
Just when I thought you were finally becoming the leader you promised us you would be, I am learning of the secretive negotiations for a new FTA that is against everything you seemed to stand for.
How can you (in a non-transparent way) consider protecting companies that use off-shore money havens and exploit low wage foreign labor at the expense of the already hard hit American worker?
Space does not permit a discussion of the many other questionable aspects of what I am reading and hearing about this new FTA, but you have already LOST many voters, and although I DRED a Republican in the White House (I do see them as ANTI-AMERICAN), your silence or support on this issue makes me wonder how DIFFERENT you really are from them.
Please explain what your position is on this negotiation and PLEASE do not let off shore money havens and low cost, exploited foreign labor continue to destroy the economy and thus the nation which we both love. (The nation being the principles and beliefs upon which it was founded, not on the corporate greed that it is becoming.)
Thank you,
David L. Hanna
NIKE now has their sneakers being assembled in many foreign countries to include Indonesia where they are paying .60 DAY with no benefits..lucky workers can sleep on the factory floor if they are lucky or maybe a cardboard box on the side of a road.
If real Americans do not wise up and boycott stores like Walmart who only has foreign junk for sale more jobs will be leaving the country.
...Today good jobs might be considered working in the BMW factory in S. Carolina for $9.00hr or a new hire in a GM factory where the new hires are getting also $9.00 hr...Old hires are still getting $28.00hr. We can thank Bill Clinton/Emmanuel for the WTO and NAFTA and even removing regulation from banks so they could game the system making billions while silently removing your nest egg.....permanently....how these people can still show their face in public is beyond me.
The Democartic Party, begun by people such as Thomas Jefferson, was largely the party for southern slave owners until the Civil War, and continued as the party of white southern racial bigots until President Johnson pushed the civil rights acts through Congress in the mid-1960's. Liberals did not gain control of the Democratic Party until Richard Nixon began luring the racial bigots into the Republican Party with his Southern Strategy. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama have shown more loyalty to corporate intererests than to policies beneficial to the majority of the people. Thus, corporations are now in control of both major political parties.
If you really want to live in a true democracy controlled by and for the people, you will have to either take over one of the two dominant political parties and change its basic character and behavior, or abandon both parties and start over. That's very unlikely to happen any time soon. When it comes to politics, money rules, and the corporations have more of it than anyone else. Why do you think the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "people" entitled to rights?
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/?tta
Let's hope the Obama's second term can reverse some of that.
What do you think all those protestors all over the world have been fighting against when the G-8 shows up ?