Not Guts.

the reason is money.

That resonates with some Tea Party types. Just ask them whether they're supporting "Obamatrade."

If you google on --conservatives tpp sovereignty-- a bunch of stuff comes up that you might use for ammunition. Here's one example.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/16196/rightwing_coalition_opposes_tpp_calling_it_obamatrade

“The President said, if you like your health insurance, you can keep it,” says Curtis Ellis of the American Jobs Alliance, a small conservative group based in Virginia that opposes the outsourcing of U.S. jobs overseas. “Now essentially, with Obamatrade, he’s saying, if you like your job, you can keep it.”

If “Obamatrade” catches on as a right-wing rallying cry against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade agreement covering the Pacific Rim economies of Australia, Japan, Malaysia, among others—it will probably have something to do with a sparsely attended press conference on Tuesday in the House Science Committee hearing room. That’s where the American Jobs Alliance and the United States Business and Industry Council—pro-business groups wary of trade’s impact on America’s national interests—joined with Tea Party Nation and the socially conservative Eagle Forum to rail against the TPP and President Obama’s support for “fast-tracking” the measure. The legislative procedure would prevent Congress from amending the agreement once it’s completed by international negotiators. Without fast-track, Congress is considered unlikely to approve the deal in its current form.

I am sooo stealing that!

...I feel your pain.

using that link. Thanks!

your product, you've got to pay your workers enough to buy it.

so that we can once again have homes, plenty of food, education and really affordable health care. The only way they can do that is through government programs like it was done before. Housing, farm subsidies with an emphasis on localization, European style free educations and a single payer system for health care. We are working on the healthcare part but have a long ways to go. Housing has come down but not near enough and they continue to cut HUD. Food is also cut whenever they can get by with it.

to squeeze more out of us.

Screw the customers.

Nothing.

advantage of a cheap work force, violating our environmental laws etc. The people, to these monsters, are just fodder, and we have some great advantages here for them IF they can overcome the standards of living for the average worker here also.

Let them release the entire 'agreement' and let the people vote on it.

Tariffs are already low with TPP countries. Even critics acknowledge it has little to do 'free trade'.

We already have 'free trade agreements with most of the TPP countries. Sticking with those FTA's and WTO rules for the rest is not a great alternative.

This agreement is in large part a reaction to China, India and South Korea making huge advances.

But since it's a trade agreement, and negotiated in secret no less, it must be bad.

Those countries have nothing at all to do with this "agreement" so why mention them?
Why would this be kept such a secret if it was all rainbows and lollipops? Answer - it's not that. Even the trade negotiators have said it had to be kept secret or it wouldn't pass in Congress. It gives away all our country's rights and regulations to foreign corporations, drives us down to their level. Nothing good in that scenario. Free trade is a total misnomer, it's freedom for global corporations to pay less taxes, pay less wages and destroy environmental and labor standards in the US.

Particularly how it will have nothing but negative consequences. Not one thing good could possibly some from it?

And I mentioned those countries because this agreement is a direct reaction to them.

BTW, pretty much all negotiations are secret until there's something to go public with.

Tell me the good that came from NAFTA? Show me how workers of the world and the US are doing better? No? That's because it's all been negative IMO. Maybe I'm missing the good stuff, because the bad is so in our face? If I'm missing something good, please share.

They will enrich a very few at the expense of millions of us.

I wonder how we will stop it.

You know, since the politicians could give a fuck what we want.

except as a source of slave labor.

...it's about losing our sovereignty to the whims of multi-national corporations. Sovereignty over financial regulation, environmental protection, food safety, etc. will no longer belong exclusively to the states and federal government, but to an advisory committee and ultimately foreign investors. Once again, investors are protected against loss at our expense. Hey, what's not to like about TPP? I mean globalization has served us so well the last 2 decades, hasn't it?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/the-tpp-if-passed-spells-the-end-of-popular-sovereignty-for-the-united-states.html

that may or may not be a part of the completed deal, and may or may not have even existed, is absurd.

All treaties that we enter into affect our internal workings to some extent, but kindly name one so far that has caused anywhere near the destruction feared here.

