Google comes out in favor of TPP

[Moliere]

What happened to "do no evil"?

https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2016/06/the-trans-pacific-partnership-step.html?m=1

[yallerdawg]

1. "Free trade bad" cannot be our simplistic mantra in the 21st Century.

Everything has to be considered on the whole!

Google, on the whole, agrees TPP works for the future!

Today, a small business can sell its products overseas with little more than an app or website. An artist, musician, or author can reach a global audience without needing a superstar agent. A small business on Bainbridge Island, Washington sells its marine parts to customers in 176 countries, and a unique performer like Lindsey Stirling cultivates a global audience with millions of views on YouTube.

The Internet is profoundly changing the global economy -- democratizing who participates in trade, transforming the way traditional industries do business, and internationalizing the way people around the world connect. Today, information flows contribute more than the flow of physical goods to global economic growth.

But Internet restrictions -- like censorship, site-blocking, and forced local storage of data -- threaten the Internet’s open architecture. This can seriously harm established businesses, startups trying to reach a global audience, and Internet users seeking to communicate and collaborate across national borders.

[mikehiggins]

2. "free trade bad" is not the point.

"free trade" is like "communism" or "free enterprise". It doesn't exist in the real world.

What does exist is the struggle between different interests to advance their positions and policies, most frequently to make one group prevail over another.

In TPP the "free trade" concept is barely considered. Instead a structure designed to benefit multi-national corporations to the disservice of nation-states is what is being played out. The "partnership" involved is one between huge economic interests with the intent of eliminating all those things that put speedbumps in their path to ever-increasing profits. Environmental issues are secondary, for example, as are many other categories seen to benefit people over corporations.

Supporting TPP is not supporting "free trade" in any sense. It is designed and intended, on the other hand, to rig the economic scales to benefit the few at the expense of the many.

[pampango]

3. Good point. TPP is not 'free trade'. It sets new rules of trade replacing the WTO, NAFTA and

other trade agreements that already exist between some of the 12 countries.

The question is whether the 'new' rules are better or worse than the 'old' rules. There will still be plenty of rules. Indeed if (a big IF) they are stricter and more enforceable than the old ones, trade will be even less 'free' than it is now.

[Moliere]

5. No it isn't about trade.

It would add negligible to no gains to global GDP. It's all about the ISDS and copyright enforcement.

[pampango]

8. True. Of course ISDS already exists everywhere. The question is whether this version is better or

worse than that it would replace.

[yallerdawg]

6. Y'all can read the whole thing here:

https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership

For instance

Question

“Is it true that Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) would allow corporations to override laws, including environmental and public health regulations?

Answer

No. ISDS cannot change law in the United States or any other country. No government measure (federal, state, or local) can be blocked or reversed under the ISDS provisions or any other part of TPP. The United States would never negotiate away its right to regulate in the public interest, and we don’t ask other countries to do so either. This is true with regard to public health and safety, the financial sector, the environment, and any other area where governments seek to regulate.

Put simply, ISDS is a mechanism to promote good governance and the rule of law. ISDS protects basic rights — such as protection against discrimination and expropriation without compensation — akin to those enshrined in U.S. law and the Constitution. We already provide these protections at home to foreign and domestic investors under U.S. law. That’s why — although we are party to 51 agreements with ISDS — the U.S. has never lost an ISDS case. Our trade agreements ensure the same kinds of protections to U.S. businesses and investors operating abroad, where they face a heightened risk of discrimination and bias.

TPP includes a number of enhancements that strengthen the transparency and integrity of the dispute settlement process under ISDS. These include making hearings open to the public, allowing the public and public interest groups to file amicus curiae submissions, ensuring that all ISDS awards are subject to review by domestic courts or international review panels, ensuring that governments have a way to dismiss claims that are without merit on an expedited basis, and more.

In addition, after consultations with Members of Congress, the United States pushed for and secured additional safeguards that will establish a code of conduct for ISDS arbitrators and facilitate the dismissal of frivolous claims, among other first-of-their-kind provisions.

ISDS ensures that a wide range of American businesses — including small businesses — are protected against unfair discrimination when investing abroad. This will benefit the millions of American workers employed by these companies, as outside analysis shows that about half of ISDS cases are initiated by small- and medium-sized businesses, or individual investors.

[GoneFishin]

4. The tens of millions of workers whose jobs will go away or whose wages will be further depressed

are the least likely to pay attention to the TPP. The wealthy assholes trying to decimate the few pockets remaining of the middle class have invested heavily in TPP and other ways to make American worker's lives harder, so they will work for even less.

We are so fucked.

[Omaha Steve]

7. Google did something last week I wasn't happy about either

I can't seem to remember what it was.

OS