Trade

What The Trade Battles Are Really About

May 23, 2015 Zaid Jilani, www.alternet.org Educate! Congress, Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Intellectual Property, TPP, Trade

As opponents and advocates of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) continue to battle it out, the debate over the agreement has largely focused on the issue of trade – whether jobs will be lost or gained, what the agreement will do to our trade deficit, and other related matters. It's worth pointing out that the United States already trades heavily with the other 11 nations included in the TPP talks. As Paul Krugman says, “this is not a trade agreement. It's about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharma companies and firms that want to sue governments.” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been particularly critical of the so-called Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions, which would empower corporations to use international courts to sue the U.S. government and others who are enacting regulations and protections that harm their profits.

Final Phase In Battle To Stop Rigged Corporate Trade

May 22, 2015 Mackenzie McDonald and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Democracy, fast track, TPP, Trade

On Thursday, despite the cold and rain in Washington D.C., people took to the streets to protest Fast Track for rigged corporate trade deals like the nearly complete Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The protest began with a march around the House Office Buildings on Capitol Hill. They chanted for democracy and played bucket drums capturing the attention of house members and staff who peered out their windows. Kathryn Johnson of Public Citizen spoke about the recent Senate cloture vote which will cut off debate on the Senate floor after only 30 hours. This means that Fast Track for secret trade deals will be Fast Tracked and the more than 150 proposed amendments will not be heard. The protest, organized by Popular Resistance, Beyond Extreme Energy, and others, was also part of a 9 day action period in Washington that is being organized by Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE).

Obama Wrong Again: Trade Law Undermines Food Safety Law

May 18, 2015 Public Citizen, Global Trade Watch, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! fast track, Food Safety, Free Trade Agreement, Trade

Today’s final ruling by the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body against popular U.S. country-of-origin meat labeling (COOL) policy spotlights how trade agreements can undermine domestic public interest policies, Public Citizen said today. The WTO decision is likely to further fuel opposition to Fast Track authority for controversial “trade” pacts that would expose U.S. consumer and environmental protections to more such challenges. (A list of some of the past public interest policies undermined by trade pacts is below.) COOL requires labeling of pork and beef sold in the United States to inform consumers the country in which the animals were born, raised and slaughtered. “The president says ‘we’re making stuff up,’ about trade deals undermining our consumer and environmental policies but today, we have the latest WTO ruling against a popular U.S. consumer policy. Last week, Canadian officials announced that our financial regulations violate trade rules, and earlier this year, the Obama administration, in response to another trade agreement ruling, opened all U.S. roads to Mexico-domiciled trucks that threaten highway safety and the environment, “said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

Warren Solidly Responds To Obama With The Facts On Trade

May 18, 2015 Staff of Senator Elizabeth Warren, www.warren.senate.gov Educate! fast track, Free Trade Agreements, Labor Rights, TPP, Trade, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Senate will soon vote on the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 – also known as “Fast Track.” President Obama has requested Fast Track authority from Congress to ease the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement with 12 countries that account for nearly 40% of the global economy. President Obama has repeatedly stated that the TPP is “the most progressive trade bill in history” because it has high labor, environmental, and human rights standards. The President claims the TPP will have “higher labor standards, higher environmental standards,” and “new tools to hold countries accountable.” But proponents of almost every free trade agreement (FTA) in the last 20 years have made virtually identical claims. The TPP is being hailed as the strongest free trade agreement yet. But this is not the first time this claim has been made. Proponents of previous trade agreements have made similar claims about every free trade agreement signed in the last 20 years, from the NAFTA agreement in 1993 to the more recent agreements with Colombia and Panama. By now, we have two decades of experience with free trade agreements under both Democratic and Republican Presidents. Supporters of these agreements have always promised that they contain tough standards to protect workers. But this analysis reveals that the rhetoric has not matched the reality.

Food Fear Lands Japan in Court Over US Trade Deal

May 17, 2015 Aya Takada, www.washpost.bloomberg.com Resist! Food Safety, Japan, TPP, Trade

Masahiko Yamada, 73, a lawyer and minister in 2010 in the then Democratic Party of Japan government, filed the lawsuit at Tokyo District Court on Friday on behalf of more than 1,000 plaintiffs, seeking to prevent Japan from joining the Trans- Pacific Partnership, he said by phone. The litigation is another twist in efforts by Japan and the U.S., the top economies among TPP members, to expedite talks on the agreement covering about 40 percent of the world’s commerce. The accord would deepen Japan’s dependence on farm imports and threaten its food security, said Yamada. The nation, which relies on imports for about 60 percent of its food, has cut its self-sufficiency target as the government expands trade deals.