....state unequivocally that the TPP, as presented to Congress since it's very doubtful the Republicans will give Obama fast track, does not include any such provisions. Simple and done. I'm waiting to hear just that. So far not a damn word so far as I know. If said provisions are in the trade deal, the fact that raw shrimp must be labeled in the US with the country of origin could be considered an unfair trade practice, since arguably it gives domestic US shrimp producers an unfair advantage over shrimp farming operations in Vietnam. In this case, rulings from the TPP regulatory structure would take president over federal or state law. I personally avoid imported shrimp like the plague. Under TPP, I may not be able to tell the difference.

As for your second point, NAFTA and GATT (WTO) have nearly destroyed this country's industrial base. Also, we don't play by the same rules as everyone else, ie. unlike Germany and others we have no national industrial policy other than to allow our US based multi-nationals to freely drive production always to the lowest cost countries for import into the US...American workers, our middle class and the prosperity of most Americans be damned. Ironically, it's cheap, subsidized corn from the US that has destroyed small maize farmers in Mexico, sending many to the US as undocumenteds seeking work. NAFTA is just wonderful, isn't it? Well, it's wonderful for a small few.

Wouldn't it be better if the Obama administration just came clean on what provisions are actually in TPP? But then again, maybe you profit from such trade mishaps. I hope your just under the siren song of "free trade" or OCDNW (Obama can do no wrong) syndrome instead.

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2014, 06:45 PM - Edit history (1)

I had hoped it would be good for American workers. But guess what -- I was wrong and Ross Perot was right. I have intention of making the same mistake again. Obama is just going to have to deal with the fact that there are plenty of people like me who have not forgotten how we got hosed on that one.

are afraid to defend the TPP as you are. Now you have our attention, explain how it will be of benefit to the 99%. And then tell us why it has to be developed in secret from us.

you don't have enough to hate it.

I do say wait and see. This is, so far, simply setting up an economic bloc to counter the looming power of China.

A lot of this stuff about limiting home rule and selling out to multinationals and Wall Street is hyperbole over normal treaty language meant to stop the partners from using local law to sneak around treaty provisions.

But, a lot of it may not be-- we just don't know.

As far as secrecy goes-- serious negotiations are usually secret. Even the cloakroom in DC is where the real work gets done.

Considering the brouhaha over what little is known so far, how would things go if every little subparagraph inserted to leverage another position was common knowledge? Would anything ever get done?

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

I asked my Senators to explain to me the benefits to the 99% and both failed miserably. One admitted in so many words that we would lose American jobs. She explained that their would be government money (taxpayer) to "retrain" workers that lose their jobs. I ask, "Retrain for what?"

We've seen the damage of NAFTA, CAFTA, and the WTO. And major corporations are helping write the language. Sorry but the "wait and see" attitude is suicide.

No one has even tried to justify this mess.

all the benefits to us tend to be indirect-- and not in that bullshit way they talk about cutting taxes on the wealthy makes them hire more people.

The point is that trade ultimately benefits us all, but the question is how to best regulate it so that it doesn't bring too much benefit to the wrong people and cut others out. Smoot-Hawley was an attempt to close our borders so we wouldn't import much, which was seen by some as driving prices down and causing unemployment. It was a spectacular failure and disrupted exports and the import of raw materials and food that we don't grow here. It didn't cause the Depression, but it extended it.

Wall Street went to Hoover begging him to veto it, but then as now Wall Street was seen as purely profiteers with no knowledge of or interest in proper economics. Wall Street was greedy then, as now, maybe even greedier, and they were a primary cause of the Depression themselves, but they aren't that stupid. They saw what would happen, but, being the craven financial manipulators they were, their pleadings were ignored and everything went to hell.

I've seen NAFTA blamed for killing as many as half a million jobs, but the the jobs that would have been lost anyway are rarely separated out. We had already been in a recession and seeing the maquiedoras (sp?) sucking jobs down there long before NAFTA, but the agreement also reduced the restrictive import rules Mexico had, so our exports down there grew. That had unintended consequences for Mexican farmers, but so it goes when number crunching. So many good and bad things happened that it's tough to say whether or not it was a good or bad thing overall until the dust finally settles.

