Inside the TPP's attack on American sovreignty

Jim Hightower

Let's peek at a few of the Pandoras in the TPP box:

The trade hoax. This massive deal will be presented as a breakthrough for "free trade," but it only uses trade as a mask: Of the document's 29 chapters, only five address tariffs and other actual trade matters. The other 24 consist of various ways to "free" rapacious corporations from any accountability for the havoc they wreak and from any responsibility to the world community's common good.

Bye-bye "Buy American." TPP dictates that all corporations based in any member nation must be given equal access to the public dollars that any government spends on equipment, food, highway projects, etc. Thus, our own national, state, and local governments would no longer be free to give preference to suppliers of our choice. "Buy American" and "Buy Local" programs could be challenged by private corporations before private international tribunals, and such policies as "sweatshop free," "prevailing wage," and "Buy Green" that link the spending of our tax dollars to our people's values would be subject to challenge in tribunals.

Pampering repressive regimes. TPP would reward Vietnam with automatic duty-free access to the markets of every member country, despite Vietnam's abominable abuses of human and worker rights. Its government and industries have repeatedly been censured for their widespread use of forced child labor; maintaining an exploitative minimum wage that averages 56 cents an hour, condemning millions to a life of penury; and routinely jailing dissidents and activists. TPP not only forces our consumer markets to accept the products of Vietnam's abominations, but also forces producers in the other 11 nations to compete with such unscrupulous standards--thus inducing them to lower their own standards--in a no-win race to the bottom.

Wall Street rides again If anyone doubts that the pact is a corporate boondoggle dressed in trade clothes, let them read its shameful financial provisions. "Too big to fail" laws, ensuring that the costs of a bank's collapse would be borne by investors, not taxpayers? Under TPP, giant global banks could scamper into private tribunals to grab billions of our tax dollars if they have to comply with such laws. Also, our nation's financial regulations would have to be "harmonized" to comply with TPP's extreme deregulation, re-creating the anything-goes Wall Street ethic that crashed the world economy in 2008. A Robin Hood Tax on volatile, super high-speed speculators? Nope. TPP specifically lets global banks challenge and kill these laws.

And so many more Pandoras, including: Greatly restricting any TPP nation from regulating fracking. Extending patent monopolies for Big Pharma so those ruthless giants can hold world drug prices (and profits) artificially high, while denying life-saving drugs to millions. Forcing our country to weaken food safety standards (including pesticide levels, toxic additives, GMOs, etc.) that are stricter than international standards--as most of ours are.

And let's not forget this: the US can't change a comma in TPP's thousands of pages of retrograde rules unless every country agrees. Once the US joins, future presidents and congresses must limit their policies to what's permitted in the agreement. And if a country decides to say "adios" and get out, there's a "hangover" clause that extends the corporate rights to raid our treasuries for another decade.

In its six years of incubation, this corporate deal has been kept behind doors that have been locked, bolted shut, sealed in plastic wrap, and shrouded in a dense fog of official secrecy.

And the people are not the only ones kept in the dark. Just for fun, ask your own personal congress critter what the TPP is and what's in it. Chances are you'll get a blank stare, for even our lawmakers have been denied "permission" simply to attend the negotiations as observers--until last June, they were not even allowed to see the drafts of rules that are being considered. As for the public and the press, it's only because of leaks from appalled negotiators and the determined digging of public interest advocates that we know anything about the Trans-Pacific Partnership's threat to our democratic rights.

Not every outsider has been denied access, however. Top executives, lawyers, and lobbyists of 500-some major corporations who serve on 16 Industry Trade Advisory Committees do have access to the secret texts and to the negotiators themselves. They get to review and amend official proposals, submit their own drafts, and generally look after their own very special interests.

Before the TPP cabal of Barack Obama, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their front line of fat-cat corporate lobbyists can even submit the substance of this anti-democratic coup to Congress, they must first get more than half of the members of the House and Senate to do something extraordinary: Surrender Congress' exclusive constitutional authority (and responsibility) over US trade policy to Obama.

This Fast Track procedure is nothing but a railroad job, first laid down by Richard Nixon in 1973. Once Congress passes fast-track authorization, it lets the White House unilaterally launch negotiations, set the agreement terms, and sign onto a trade deal-- all before Congress even gets to vote on the pact itself. Then the White House writes legislation conforming wide swaths of America's laws to the deal. This legislation is then sent to Congress, bypassing congressional committees entirely; it must be voted on within 90 days, with minimal debate and no possibility of a filibuster. Members cannot offer any amendments to the complex proposals in this thick document--they get only a single yes or no vote on the total package.