A Corporate Coup of a Different Order: The Growing Resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Transparency was supposed to be a White House priority from the very start. In his first inaugural address, when the world celebrated an historic and improbable election, Barack Obama made the case for how an open government was necessary to earn the trust of the people.[1] The next day, he issued a memo that asserted his commitment to creating an “unprecedented level of openness.”[2] And in February, more than four years later, President Obama claimed his to be “the most transparent administration in history.”[3]

Perhaps the least publicized example of that statement’s dishonesty is the White House’s efforts to negotiate the biggest trade agreement since the mid 1990s in near-total secrecy.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, has been in negotiations since 2007. In November 2009 the Obama administration made it a centerpiece of the United States Trade Representative’s (USTR) work.[4] The 12 countries currently negotiating the deal, which include Australia, Chile, Japan, and Singapore, account for nearly 40% of the global economy and one-third of international trade.[5] Yet to characterize the TPP as a trade deal is imprecise, if not disingenuous. The agreement has less to do with the exchange of goods than with altering regulations covering medicine, agriculture, finance, intellectual property, and labor and environmental standards. For example, under the TPP, if a U.S. law conflicted with the pact’s mandates, foreign investors could sue through an independent tribunal to re-coup their so-called “expected future profits.” The TPP stands as a threat to sovereignty at the federal, state and local level.

Prying at the Text

Despite its claims to the contrary, the Obama administration has been far less transparent on trade-related deals than its predecessors. In 2001, during negotiations over the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), George W. Bush’s trade representative made the deal’s working text public, with some redactions so as to preserve anonymity. The current administration has so far refused demands to release the text. What little is known about the deal is based on the generalized testimony of those who have seen the text and on portions that have been anonymously leaked.

Frustration and outrage have been building. In March of this year, 400 civil society groups, including the Sierra Club and Global Exchange, signed a letter deploring the administration’s secrecy and demanding a public debate around the deal.[6] Even members of Congress have been denied access to the text, and those who have seen parts of it have been unable to share it with their assistants because of its classified status. In June, two-thirds of Democratic freshmen in the House of Representatives signed a letter to party leadership about the lack of debate.[7] Shortly thereafter, in response to a wave of citizen comments, the USTR gave Representative Alan Grayson access to the TPP’s text. In an email to supporters, he wrote that the TPP “hands the sovereignty of our country over to corporate interests.”[8]

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http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/globalism/3382-a-corporate-coup-of-a-different-order-the-growing-resistance-to-the-trans-pacific-partnership

this is a long, immaculately researched piece; one of the best I've read on the TPP- and you know I've read a lot.