Free Trade

Confidential Emails Show Close Industry Involvement In TPP

June 6, 2015 William New, www.ip-watch.org Educate! Communication, Free Trade, Internet, TPP

By William New in IP Watch - Through a US Freedom of Information Act request, Intellectual Property Watch has obtained some 400 pages of email traffic between USTR officials and industry advisors. Most of the content of the emails is redacted (blacked out), but they still give insight into the process. The released emails, ranging from 2010 to 2013, are made public for the first time. What is striking in the emails is not that government negotiators seek expertise and advice from leading industry figures. But the emails reveal a close-knit relationship between negotiators and the industry advisors that is likely unmatched by any other stakeholders. A number of other big companies are included in discussions on trade secrets, such as DuPont, Corning, Microsoft and Qualcomm.

WikiLeaks Releases Documents Related To Controversial TISA

June 4, 2015 Sam Thielman and Phillip Inman, www.theguardian.com Resist! Finanace and the Economy, Free Trade, Internet, Wikileaks

By Sam Thielman and Phillip Inman in The Guardian - WikiLeaks on Wednesday released 17 different documents related to the Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa), a controversial pact currently being hashed out between the US and 23 other countries – most of them in Europe and South America. The document dump comes at a tense moment in the negotiations over a series of trade deals. President Barack Obama has clashed with his own party over the deals as critics have worried about the impact on jobs and civil liberties. On Tuesday, WikiLeaks put a $100,000 bounty on documents relating to the alphabet soup of trade treaties currently being negotiated between the US and the rest of the world, particularly the controversial Trans-Pacific trade agreement (TPP). The offer, announced yesterday, has already raised more than $33,000. Wednesday’s leak is the third time that WikLeaks has published sections from secret trade agreements.

ObamaTrade Rewards US Corporations That Profit From Slavery

June 3, 2015 Zach Carter, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Free Trade, Human Rights, Human Trafficking, Malaysia, TPP

By Zach Carter in Huffington Post - President Barack Obama's effort to include Malaysia in a major pending trade pact has baffled human rights advocates, who see it as a reward for a regime with one of the world's worst human trafficking records. But the myriad interests involved in the trade fight include some very large American corporations, which are currently padding their profits with labor costs kept low by modern-day slavery in Malaysia. Major U.S. electronics brands, including Intel, AMD, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments and Dell, have relied on Malaysian manufacturing for years -- either in their own factories, or through facilities operated by their suppliers. Computer processors, hard drives, smartphone parts and other consumer electronic devices are all part of the slavery system -- more than one-fourth of all workers in the Malaysian electronics industry are victims of forced labor, according to a damning 2014 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Wikileaks Issues $100,000 Reward For Release Of TPP

June 3, 2015 Wikileaks, www.wikileaks.org Resist! Free Trade, TPP, Wikileaks

By Wikileaks - Today WikiLeaks has launched a campaign to crowd-source a $100,000 reward for America’s Most Wanted Secret: the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). Over the last two years WikiLeaks has published three chapters of this super-secret global deal, despite unprecedented efforts by negotiating governments to keep it under wraps. US Senator Elizabeth Warren has said "[They] can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it." The remaining 26 chapters of the deal are closely held by negotiators and the big corporations that have been given privileged access. Today, WikiLeaks is taking steps to bring about the public’s rightful access to the missing chapters of this monster trade pact.

UN Experts Warn Of Serious Threats From Secret Trade Deals

June 3, 2015 UN Commission on Human Rights, www.ohchr.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Free Trade, TPP, United Nations

By UN Commission on Human Rights - While trade and investment agreements can create new economic opportunities, we draw attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement. We believe the problem has been aggravated by the “chilling effect” that intrusive ISDS awards have had, when States have been penalized for adopting regulations, for example to protect the environment, food security, access to generic and essential medicines, and reduction of smoking, as required under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or raising the minimum wage.

TISA: Another Secret Treaty Is Leaked

May 30, 2015 Jeremy Malcolm, www.eff.org Educate! Free Trade, Freedom of Expression, Internet, Law, Privatization

A February 2015 draft of the secret Trade In Services Agreement (TISA) was leaked again last week, revealing a more extensive and more recent text than that of portions from an April 2014 leak that we covered last year. Together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), TISA completes a trifecta of trade agreements that the administration could sign under Fast Track without full congressional oversight. Although it is the least well-known of those agreements, it is the broadest in terms of membership. As far as we know, it presently includes twenty countries plus Europe (but notably excluding the major emerging world economies of the BRICS bloc), who, with disdainful levity, have adopted the mantle “the Really Good Friends of Services”.

Fast Track Should Be Called The “Treason Act”

May 29, 2015 Victor Tiffany, www.examiner.com Resist! Capitalism, Democracy, Free Trade, TPP

The Trans-Pacific Partnership should be called the Treason Act because it would impose regulations upon the national legislatures and local governments of twelve countries as if they had been defeated in a war. The TPP is an act of waragainst middle class Americans’ standard of living, against the planet's climateand against the poor people of 12 nations who will not be able to pay higher costs for life-saving prescriptions. People will unnecessarily die if the transnational corporations win this "war." The transpartisan collaboration to impose corporate rule upon the United States means that Obama will not be impeached for this act of treason, but he should be. He should also be arrested and indicted for treason, but he won’t be because the United States has become a corporate-state, a government of, by and for the corporations. Senate Majority Leader McConnell and House Speaker Boehner are corporate collaborators helping to foist this coup upon the American people, and they will protect the corporate puppet in the White House from warranted impeachment and prosecution.

How Much Did Corporations Pay To Senate For Fast Track?

