The TPP: A Quiet Coup for the Investor Class
What can be confidently reported about the TPP is that,
in terms of trade flows, it would be the largest free-trade agreement
yet entered into by the United States—and, according to a report by the
Congressional Research Service, that the ministers negotiating the
agreement “have expressed an intent
to comprehensively reduce barriers in goods, services, and agricultural
trade as well as rules and disciplines on a wide range of topics” to
unprecedented levels. Yet despite these grandiose ambitions, details of
the negotiations and drafts of the text have been purposefully withheld
from Congress and American citizens.
The secrecy surrounding the negotiations is breathtaking. In July, 134 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter
to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk requesting that the appropriate
congressional committees be consulted and that a draft of the text be
released. The members reminded Kirk that draft texts were circulated and
congressional committees consulted throughout the NAFTA negotiations in
the early 1990s. Their letter received no response. A month later,
House members petitioned Kirk to allow a congressional delegation to
observe the negotiations—as
in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the
launch of the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization, and numerous
NAFTA rounds. Despite its persistence, Congress has not been granted any
significant oversight or insight regarding the negotiations.
While Congress, the press, and the public have had to
make do with leaked chapters of negotiations, Just Foreign Policy
reports that 600
corporate lobbyists were granted access to the negotiated text.
American democracy is in a sorry state when corporations are granted
more access to even the text of sweeping government agreements than the
public and its elected officials. Although corporate influence on U.S.
trade policy is hardly a new phenomenon, the simultaneous waning of
congressional oversight is all the more unsettling.
In May, Democratic Reps. Barney Frank and Sander Levin wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to express their concern
about the TPP’s provisions entrenching capital mobility. Their letter
requested “an official written statement of the U.S. policy” concerning
the ability of parties to the agreement to deploy capital controls in
the face of a financial crisis. If the leaked drafts accurately reflect
the direction of the negotiations, countries that instituted capital
controls could be taken to court by private corporations and could be
held liable for damages. Hundreds of economists signed letters in January and February
2011 opposing these provisions, yet the investment chapter leaked in
June suggests that neither their concerns nor Frank’s and Levin’s were
taken into consideration.
Other troubling trends have emerged in the leaked chapters. According to Citizen.org,
the negotiations thus far have given corporations the right to avoid
government review when acquiring land, natural resources, or factories.
They have also banned corporate performance requirements, guaranteed
compensation for the loss of “‘expected future profits’ from health,
labor, [or] environmental” regulations, and included stunning provisions
concerning the right to “move capital without limits.” If these are
indeed terms of the TPP, then the agreement would make it nearly
impossible for countries to hold corporations accountable for their
conduct—and would in fact hold governments liable for any “damage”
incurred by corporations due to the institution of regulations.
Many progressives had hoped that President Barack Obama
would shift U.S. trade policy away from staunch free-marketeering. But
according to Lori Wallach,
the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, the leaked
chapters of the TPP “sent shock waves through Congress because it showed
that U.S. negotiators had totally abandoned Obama’s campaign pledges to
replace the old NAFTA trade model and in fact were doubling down and
expanding the very Bush-style deal that Obama campaigned against in 2008
to win key swing states.”
The struggle over the Trans-Pacific Partnership reveals
a disturbing trend in American politics. The much discussed Citizens
United ruling granting corporations personhood has given way to a trade
negotiation process in which corporations are granted more rights than
American citizens, their elected representatives, or foreign governments
impacted by the deal. That trade negotiations with such an immense
potential impact on numerous sectors of the American economy have been
conducted in secret is troubling enough. To consider that those
negotiating the treaty have willfully ignored experts and elected
representatives in favor of corporate interests calls into question the
sustainability of American democracy.
r.
Chairman, thank you for convening a hearing on the monumentally
important issue of “Taking Back Our Democracy.” Unfortunately, that
title exactly describes the challenge facing us today.
