Hurrah, the scintillating spirit of bipartisanship is loose in DC again, per the NYTimes:
…[I]ncreasingly, Congress, under Republican control, is pressing forward on broad aspects of President Obama’s end-of-term agenda.
On a huge trade agreement, Republicans are pursuing legislation with virtually no Democratic support… The forward movement also reflects Republicans’ eagerness for legislative achievements before the 2016 presidential race, and their far larger say in drafting legislation and setting the terms of the debate after gaining full control of Congress last year…
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold its final hearing on legislation granting the president “fast track” negotiating authority to complete a trade accord with 12 Pacific Rim nations, and it will formally draft the bill on Wednesday. The House Ways and Means Committee will draft similar legislation on Thursday, moving forward on one of the president’s top priorities over the vociferous opposition of much of his party…
The new push on trade promotion authority stems from Mr. Obama’s “strategic pivot” to Asia since the opening months of his presidency and a yearslong effort to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would be the largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement….
…[C]onservative groups like Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute have come out strongly in favor of the trade authority, as has the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.
In a first for Mr. Obama, he may achieve a legislative victory on an almost party-line vote in which his party votes no…
So, amazingly, the Grey Lady is cheerleading a “bipartisan” trade agreement that will give megacorporations even more control over our government, and prove a boon to the Republicans and their legislative enablers, while making the lives of us 99%ers that much harder?
Timothy B. Lee Vox has a long comprehensive explanation of the agreement: “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is great for elites. Is it good for anyone else?”
Via Ed Kilgore, at the Washington Monthly, here’s Professor Krugman’s opinion in late February:
… It’s far from clear that the T.P.P. is a good idea. It’s even less clear that it’s something on which President Obama should be spending political capital. I am in general a free trader, but I’ll be undismayed and even a bit relieved if the T.P.P. just fades away…
What the T.P.P. would do, however, is increase the ability of certain corporations to assert control over intellectual property. Again, think drug patents and movie rights.
Is this a good thing from a global point of view? Doubtful. The kind of property rights we’re talking about here can alternatively be described as legal monopolies. True, temporary monopolies are, in fact, how we reward new ideas; but arguing that we need even more monopolization is very dubious — and has nothing at all to do with classical arguments for free trade…
So what I wonder is why the president is pushing the T.P.P. at all. The economic case is weak, at best, and his own party doesn’t like it. Why waste time and political capital on this project?…
And I got an email from my senior Senator this morning:
Have you seen what’s in the new TPP trade deal?
Most likely, you haven’t – and don’t bother trying to Google it. The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret.
Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: “We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”
If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it, then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.
Let’s send a loud message to our trade officials: No vote on a fast-track for trade agreements until the American people can see what’s in this TPP deal. Sign this petition right now to make the TPP agreement public…
For more than two years now, giant corporations have had an enormous amount of access to see the parts of the deal that might affect them and to give their views as negotiations progressed. But the doors stayed locked for the regular people whose jobs are on the line.
If most of the trade deal is good for the American economy, but there’s a provision hidden in the fine print that could help multinational corporations ship American jobs overseas or allow for watering down of environmental or labor rules, fast track would mean that Congress couldn’t write an amendment to fix it. It’s all or nothing.
Before we sign on to rush through a deal like that – no amendments, no delays, no ability to block a bad bill – the American people should get to see what’s in it.
Sherrod Brown has been leading this fight, and he points out that TPP isn’t classified military intelligence – it’s a trade agreement among 12 countries that control 40% of the world’s economy. A trade agreement that affects jobs, environmental regulations, and whether workers around the globe are treated humanely. It might even affect the new financial rules we put in place after the 2008 crisis. This trade agreement doesn’t matter to just the biggest corporations – it matters to all of us…
“Fast Tracking” the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Against Us)Post + Comments (97)