{"id":12959,"date":"2015-10-03T09:02:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-03T14:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12959"},"modified":"2015-10-03T09:02:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T14:02:31","slug":"the-trans-pacific-free-trade-charade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12959","title":{"rendered":"The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade<\/a><\/h3>\n

As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new\u00a0Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/a>\u00a0(TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems.<\/p>\n

You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for \u201cfree trade.\u201d The reality is that this is an agreement to\u00a0manage<\/i>\u00a0its members\u2019 trade and investment relations \u2013 and to do so on behalf of each country\u2019s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the\u00a0TPP is not about \u201cfree\u201d trade<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New Zealand has threatened to walk away from the agreement over the way Canada and the US manage trade in dairy products. Australia is not happy with how the US and Mexico manage trade in sugar. And the US is not happy with how Japan manages trade in rice. These industries are backed by significant voting blocs in their respective countries. And they represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the TPP would advance an agenda that actually runs\u00a0counter<\/i>\u00a0to free trade.<\/p>\n

For starters, consider what the agreement would do to expand intellectual property rights for big pharmaceutical companies, as we learned from leaked versions of the negotiating text.\u00a0Economic research<\/a>\u00a0clearly shows the argument that such intellectual property rights promote research to be weak at best. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary: When the Supreme Court invalidated Myriad\u2019s patent on the BRCA gene, it led to a burst of innovation that resulted in better tests at lower costs. Indeed, provisions in the TPP would restrain open competition and raise prices for consumers in the US and around the world \u2013 anathema to free trade.<\/p>\n

Read more at https:\/\/www.project-syndicate.org\/commentary\/trans-pacific-partnership-charade-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-and-adam-s–hersh-2015-10#J3RyoruABgKITiZc.99<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new\u00a0Trans-Pacific Partnership\u00a0(TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems. You will hear […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[103,2357,337,517,9546,8402,804,805,808,827,834,5264],"class_list":["post-12959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-canada","tag-competition","tag-free-trade","tag-mexico","tag-pacific-rim","tag-project-syndicate","tag-tpp","tag-trade","tag-trans-pacific-partnership","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12960,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12959\/revisions\/12960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}