TPP,
Obama, Corporate “Free Traitors” and You!
By Ralph Nader
April 25, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - The pro-big business
President Barack Obama and his corporate allies are starting their
campaign to manipulate and pressure Congress to ram through the
“pull-down-on-America” Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade and
foreign investment treaty between twelve nations (Australia, Brunei,
Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru,
Singapore, the United States and Vietnam).
The first skirmish is a fast track bill to have Congress formally
strip itself of its constitutional authority to regulate trade and
surrender this historic responsibility to the White House and its
corporate lobbies.
Lest you think the TPP is too commercially complex
to bother about, think again. This mega-treaty is the latest
corporate coup-d’état that sacrifices the American consumer, labor
and environmental standards – inventively called “non-tariff trade
barriers” – and much U.S. sovereignty to the supremacy of corporate
commercial trade.
No single column can adequately describe this
colossal betrayal – camouflaged by phrases like “free trade” and
“win-win agreements.” For comprehensive analysis of the TPP you can
go to Global Trade Watch (http://www.citizen.org/trade/).
Trade treaties, like NAFTA and GATT, which created
the World Trade Organization (WTO), already have proven records of
harming our country through huge job-exporting trade deficits,
unemployment, freezing or jeopardizing our consumer and
environmental rules, holding down regulations on giant banks and
weakening labor protections.
How does the corporate state and its “free
traitors” construct a transnational form of autocratic governance
that bypasses the powers of our branches of government and accepts
decisions that greatly affect American livelihoods issued by secret
tribunals run by corporate lawyers-turned-judges? Well, first they
establish autocratic procedures, such as fast track legislation that
facilitate the creation of an absentee autocratic government, which
betrays the American people by going far beyond reducing tariffs and
quotas.
Imagine, when the TPP treaty finally gets
negotiated with other nations in secret, the White House cynically
classifies it as an “agreement” requiring a simple majority vote,
not a treaty requiring two-thirds of the Congress for passage. Fast
track legislation then limits debate on the TPP to a total of 20
hours in each chamber. Then, Congress lets the White House tie
Congress’ hands by prohibiting any amendments and requesting just an
up or down vote.
Meanwhile the campaign cash flows into the
abdicating law-makers’ coffers from the likes of Boeing, General
Electric, Pfizer, Citigroup, Exxon Mobil and other multinational
corporations that show a lack loyalty to the United States (no
corporate patriotism) due to their ties to communist and fascist
regimes abroad who let them get away with horrible abuses and
repression in the name of greater profits.
Many of these Pacific Rim countries, for example,
have bad labor laws and practices, few, if any, consumer or
environmental protections that can be enforced in courts of law and
precious little freedom of speech.
A recent treaty with South Korea was pushed
through Congress on false predictions of jobs and win-win solutions.
In fact, the Korean agreement resulted in a ballooning of the trade
deficit that the U.S. has with that country,
costing an estimated nearly 60,000 American jobs.
The majority of these corporate-managed trade
agreements come from the demands of global corporations. They
exploit developing countries that have cheap labor and lax laws,
unlike more developed countries, such as the U.S., that have greater
protections for consumers, workers and the environment. Under this
trade agreement, countries that seek better protections for their
workers and consumers can be sued by corporations and other nations.
Remarkably, better treatment, such as safer motor vehicles, is seen
as an obstructive trade barrier against inferior imports.
For one example of many, under the WTO, the U.S.
cannot keep out products made by brutal child labor abroad, even
though U.S. law prohibits child labor in this country. This is how
our sovereignty is shredded.
Under the WTO, the U.S. has
lost 100 percent of the cases brought before the secret
tribunals in Geneva, Switzerland against our public interest laws
–like consumer and environmental protections. The TPP will produce
similar autocratic outcomes.
Cong. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), former Texas Supreme
Court Justice, told POLITICO: “I do not believe that Congress should
relinquish its trade oversight authority. This really is a fast
track — seeking to railroad the Trans-Pacific Partnership through
while the United States Trade Representative (USTR) hides from
Congress the most important details.”
Proponents of the TPP want to limit debate and
prevent any amendments to this treaty that might deal with issues
such as currency manipulation, child labor, bad workplace
conditions, etc. by such countries as Mexico and Vietnam. What is
enforceable, with penalties, are sanctions and lawsuits against our
country (and others), which corporate power demands. U.S. taxpayers
will ultimately pay that price.
This is why Senator Elizabeth Warren is opposing
the TPP. She
wrote in the Washington Post that the TPP, “would allow
foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick
up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a
U.S. court.”
For example, if a company doesn’t like our
controls over cancer-causing chemicals, it could skip the U.S.
courts and sue the U.S. before a secret tribunal that can hand down
decisions, which can’t be challenged in U.S. courts. If it won
before this secret kangaroo court, it could be given millions or
hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, charged to you, the
taxpayer. Again, the big business “free traitors” are shredding our
sovereignty under the Constitution.
Scores of such cases already have been brought
under the WTO. Senator Warren explained that “recent
cases include a French company that sued Egypt because Egypt
raised its minimum wage, a Swedish company that
sued Germany because Germany decided to phase out nuclear power
after Japan’s Fukushima disaster, and a Dutch company that sued the
Czech Republic because the Czechs didn’t bail out a bank that the
company partially owned…
Philip Morris is trying to use ISDS to stop Uruguay from
implementing new tobacco regulations intended to cut smoking rates.”
Senator Warren upset President Obama who, before a
business audience (he wouldn’t talk TPP before a labor or consumer
gathering), called Warren “wrong on the facts.” Really? Well why
doesn’t he debate her, as Al Gore debated Ross Perot on NAFTA? She
has read the fine print; I doubt whether he has read more than the
corporate power tea leaves. He seems to have forgotten his severe
criticism of NAFTA from when he ran for president in 2008.
Right now, President Obama probably has the
Republican votes in the Senate, but not yet a majority of votes in
the House. The vast majority of the Democrats are opposed to the
TPP. Tea Party Republicans are reducing Speaker Boehner’s vote count
among Republicans. Using history as an example, President Bill
Clinton easily peeled off votes during his push for NAFTA. What we
need now are a couple of million voters around America to put
serious heat on their faltering members of the House and Senate –
not that arduous of an effort – over the next few months. That is
fewer Americans than watch big league games on television.
In addition, these civic-minded and active
Americans would be backed by 75 percent of Americans who think that
the TPP should be rejected or delayed, according to a
bipartisan poll from the Wall Street Journal. People
know what these “pull–down” trade agreements have done to them in
their own communities.