Lori, this week we saw the final nail in the coffin of the TPP, only the TPP.
Largely this was anticipated even if Donald Trump didn't take this sort of extra, I guess,
victory lap showboating by signing an executive order.
Nevertheless, good news.
I mean, you and I have been talking about this trade deal for, I think, about three
or four years now.
At that time we were talking about, it could very well be shot down by the Right, simply
because it, in many respects, created a one-world regime, or an attempt at it.
It ended up being a brought down by a wave of Populism, both on the left and the right
over the past couple of years here.
Broadly speaking, tell us what this deal did and what it means that it's dead?
The TPP was described as a trade agreement but what it really did was expand and lock
in a variety of enormous new corporate powers, including for individual foreign companies
to demand unlimited compensation by suing the US government before tribunals of three
corporate attorneys, to demand payment for any US policies, state, local or federal,
court decisions, government actions that they claimed undermined the new corporate rights
and privileges the agreement would grant them and these decisions were not subject to appeal.
It also gave corporations new rights, new protections to avoid competition in the pharmaceutical
industry from generic medicines that would bring down consumer prices; plus, there was
a chapter that, literally, created incentives to offshore more jobs to low-wage countries
and another chapter that banned the use of buy-local, buy-green, buy-America policies
when our government spends our tax dollars for procurement.
It was an international campaign over the seven years of negotiations that got the agreement
pushed back from the original date it was supposed to be signed in 2012, but our international
partners helped push it right square into the US Presidential race, which then, basically,
let all this work happen over the last year that ensured that they could never get a majority
in congress to pass it.
Now, Donald Trump has, basically, buried the moldering corpse of an agreement signed a
year ago that never could get through congress.
I've got a couple of questions that I've had throughout this process, let me ask you those
before we go further, in terms of the implications of Trump's signing and the status of other
agreements that are very similar to it.
There were multiple parts, obviously, of this so-called trade deal.
We have all ready pre-existing trade deals with almost all the countries involved in
this deal, right?
We have bilateral treaties with the vast majority of these countries.
Stop me if I'm wrong here.
There also was a tremendous amount of research showing the amount of economic activity that
was anticipated as a function of this deal was really, largely insignificant.
What was this about from your perspective and what was it about, supposedly, from the
administration's perspective?
I mean, because there is a couple of things in there that we have, that are features of
this deal.
I wonder if in some ways this deal wasn't to set precedent but for future deals, like
in particular the state investor dispute resolution mechanism or other, I guess, patent regimes.
From your perspective, what was the logic of this deal on the part of those who were
pushing it and from the perspective what was articulated to us?
Well, what was really behind this was the agenda of the 500, literally 500, official
US trade advisors who represent corporate interests, who are able to call the shots
on the agreement.
For them it was a way to expand and then permanently lock in a whole set of rights and privileges.
Every country who is a signatory had to conform all of their domestic laws to all the TPP
rules.
Of TPP's 30 chapters, only six of them had anything to do with trade.
It was rewriting financial regulations, food safety, access to medicine rules, internet
governance, investment in local development policy, land use policy, environmental policy,
energy policy and it's not subject to change.
You could have a revolution, an election, whatever changes your government, you're still
locked in and there is no timeout for the agreement.
That the US is not a part of that thing anymore, and that it is toast, is great news for people
on the planet.
Now, once it became clear, once the studies got done, that there was no merit for selling
the agreement as an economic gain because there just weren't any trade gains to speak
of ... Even the most biased sources of studies came up with really minuscule potential gains.
Once that became clear then the story the other side used to sell it was, it was necessary
for foreign policy, it was our bolster against China.
That was crazy too because the agreement's rules, for instance, gave benefits under the
trade agreement to products that had up to 65% Chinese content.
Actually, that whole line about, ‘Wouldn't you rather write the rules?
TPP.
Instead of having China write the rules.’
These weren't US rules, these were corporate rules.
China didn't need to write them, they got a free ride because their corporations would
be able to get products into the US under the agreement without the Chinese government
having to follow any of the rules.
To the extent that there were any good rules in there, the Chinese government didn't have
to follow them and up to 65% of the value of a product could come in duty-free under
the agreement without China even being a member.
The notion that somehow this was going to be a counter force against China, which is
silliness ... Actually, some of the honest, former State Department and China experts
started to say that towards the end, and then there was just no argument for it at all,
which is part of why there was no majority in congress.
Yeah, I mean, and so was this just purely from the perspective of the Obama administration,
which was pushing this so hard, purely a corporate giveaway?
You know, we've heard quite a bit about this ... And you know, you mentioned this, you
don't want China to write the rules.
I'm not even sure exactly how that works in practice, per se.
If people want to make deals with the United States and they are not part of the negotiations
they're going to have to meet US standards if they want part of our market or, I guess,
if we want part of their market.
Lowering our standards is always easier, it seems to me, than getting others to raise
their standards on some level.
What was the national security argument about the Asia pivot?
Well, the whole argument was, you know, other countries will get into partnership with us
if we give them these new goodies, their corporations…
rights bypassing the US Treasury and our laws, then somehow they'll be closer to us.
All the national security experts who looked at that argument said, ‘Well, wait a minute.
You think somehow something we do on a piece of paper called, the so-called trade agreement
is more important than the US Navy protecting Japan and the other signatories of the agreement?
You think that somehow the thing that makes the partners in… have alliances with the
US isn't common interest on security or drug interdiction, but rather some piece of paper?
That's ridiculous.
These countries that are close to China are going to have China as their main trade partner;
as New Zealand, Australia and others do.
The rules we're writing are not going to make us stronger, they're going to hollow-out our
own national defense and these other countries are not going to feel somehow more affinity
to us, more than they all ready do on defense issues, because they all ready rely on us
for defense.’
It just became clear that this was sort of a distraction argument.
Once the economic argument was debunked, the next thing to do was just try and distract
people and say, ‘Ohh, China.
This will help.’
We got to take a break.
When we come back we're going to test out that argument about this being about Pacific
security, when we discuss the TTIP and, I guess, the TISA in just a moment with Lori
Wallach.
She's the Director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch and we're talking about the death
of the TPP, which was, I guess, dropped in the coffin and buried this past week.
We got to take a quick break.
I'm Sam Seder, this is Ring of Fire Radio.