An unusual alliance of progressives and conservatives, consumer advocates, unions and small businesses successfully sounded an alarm about the Trans Pacific Partnership legislation [TPP] so vigorously advocated by the White House. Members of the President’s own party were instrumental in at least temporarily stopping passage of the measure.
A particular sore point has been the secretiveness surrounding the proposed law, with the precise language of the legislation kept from the public and even staff members of the elected officials who are asked to vote on it.
The White House maintains that:
“TPP will be the greenest trade agreement in history — protecting oceans and combating wildlife trafficking, illegal fishing, and illegal logging across a vast swath of the globe. The countries in the agreement produce $2 out of every $5 of global economic output. And big economies have big impacts on the environment, so this standard really matters.
“TPP will also raise labor standards across our trading partners and help raise wages here at home. That’s because enforceable requirements on minimum wages, hours of work, and occupational safety and health are at the center of the agreement. And that’s because trade jobs are good jobs, paying up to 18 percent more on average than non-trade jobs.
“TPP will be good for our national security, too — increasing America’s presence in the fastest-growing region of the world and bolstering the economic vitality at home that underpins our military strength. Failure to get TPP over the finish line could relegate us to a future where we sit on the sidelines, letting China write rules with lower standards that diminish our relevance in Asia.”
Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) states that “The White House still refuses to answer even the most basic questions about [the TPP].
“These are the questions the White House will not answer:
- Will it increase or reduce the trade deficit, and by how much?
- Will it increase or reduce employment and wages, and by how much?
- Will you make the “living agreement” section public and explain fully its implications?
- Will China be added to the TPP?
- Will you pledge not to issue any executive actions, or enter into any future agreements, impacting the flow of foreign workers into the United States?
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“Proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership want us to fast-track it before we know what’s in it. They want us to trust that enforcement will occur, even though it has not in the past. They want us to trust that the President won’t utilize this broad new avenue to expand foreign worker programs, even though his record demonstrates that he will. They want us to trust that this time is different.
“One of the most important areas TPP proponents ignore is the issue of non-tariff barriers. The barriers to U.S. exports in this century are increasingly not conventional tariffs, but non-tariff barriers like currency manipulation, backdoor taxes, and a variety of state-sanctioned obstacles to market entry. Under the TPP, the U.S. will lower its tariffs but competitor industries will retain their substantial non-tariff barriers. This is what Nucor Steel’s Chairman Emeritus, Daniel DiMicco, means when he talks about “unilateral American trade disarmament” and the “enablement of foreign mercantilism.” In other words, poorly-negotiated trade deals, instead of opening new markets for our industries, tilt the playing field even further in their competitors’ direction. The result is not freer global trade, but more mercantilist market domination.
“Millions of Americans, and their communities, have lost good-paying jobs because of our government’s chronic failure to confront currency manipulation and a variety of other illicit trading practices. Perhaps that is why Americans, by a 70-30 margin, say the last two decades of trade deals have benefitted other countries rather than our own. What message should that send Washington?…
“The recent trade deal with our strong ally South Korea, we were told, would boost our exports to them by more than $10 billion, but in reality increased them by less than $1 billion—while South Korea’s imports to us soared more than $12 billion, widening our trade gap with them considerably.
“While fast-track provides negotiating objectives, they are not enforceable in any meaningful way: if the Trans-Pacific Partnership or any future trade deal ignores those objectives, it is unlikely Congress will do anything about it. Practically speaking, the negotiating objectives operate as mere suggestions. And, as the Congressional Research Service explains, the fast-tracked deal “would supersede existing U.S. law” and result in the U.S. being “bound by international law,” arbitrated by a global tribunal.
The rare agreement between groups supporting nearly polar opposite perspectives highlights the numerous concerns and unanswered questions about Mr. Obama’s trade goals. Extensive inquiries have been raised by many about the reality behind the President’s descriptions.
Salon points out:
“Saying, as the White House has, that the deal would support ‘an additional 650,000 jobs’ is not true. This figure came from a hypothetical calculation of a report by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which the Institute itself said was an incorrect way to use their data. ‘We don’t believe that trade agreements change the labor force in the long run,’ said Peter Petri, author of the report, in a fact check of the claim…
“Recent trade deals have in fact increased the trade deficit…
“On the controversial topic of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), where corporations can sue sovereign governments for monetary damages for violating trade agreements that hurt the company’s “expected future profits,” the White House has engaged in a shell game. They say, “No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.” But the point of a corporation suing the United States or any trade partner is to put enough financial pressure on a government to force them to alter the law themselves. So ISDS doesn’t “cause” a change in law only in the narrowest sense. Even third-party countries have curtailed regulations in reaction to ISDS rulings, as New Zealand did with their cigarette packaging law, awaiting the outcome of a dispute between the tobacco industry and Australia (a suit that continues despite an initial victory for Australia)…
“The White House assumes that the only thing America cares about with ISDS is the upsetting of our own laws. So they’ve stressed that the U.S. has never lost an ISDS case. This is irrelevant. What ISDS does is offer bailout insurance policy to multinational corporations. If they run into discrimination or regulatory squeezing by a foreign government, they can use an extra-judicial process to recoup their investment. Workers screwed over by trade agreements have no ability to sue governments; only corporations get this privilege…
“Weak ‘rule of origin’ guidelines could allow China to import goods into TPP member countries without any tariffs, while freed from following any TPP regulations…”
Public Citizen believes the measure would encourage an exodus of American jobs, undermine food safety by requiring the import of products that don’t meet U.S. safety standards and impose limits on food labeling, undermine efforts to contain medicine costs, undermine Wall Street regulation, curtail internet freedom, and provide more power to international corporations.
Phyllis Schlafly, writing in WND worries that “TPP will betray us….The text of TPP emphasizes that it is a “living agreement.” Translated out of bureaucratese code language, that means the text of TPP can be changed in major and minor ways by executive action after Congress OKs the document. …TPP will facilitate the expanded movement of foreign workers into the United States. TPP opens the door to more waves of illegal immigrants and allows Obama to make future changes without any congressional oversight or expiration date. Kevin L. Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council calls this “another power grab” that will let Obama and his employees rule by executive action. By not calling TPP a treaty (even though it involves 12 countries on three continents), the globalists induce the Senate to abandon the 67-vote threshold for treaty ratification …
“Fast track turns over some of our authority as a sovereign nation to international authorities, which is a major longtime goal of the internationalists, the so-called kingmakers, and big business lobbyists. The code language that hides this in TPP is the statement that calls it a “living agreement.” This means Obama and his executive-branch pals can take all kinds of actions Article I of the U.S. Constitution reserves to the legislative branch, such as ratifying or changing a treaty and controlling immigration…”