Hypotheticals On The TPP

May 17, 2015 BadBoyScientist, www.dailykos.com Resist! Democracy, Sovereignty, TPP, Trade

This isn't as much a diary as a few questions to start a discussion. Supposing the TPP gets rammed through and American states, counties and cities lose some of their autonomy to the 'Star Chamber' of multinationals. I suspect they won't like it - and their constituents won't like it. 0) Can state and local governments practice 'civil disobedience' to protest an unjust law? 1) Could a state use this as a basis to secede from the United States since it will be placing the State under 'foreign rule' with no way to petition this 'shadow gov't'? 2) Could a city or state just ignore the ruling of this 'court'? I mean, how much power does that court have? Who enforces it? What could they do if a state said "Try to stop us from prohibiting the sale of those products and good luck collecting your settlement from us."

Obama Hurls Insults At Democrats And Democratic Base

May 14, 2015 Brent Budowsky, www.observer.com Educate! Law, Obama, Progressive, TPP, Trade

In Mr. Obama’s speech at Nike last week, his comments to Matt Bai of Yahoo over the weekend, and White House press secretary Josh Earnest’s comments to reporters on Monday, Mr. Obama and his White House staff have repeated a string of personal insults directed against prominent liberal Democrats in Congress, liberal Democrats across the nation, organized labor, and leading public interest and environmental groups who share doubts about the TPP trade deal. Mr. Obama’s tirades on trade have included accusations that these liberal Democrats are ignorant about trade policy, insincere when offering their opinions, motivated by politics and not the national interest, and backward looking towards the past. Obama’s repeated attacks against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), in which he charged that Warren’s concern about the trade bill is motivated not by a reasoned view of what is right for America but by her personal political motivations, is one of the most dishonest and repellant examples of character assassination and contempt by any American president.

Washington Post Calls Senators Names If They Oppose TPP

May 14, 2015 CEPR, www.cepr.net Educate! Congress, Journalism, Media, TPP, Trade

Everyone knows that the Washington Post supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but does it really have to resort to name calling in its news pages to refer to people who disagree with its position? That's what readers of its front page piece on the Senate vote to block the discussion of a bill authorizing a fast-track are wondering. The piece referred to Senator Sherrod Brown and other staunch opponents of TPP in its current form as "anti-trade hard-liners." Of course Senator Brown and his allies are not opponents of trade, they do not advocate autarky. The correct way to refer to these people would have been "anti-TPP." Given the concern of newspapers over space, in addition to being more accurate, this also would have saved the paper two letters.

Stopping The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is A ‘Black Issue’

May 12, 2015 Ajamu Baraka, www.popularresistance.org Educate! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), fast track, TPP, Trade

USA - The Neoliberal assault on U.S. workers continues – this time with a slick move on the part of the 1% to sneak by the people a noxious trade bill called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP. The TPP is just one of measures the elite hopes to conclude using Barack Obama - their most effective weapon since Ronald Reagan for convincing the middle-class and working people to support policies that are objectively against their interests. Like the North American Free-trade Agreement ( NAFTA) concluded under Bill Clinton that promised jobs, balanced economic growth and prosperity but instead created economic devastation in the agricultural sector of Mexico and the loss of jobs in the U.S., the TPP promises more of the same but on a grander scale.

Newsletter: The Moment Has Arrived, Now Is The Time

April 25, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore, Black Lives Matter (BLM), Corporatization, fast track, killed by police, Racism, TPP, Trade

After a more than three year campaign, the moment has arrived, now is the time. We are at the key battleground that will determine whether the TPP and other corporate trade agreements will become law. Fast track trade authority, as expected, passed the two committees of jurisdiction in the House and Senate. The next step is where we have always expected we could stop them, the full US House of Representatives. We must maintain our pressure on them to vote “No” on fast track. We urge you to continue to call your member frequently. You can use www.StopFastTrack.com to do that. And we urge you to organize actions in your local district during the next recess from May 2 to 11. This is a critical recess, if our support grows during the recess, it is unlikely they will be able to achieve majority support. Join the next weekly National Fast Track Resistance call on Wednesday, April 29 at 9 pm EDT/6 pm Pacific.