The same goes with other major trade agreements-- just ranting over "the damage done" means nothing unless you can show that there was actual damage done that was due entirely, or at least primarily, to the agreement.

The TPP has one fundamental purpose-- a balance to China as a new major economic player. It's already the most populous nation, and soon to be the largest economic producer-- eclipsing the US and Japan while destabilizing every other Pacific nation and the EU.

The TPP may not be the answer, but does anyone have a better one?

jobs to: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam

But you are correct that China and India are not part of it. Those, however, are not the only places where we would like to increase cheap labor.

New Zealand, Japan and the other countries? There are no/low tariffs with them already. How is this worse than current trading rules for jobs?

NAFTA was about corporations getting more power over people. TPP is about corporations having more power than governments. They will officially become self aware if this passes. Think things are bad now? They're about to get worse.

follow the guidelines.

That's adorable.

The "club" that actually thinks a Democratic president could want trading rules to include labor rights and environmental protections has fewer members and they tend to be much more gullible.

which are?

But we don't.

I would like to do away with the free trade that we have. It is hurting us. It is only helping the very richest amongst us. It will destroy our judicial system, local control over environmental and other law and reduce our ability to enforce safe product standards. It's an awful, awful idea.

I do not think that "free" trade has been good for Americans. It hasn't been good for most people in the world. Traditional lifestyles and cultures in many so-called "underdeveloped" countries have been destroyed. In America our wages have declined while prices have stayed steady although products we import are generally shoddy.

Free trade is lose/lose as far as I can see from the results.

Brian Westbury "a Fellow of the George W. Bush Presidential Center” is not an impartial source.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5733531
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5729833

the same way NAFTA and Glass-Stegall (sp?) hurt Clinton. Dems should filibuster this when it comes up after 1/1/15, but will they? Or, will they follow their corporate masters, not buck the Dem president, and go along? That alone could doom progressive policies for a very very long time. Faced with voting for a fake Repug (DINO) or a real one, people usually choose the real one.

Dems need to do something totally different, show some spine and stand up for principals. Don't desert the working class folks, don't let the Repugs further destroy us.

So this transformation won't be such a shock, which was probably the plan all along. The immoral class will have their free trade at the death of the middle class.

And nobody has the guts to try and stop it from happening.

right now people are having trouble living on $7/hour. Wait until it's down to $1/hour and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it because companies are immune from prosecution.

At least revolution will be more attractive then. People will literally have NOTHING to lose. If the 1% are stupid enough to pass it they will have to live with the repercussions (and I'm including the 3rd way sycophants in my definition of the enemy).

has been all along. Yes, it's The New Fascism in all its glory. Feudal economics with the aristocracy protected by a high-tech authoritarian police state.

When I was 17 I made $3.10 per hour. I could afford an apartment, a car, and money to live on. Now you can barely afford any one of those things on minimum wage.

Obama has much to do with this, with his masochistic love affair with the GOP.

"Until we get real wage levels down much closer to the Brazils and Koreas, we cannot pass along productivity gains to workers wages and still be competitive" --- (Stanley J. Mihelick, EVP Goodyear Inc. NYT, June 4, 1997)

They are big on our sovereignty.

What provisions of it guarantee 3rd world wages?

How would we lose our sovereignty? What country will be governing us?

But we can't sue them for any reason.

Wiki 'investor-state dispute settlements' or google it, or read the other thread here on the TPP~

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6007139

Where's the provision that will allow foreign corporations to sue local governments and individuals if we "hurt their profits." Does not sound like language that would be used in a treaty, either.

Can our corporations sue their local governments? I don't see us agreeing to it if we don't have equal rights in the other countries.

Its incredibly easy to look up info on the investor state dispute settlement in NAFTA & now in the TPP.

Yes.

So, NAFTA and CAFTA and world trade agreements seem to be doing quite well for those who intended it would.

To get a government job, they'll be the most insulated.