Home » Posts tagged 'trans-pacific partnership' (Page 5)
Tag Archives: trans-pacific partnership
Marriage Made in Corporatist Heaven Slams into Resistance
Marriage Made in Corporatist Heaven Slams into Resistance
The new “trade” pacts aim to curtail national sovereignty.
After eight rounds of secret negotiations, Washington and Brussels are still struggling to breathe life into the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). According to current European Union President, Latvia, the chances of the agreement being signed by the year-end target are growing perilously slim.
The potentially game-changing trade deal is aimed at radically reconfiguring the legal and regulatory superstructures of the world’s two largest markets, the United States and the European Union – for the almost exclusive benefit of the world’s biggest multinational corporations.
However, resistance continues to mount on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.S. Wikileaks’ perfectly timed exposé of the investment chapter of TTIP’s sister treaty, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), could derail White House efforts to gain fast track approval to bulldoze the treaty through Congress. This time, even the mainstream media seems to be paying an interest, with the New York Times in particular publishing a broadly critical report.
On the other side of the Atlantic, things seem to be going from bad to worse — at least for the treaty’s supporters. Even the U.S.’s ever-faithful ally and fellow Five-Eye member, the United Kingdom, is beginning to express reservations about TTIP. Earlier this week an all-party committee of Members of Parliament released a scathing report on the trade agreement. The Business, Innovation and Skills committee said the government needed “stronger evidence” to back up its claim that TTIP would bring a boost of £100bn a year to the UK.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Crunch Time for the Global Corporatocracy
Crunch Time for the Global Corporatocracy
As Sir Winston Churchill is alleged to have said, democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried. However, in this age of increasingly globalized governance the future of democracy is very much in question.
Already many key economic decisions affecting our lives are being taken and implemented in complete secrecy behind hermetically closed doors. In the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement between 12 nations including the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand, an army of over 600 corporate advisers have been allowed access to the accompanying text while the public and even members of Congress have largely been kept in the dark.
Indeed, the only way for the uninitiated to learn about some – but far from all – of the potential repercussions of today’s trade agreements is through leaked documents. The current negotiations for a US-EU trade deal (TTIP) are so clandestine that the few Members of the European Parliament that are granted access can only view the plans in their original documentation, in a secure location, with the threat of espionage charges hanging over them if they are caught making copies or sharing the details with the public.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Here’s Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is Just Plain Wrong
Here’s Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is Just Plain Wrong
Republicans who now run Congress say they want to cooperate with President Obama, and point to the administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, as the model. The only problem is the TPP would be a disaster.
If you haven’t heard much about the TPP, that’s part of the problem right there. It would be the largest trade deal in history — involving countries stretching from Chile to Japan, representing 792 million people and accounting for 40 percent of the world economy – yet it’s been devised in secret.
Lobbyists from America’s biggest corporations and Wall Street’s biggest banks have been involved but not the American public. That’s a recipe for fatter profits and bigger paychecks at the top, but not a good deal for most of us, or even for most of the rest of the world.
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.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Activist Post: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)
Activist Post: Updated Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
WikiLeaks has released a second updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the world’s largest economic trade agreement that will, if it comes into force, encompass more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The IP Chapter covers topics from pharmaceuticals, patent registrations and copyright issues to digital rights. Experts say it will affect freedom of information, civil liberties and access to medicines globally. The WikiLeaks release comes ahead of a Chief Negotiators’ meeting in Canberra on 19 October 2014, which is followed by what is meant to be a decisive Ministerial meeting in Sydney on 25–27 October.
Despite the wide-ranging effects on the global population, the TPP is currently being negotiated in total secrecy by 12 countries. Few people, even within the negotiating countries’ governments, have access to the full text of the draft agreement and the public, who it will affect most, none at all. Large corporations, however, are able to see portions of the text, generating a powerful lobby to effect changes on behalf of these groups and bringing developing country members reduced force, while the public at large gets no say.
…click on the link above to read the rest of the article…
