Here’s Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is Just Plain Wrong By Robert Reich

[Douglas Carpenter]

First some background. We used to think about trade policy as a choice between “free trade” and “protectionism.” Free trade meant opening our borders to products made elsewhere. Protectionism meant putting up tariffs and quotas to keep them out.

In the decades after World War II, America chose free trade. The idea was that each country would specialize in goods it produced best and at least cost. That way, living standards would rise here and abroad. New jobs would be created to take the place of jobs that were lost. And communism would be contained.

For three decades, free trade worked. It was a win-win-win.

It’s no longer free trade versus protectionism. Big corporations and Wall Street want some of both.

But they want less protection of consumers, workers, small investors, and the environment, because these interfere with their profits. So they’ve been seeking trade rules that allow them to override these protections.

Even better for global companies, the tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation’s regulations. Philip Morris is using a similar provision against Uruguay (the provision appears in a bilateral trade treaty as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits – say, a regulation between Uruguay and Switzerland), claiming that Uruguay’s strong anti-smoking regulations unfairly diminish the company’s profits.

Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods, investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of Wall Street, or the environment from toxic emissions.

read full article:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/heres_why_the_trans-pacific_partnership_agreement_just_plain_wrong_20150107

[upaloopa]

1. So if we know this surely Obama knows this

Why does someone who claims to want to grow and protect the middle pass want to put TPP in place?
I don't think any of us really knows the answer to that question. Those who support Obama no matter what will tell us we have to prove TPP is bad because it doesn't compute in their minds.
Others will say Obama is a corporatist at heart.
I wish I knew why for real.

[Octafish]

2. '...easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits...'

“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.” ― Upton Sinclair

[tclambert]

7. So any requirement to pay pensions or health benefits or overtime or a livable wage could result in

the corporation demanding US taxpayers pay for it all? What if we have rules that say they shouldn't kill people, like their workers or their customers or people who happen to live downwind of their toxic fume plant?

[Octafish]

8. Call in Larry Summers and his bankster chums.

Greg Palast explains how powerful these trade agreements are designed to be -- Local Law Fail Safe:

Larry Summers
and the Secret "End-Game" Memo

Thursday, August 22, 2013
By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

EXCERPT...

The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: "derivatives trading." JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as "assets."

Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move. It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gregpalast.com/larry-summers-and-the-secret-end-game-memo/

As chief of the president's economic advisors, Joseph Stiglitz warned us. So, he got canned.

[rhett o rick]

3. I wonder if those here in DU that are afraid to speak out on this, are reading these threads.

How can any Democrat not speak out against this? The question is rhetorical.

[antigop]

4. "How can any Democrat not speak out against this?"

I know you said it was a rhetorical question, but I will answer anyway.

Because they benefit from it.

[rhett o rick]

5. You are right of course. They are not the ones I am speaking of. Even right here in DU

which is intended to be politically liberal, there are some that will not speak out.

[pampango]

9. "Because they benefit from it." Most Democrats support it. Do they do so because they benefit

from it?

[JaneyVee]

6. Wasn't he Labor secretary during NAFTA?

[m-lekktor]

11. yup. i thought the same thing... nt

[Katashi_itto]

10. Vote Hillary! She Helped Write It! Only she can make us the impoverished nation we are meant to be!

GO HILLARY!

[antigop]

12. Hillary Clinton's Business Legacy at State Department (leading part in drafting TPP)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101667554

[Katashi_itto]

13. Exactly she is the best qualified candidate to remake America into what it was supposed to be.

To make Somalia look more developed.

Or Vote Republican and get something even worse.

It's awesome!

[The2ndWheel]

14. It's not a question of right and wrong

It's what can or can't be done.

In the decades after WW2, had reality been what it is today right off the bat, nobody would be talking about the good old days in the decades after WW2.

You know how they say you can't go back? Well, we're not going back to the 1950's, economically, or socially. So everyone, on both sides, can stop dreaming about it.