Bernie Sanders Welcomes Setback in TPP Trade Talk
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/31622-bernie-sanders-welcomes-setback-in-tpp-trade-talks
US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Saturday welcomed reports that a push for a new 12-nation trade deal had stalled amid differences over maneuvers by drug makers who want to jack up prescription medicine prices around the world.
“Some of the countries understand what the pharmaceutical companies want and they’re not going to give it to them,” Sanders told a town meeting here at Southern New Hampshire University. “They want to have not only Americans but people around the world pay sky-high prices for prescription drugs.”
Meetings in Hawaii reportedly deadlocked on Friday over protections for drug companies. The talks ended as negotiators reportedly neared agreement on a major Pacific Rim trade agreement known at the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
New Zealand negotiators reportedly foiled U.S. efforts to extend patent protections and raise prices for medications. Australia and Chile also were said to be resisting the U.S. push to shield pharmaceutical companies for up to 12 years from competition by lower-priced generic drugs.
“Let’s defeat TPP,” Sanders said to cheers from the more than 500 people who came out to hear him discuss the trade deal and other issues in his campaign for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
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In the 2011 federal election the Liberals ran with a particularly obnoxious third-way neolib who turned off Liberal voters who are used to something very different. The guy didn't inspire any enthusiasm in the young (he's gone now) - and in fact inspired negative enthusiasm all around. In that election the Liberals collapsed and the NDP (labor/socialist) surged. But that isn't a recipe for winning for the NDP - not then and not now, though perhaps it's in the cards for the future. Traditionally the Liberals and NDP work more or less in tandem, the NDP keeping the more "centrist" Liberals "to the left", and in fact providing the winning ideas. So the Liberal choice of a decidedly *right wing* third-way/neocon type (no way third-way would be termed "center" in Canada, not even "center-right", it is just plain right wing, and pretty damn far right at that, in the Stephen Harper area of "right"
made the 2011 election something of an outlier. You have to go back to 1988 for a similar Conservative win, and it was under similar circumstances of a weak and uninspiring Liberal leadership and an unprepared NDP.
Knocking away on wood while saying it but this Oct. 2015 federal election has none of those circumstances that accompany conservative wins, the NDP has maintained its strength and gained in depth and experience - at least according as polling (and look at the astounding Prov. election results in Alberta!) - and the Liberals have a very charismatic and personable leader. I expect the Conservatives to be ousted, and I expect a Liberal/NDP minority coalition gov't to be elected, and that will be a good and solid result.
eta: and to keep this on topic of the OP, if Harper is reelected the TPP will certainly sail through with very little debate, very little awareness, but if Liberal/NDP win you can bet your last dollar that suddenly the TPP will become very controversial with very lively debate. We have "social programs" like universal health care, pharmacare, which are incompatible with the corporatist/capitalist absolutism of the TPP.
Don't you wish the whole corporate house of card would collapse.
The sole purpose of the TPP is to allow corporations to benefit at the expense of consumers and workers worldwide. Otherwise this fucking TPP obscenity wouldn't even exist.
