Word: TPP

Washington's Blog -  Under the TPP, corporations will be able to appeal the laws of nations to 3-member panels of arbitrators, with one arbitrator chosen by them and a second agreed to by both them and the nation whose laws they are seeking to overturn. See the chapter on “investment,” for how this works. It means that a foreign oil or mining corporation, for example, could overrule a U.S. environmental law by appealing to 2 out of 3 corporate lawyers on a secret panel.

The TPP puts a large number of disastrous policies in place without waiting for corporate arbitration. For example, the U.S. Department of Energy would be required to approve any applications to export liquefied “natural” gas — meaning more fracking, more destruction of the earth’s climate, more profits for those who’ve been writing this treaty in secret for years, but not more sustainability, environmental protection, or even U.S. energy “independence.”

The TPP would lower U.S. tariffs to zero while keeping Vietnam’s, for example, in place, which — along with no meaningful or enforceable labor standards — will encourage U.S. corporations to move even more jobs abroad to low-wage and even slave labor. The Obama Administration reported on slavery in Malaysia, then altered Malaysia’s ranking in order to allow its participation in the TPP. This race to the bottom would lower U.S. wages without encouraging better practices abroad.

“According to an initial analysis published in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. market access concessions alone will increase the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods and autos and auto parts by more than $55 billion dollars resulting in the loss of more than 330,000 jobs.” —Public Citizen

The TPP could require the United States to import food that doesn’t meet U.S. safety standards. Any U.S. food safety rule on pesticides, labeling, or additives that is higher than international standards could be challenged as an “illegal trade barrier.”

The TPP would threaten provisions included in Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ health programs to make medicines more affordable, as well as domestic patent and drug-pricing laws.

The TPP is broader and more encompassing than NAFTA, and weakens rather than strengthening NAFTA’s weak protections for labor and the environment. Barack Obama campaigned on substantially reforming NAFTA in those regards. Instead, he’s now proposing the worst of NAFTA on steroids.