May 29, 2015 C Robert Gibson and Taylor Channing, www.theguardian.com Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism, Free Trade, TPP

A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed. “We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate. That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Opponents Say TPP Deal Will Impose Defacto Corporate Governance

May 28, 2015 Interview with Kevin Zeese Scott Harris, www.btlonline.org Educate! Capitalism, Free Trade, Government, Politics, TPP

The battle in Congress over Trade Promotion Authority, also known as “fast track,” and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the European Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade agreements, is in high gear. President Obama is pressuring lawmakers to pass fast track, which is a mechanism that forces Congress to vote on a trade agreement within 60 to 90 days of receiving it, with only limited debate and no amendments allowed. While fast track had been stalled in the U.S. Senate, it’s expected to eventually pass there, with the real fight moving to the House of Representatives. There, an unlikely coalition of mostly Democrats and some Republicans are opposed to a free trade deal citing a variety of reasons.

Black Opposition To Rigged Trade Neoliberalism

May 25, 2015 Ajamu Baraka, www.blackagendareport.com Resist! Free Trade, Racial Justice, TPP, Worker Rights and Jobs

President Obama and the corporate Democrats continue to press Congress to provide Obama with trade promotion authority (TPA), or so-called “fast-track” authority to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the first of a series of pernicious so-called free trade agreements. The Flush the TPP website, a major resource for the anti-TPP movement characterizes the treaty as: “A secret trade agreement…(that) threatens to undermine democracy by entrenching corporate power in virtually every area of our lives, from food safety and the environment, to worker rights and access to health care, the TPP is about much more than trade. It is a global corporate coup.” In the process of organizing the fight-back to deny President Obama fast-track authority to conclude the TPP and ram it through Congress behind the backs of the people, I wrote about the fact that in some black circles there was uncertainty regarding the priority that the TPP should be given or whether or not it was even an important issue for African Americans.

Tell The Congressional Black Caucus, Don’t Fall For Obama’s Race Card On Fast Track

May 25, 2015 Editors of Black Agenda Report, www.blackagendareport.com Resist! Congress, fast track, Free Trade, Obama, Racial Justice, TPP

We understand that the First Black President is now leaning heavily upon members of the Congressional Black Caucus to provide the handful of Democratic votes in the House needed to achieve fast track status for TPP and TTIP. To their credit so far, many CBC members are quietly resisting the president, and a few dare to say so out loud. It's time to let the Congressional Black Caucus know that this is a time and a place when they MUST resist narrow appeals to racial solidarity, when they MUST refuse to line up behind the president. President Obama will demand their support in the name of racial solidarity, if nothing else, but they must refuse. But for the next 10 days, we want to gather as many online signatures to present to the Congressional Black Caucus as possible demanding that they stand up for their constituents, to stand up to the president and SAY NO TO FAST TRACK, NO TO TPP AND TTIP.

EU Dropped Pesticide Laws Due To US Pressure Over TTIP

May 24, 2015 Arthur Neslen, www.theguardian.com Educate! Europe, Free Trade, health, TTIP

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. Minutes of the meeting show commission officials pleading that “although they want the TTIP to be successful, they would not like to be seen as lowering the EU standards”.

If Trade Is War, It’s Time We Fought Back

May 23, 2015 Sonali Kolhatkar, www.truthdig.com Educate! Congress, fast track, Free Trade, Obama, TPP

It is not often that members of Congress get the opportunity to weigh in on international trade. But negotiations over fast-track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in recent months have given elected representatives the chance to voice their opinions on how the government should engage with other countries financially. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a report this week highlighting various promises that presidents have made over the years as they touted the labor benefits of so-called free-trade pacts like NAFTA, and pointing out how they fell flat in living up to those promises. But Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders (a Vermont independent who is a presidential candidate) are among a tiny handful of lawmakers who are openly skeptical of the TPP. The battle lines over the secretive multilateral trade pact pit Warren and Sanders against President Obama, as well as most Republicans and Democrats.

Fast Track Passes Senate But With Anti-Slavery Poison Pill

May 23, 2015 Laura Barron-Lopez, Ryan Grim, and Zach Carter, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Congress, Free Trade, Law, Obama, TPP

President Barack Obama's trade agenda suffered a setback Friday evening during a series of last-minute maneuvers in the Senate. While the upper chamber eventually passed a bill that would help Obama streamline a trade pact with 11 Pacific nations, the final product threw a wrench into the president's plans. The Senate approved a bill to "fast-track" trade agreements negotiated by the president. The agreement will prevent Congress from amending or filibustering Obama's controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The TPP deal would have a hard time surviving without fast-track authority. But a key crackdown on human trafficking survived the legislative jujitsu. The White House considers the provision a deal-breaker, as it would force one of the nations involved in the TPP talks -- Malaysia -- out of the agreement.

Broad Coalition Rallies To Defeat Obama On Trade Deal

May 21, 2015 Heidi Przybyla, www.bloomberg.com Resist! Capitalism, fast track, Free Trade, Politics, TPP

Once the Senate approves fast track trade negotiating authority for Obama, which could happen as early as this week, the battle will move to the House, where it expected to unleash a major lobbying battle. On the one side, a president who is more engaged in legislative trench warfare than he has been in a long time over legislation that would give him authority to establish the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “This is personal for him,” Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, a member of the Democratic House leadership, told Bloomberg reporters and editors. On the other: a coalition of opponents that is far more diverse than the one that tried unsuccessfully to torpedo Clinton's North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, the first of several trade pacts struck since the 1990s that critics say have cost U.S. jobs and depressed wages.

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