Have you ever heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement?
This posting is not so much an article on the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement being negotiated as it is a gateway to articles on the subject. It is important to learn about this subject because, as Dave Johnson wrote in OpEdNews, “You will be hearing a lot about the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. TPP’s negotiations are being held in secret with details kept secret even from our Congress. But giant corporations are in the loop.”
I would like to suggest you watch the DemocracyNow video from last June (see below) to UNDERSTAND this pending trade agreement and why it is a really big deal. Note, however, that the video of an awards cerimony was actually an anti-TPP activist’s hoax.
Here is an excerpt from Public Citizens analysis of TPP: ” TPP is a “trade” agreement between several Pacific-rim countries that is actually about much more than just trade. It will be sold as a trade agreement (because everyone knows that “trade” is good) but much of it appears to be (from what we know) a corporate end-run around things We the People want to do to reign in the giant corporations — like Wall Street regulation, environmental regulation and corporate taxation. ” [Note: Once finalized, this trade agreement will remain open ended so that any other nations may sign on to it in the future.]
“After more than two years of negotiations under conditions of extreme secrecy, on June 12, 2012, a leaked copy of the investment chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement was posted at
http://tinyurl.com/tppinvestment. Public Citizen has verified that the text is authentic. “
“The leaked text provides stark warnings about the dangers of “trade” negotiations occurring without press, public or policymaker oversight. It reveals that negotiators already have agreed to many radical terms granting expansive new rights and privileges for foreign investors and their private corporate enforcement through extra-judicial “investor-state” tribunals.” – Public Citizen
Here is just a small example I reviewed of the wording in the actual TTP document that was leaked last June:
———————————-
Article 12.7: Performance Requirements
3. (c) Provided that such measures are not applied in an arbitrary or unjustifiable manner, or
do not constitute a disguised restriction on international trade or investment,
paragraphs l(b), (c), [and] [(t)], [and (h),] and 2(a) and (b), shall not be construed to
prevent a Party from adopting or maintaining measures, including environmental
measures:
(i) necessary to secure compliance with laws and regulations that are not
inconsistent with this Agreement;
(ii) necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health; or
(iii) related to the conservation of living or non-living exhaustible natural
resources.]
——————————-
What this example says is that national laws “necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health” cannot be applied to international trading in ways that a foreign investor considers arbitrary, unjustified or trade restrictive. Elsewhare the agreement lays out how international investors can sue governments, and this process is entirely under corporate, not government, control.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/6/14/breaking_08_pledge_leaked_trade_doc
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Data Driven Viewpoints 
Actually, the provision supports a member nation’s right to have national environmental restrictions, so long as they are not a “disguised restriction” on international trade. However, in the long run, you have it right. As we’ve seen before, multi-national corporations use trade pacts to thwart national efforts to regulate environmental, labor and other local controls.
You are correct, but it is the investors who bring the complaints and corporate lawyers who get to decide if a nations regulation is unfair to trade. What can possibly go wrong?
Hmm…wonder if this is why the non-GMO and Codex Alimentarius petitions have been resurging again, after taking a brief haitus from being the main focus for the international Food Freedom groups…?
I followed these concerns quite avidly from 2005 – 2010 – then it seemed to dwindle down on activity and I, in naive optimism, believed the matter to have been settled – but recently there has again been a spike in articles, petitions, etc., and I’m thinking perhaps these things are all linked…
Good heavens TamrahJo, you have sent me back to school to learn about your Codes Alimentarius petitions. Wasn’t aware before now.
Um…did you want to go to school, now that summer is here? Sorry…
😀
It and many other similar international concerns focus on the GMO, patenting of life and food freedom issues – Many other countries have chosen to refuse to import any foods from GMO, to require GMO foods to be labeled, etc., but the US has fought this and because so much of our food supply is tracked back to GMO seeds, it seems to rear it’s head every now and again when International talks are going on…
🙂