How Fast Track And The TPP Undermine The Internet

April 24, 2015 Maira Sutton, www.eff.org Educate! Internet, NSA, Surveillance, Trade, TTP

Sen. Ron Wyden took to Wired yesterday to argue that the Fast Track bill he co-sponsored to rush approval for trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement will help protect the free and open Internet. Sen. Wyden has long been a staunch defender of the Internet and users' rights, and more recently, he has renewed his efforts to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the draconian Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The primary reason Sen. Wyden boasts that Fast Track and the TPP would protect Internet users is because both contain provisions involving the "free flow of information." Such provisions live in the TPP's E-Commerce chapter, which has never been leaked, so no one except the negotiators themselves and corporate advisors with special privileges have seen the actual language. What we do know is based on public statements and leaked texts from other secret trade deals.

As Fast Track Moves In Committees, Opposition Builds

April 23, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! fast track, Free Trade Agreements, TAFTA, TPP, Trade, TTIP

Things are rapidly changing on Capitol Hill around fast track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other corporate trade agreements. The article we wrote below, published in MintPress News, was written a few days ago but there are already important updates. The two Committees are very likely to pass the fast track and related bills. They are dominated by those in favor of fast track and "free" trade, then the real battle begins with the full House. The best estimates, as described below, have a majority of the House opposed to fast track, but pressure will be put on Congress by the White House, Republican leadership and mega-corporations so the movement against rigged corporate trade must escalate its actions. A good place to start is Stop Fast Track where you will be directed how to take action. If you are in the DC area sign up to be part of the rapid response team that Popular Resistance has developed

More Than 500 Cities Protest Rigged Corporate Deals

April 18, 2015 Sam Cossar Gilbert, www.aljazeera.com Resist! Neoliberalism, TPP, Trade, TTIP

Today, April 18, tens of thousands of people in over 500 cities across the world are taking action against corporate trade and investment regimes that are threatening our environment and human rights. From a picket in the Philippines to a public forum in Ecuador and a direct action in Australia, participants in this unprecedented "Global Day of Action" are taking back control of our democracy. Trade and investments agreements are no longer just about import tariffs, but about a range of issues that determine the food we eat, the energy we use and the ability of our governments to regulate in the public interest. As of today, four massive new global trade agreements are being negotiated away from public scrutiny, despite the fact that they will affect the lives of over 1.5 billion people.

Rigged Corporate Trade Turns Public Services Into Corporate Profits

April 18, 2015 Nick Dearden, www.globaljustice.org.uk Resist! Privatization, Public Services, TPP, Trade

Another week, another victory for big business over a government in a secret pseudo-court. This time it’s the turn of private water giant Suez, who successfully sued Argentina for reversing the privatisation of Buenos Aires's water supply. No matter that the country was in a state of economic crisis when the nationalisation took place, and the government didn’t want water prices to rise by 60%. No matter that the company time and again failed to meet its performance targets. In the world of corporate courts, nothing matters except an investor’s ‘right’ to profit. Yet it is exactly this system of so-called Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) that we will be signing up to if the US-EU trade deal known as TTIP goes ahead. Again and again government ministers tell us there’s nothing to fear. Nothing in TTIP will prevent us running public services in the way we choose.

Under Trade Deal, Disputes Settled Outside US Judicial System

April 15, 2015 Dean Baker, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Americas, Law, Obama, Trade

One of the most important Supreme Court cases this year is King v. Burwell. The suit questions the legality of the subsidies to low- and middle-income families in the health-insurance exchanges run by the federal government. If the Court rules for the plaintiff, millions of people in the 36 states that did not set up exchanges could lose their subsidies. With insurance now unaffordable for much of the population in these states, their exchanges will no longer be operational, leading to the collapse of the Affordable Care Act in much of the country. The whole basis for King v. Burwell is one sentence in the 1,700 page law indicating that subsidies are only supposed to be paid to people in states that have set up their own exchanges.

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