After Two Years of Closed-Door Negotiations, Trans-Pacific Partnership
Leak Replicates Alarming Bush Trade Pact Terms That Obama Opposed as Candidate
A leak of one of the most controversial chapters of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) reveals that extreme provisions have been agreed
to by U.S. officials, providing a stark warning about the dangers of “trade”
negotiations occurring under conditions of extreme secrecy without press, public
or policymaker oversight.
Via closed-door negotiations, U.S. officials are rewriting swaths of U.S. law
that have nothing to do with trade and in a move that will submit the U.S.
government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals that can order unlimited
payments of our tax dollars to foreign corporations that don’t want to comply
with the same laws our domestic firms do.
Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, says that
although the TPP has been branded a “trade” agreement, the leaked text of
the pact’s Investment Chapter shows that the TPP would:
- Limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S. boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;
- Extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;
- Establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges.
Allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with
U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and
foreign firms.
While about 600 official U.S. corporate advisors have access to TPP texts, and
have a special role in advising U.S. negotiators for the public, press and
policymakers, this leak (on June 13, 2012) provides the first access to one of
the prospective TPP’s most controversial chapters.
Last May, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance
Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global
Competitiveness (the committee with jurisdiction over the TPP) filed legislation
to open the process after he and his staff were denied access to the U.S.
proposals for the TPP negotiations.
The U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk defended the unprecedented secrecy of TPP
negotiations by noting that when the draft of a major regional trade pact was
released previously, it became impossible to finish the deal as then proposed.
“The top U.S. trade official effectively has said that the administration
must keep TPP agreement secret because otherwise they wouldn't be able to shove
this deal past the public and Congress,” said Wallach. “The airing of this
one TPP chapter, which greatly favors foreign corporations over domestic
businesses and the public interest, and exposes us to significant financial
liabilities, shows that the whole draft text must be released immediately so it
can be reviewed and debated. Absent that, these negotiations must be ended
now.”
The TPP is the first trade pact that the Obama administration is negotiating.
The leak last June further complicates the administration’s goal of completing
TPP negotiations this fall. Already the TPP timeline was generating political
headaches for the Obama re-election campaign, as repeated U.S polling shows that
majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans oppose more NAFTA-style
trade deals.
The TPP may well be the last trade agreement that the U.S. negotiates. This is
because TPP, if completed, would have a new feature relative to past U.S. trade
pacts: It would remain open for any other country to join later. USTR Kirk said that he "would love nothing more” than to
have China join TPP.
The TPP offered an opportunity to develop a new model of trade agreement that
could deliver the benefits of expanded trade without unduly undermining
signatory nations’ domestic public interest policies or establishing special
privileges for foreign corporations.
President Barack Obama and countless members of Congress have campaigned on
fixing these investment rules to better protect the public interest, but Public
Citizen’s analysis of this text shows that the U.S. positions do not reflect
any of the changes that candidate Obama pledged when he recognized the threats
posed by the NAFTA-style investment provisions in trade agreements.
The leak also reveals that:
- Australia has refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the “investor-state” private corporate enforcement foreign tribunal system.
- U.S. negotiators are alone in seeking to expand this extra-judicial enforcement system to allow the use of foreign tribunals to enforce contracts that foreign investors may have with a government for government procurement, or to operate utilities contracts related to concessions for natural resources on federal lands.
- Other countries are proposing safeguards for financial regulation and limits to the corporate tribunals that the U.S. has not supported.
Trade advisers for the notorious secret trade agreement are being negotiated
by the Obama administration. The TransPacific Partnership will meet in Leesburg,
Virginia from September 6th to 15th.
Advocacy groups are working together to put a spotlight on this agreement which
will set the rules for international business dealings for the foreseeable
future and gives transnational corporations more power than governments.
There will be events outside of the meeting to educate the public about this
trade agreement and actions to let the trade advisers know that the public
opposes the TPP. For more info, contact info@october2011.org
Public Citizen’s analysis of the leaked text and guided tour through its provisions can be found here. Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit public interest organization based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.citizen.org
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