Today Congress voted down a bill that would have given President Obama authority to expedite negotiations in the latest international trade agreement, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The bill would have prevented Congress from amending or filibustering the proposed agreement by forcing them to either approve or deny it in its entirety.
If you haven’t heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it’s because the authors of the enigmatic trade deal don’t want you to hear about it. Although the agreement has been in the works for over six years, the American public was oblivious to the specifics until 2013, when WikiLeaks revealed classified draft documents detailing some elements of the suspiciously secretive deal. The initial revelations, in conjunction with other information that has since been leaked, have spurred widespread protests against the proposal from people on both sides of the political spectrum.
The TPP has met strong opposition from environmental watchdogs, labor unions, human rights organizations, religious entities and consumer rights groups, among others. In my mind, any proposal that elicits vehement backlash from such a diverse consortium of self-proclaimed do-gooders deserves some serious attention. Unfortunately, President Obama doesn’t seem to agree, as he is doing his utmost to prevent the public from seeing the proposal. Although the TPP involves 11 other countries and doesn’t seem to have anything at all to do with national security, Obama refuses to declassify documents related to the agreement. Even members of Congress, who will eventually be tasked with either approving or denying this sweeping trade deal, have not been allowed to see the actual wording.
Two narratives attempt to explain this latest international trade agreement. There’s the official narrative, propagated by the authors of the TPP via their presidential puppet and his henchmen. Then there’s the real story, as it has been revealed through the illegal but absolutely necessary dissemination of classified, TPP-related documents.
According to Obama, this new trade agreement will: prevent child labor, set a minimum wage in other countries, foster the formation of foreign labor unions, create environmental protections, induce a flood of new domestic jobs and strengthen our economy by forcing other countries to play by “fair” rules, as defined by the United States. Obama was also proud to announce that Nike has agreed to bring 10,000 new jobs back to the states if the TPP is enacted. (He failed to mention that Nike laid off one-third of its roughly 14,000 U.S. employees last year and that the majority of the nearly one million workers employed by the company work in Vietnam for less than 60 cents an hour.)
While Obama has trumpeted the supposed benefits of the TPP, relentlessly lobbying legislators on both sides of the aisle and unabashedly heralding it as “the most progressive trade deal in history,” he hasn’t explained how this agreement would achieve its purported objectives. However, the aforementioned organizations who oppose the TPP have been extremely vocal in explaining why they believe the agreement would threaten the very people and principles it is purported to protect.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of the TPP involves the creation of an international arbitration panel that would allow multinational corporations to challenge national, state and local laws. Under the agreement, global corporations would be empowered to sue government entities for passing laws that raise health, safety, environmental or labor standards when said standards affect a profit loss for the corporation. This perverse provision would essentially elevate corporations to the status of sovereign nations and allow them to flex America’s muscle in order to achieve their singular end of earning ever-higher profits. Do we really want these faceless, heartless, money-grubbing entities to have veto power over the national laws that have been painstakingly designed to protect us against corporate and governmental malfeasance?
When Elizabeth Warren expressed similar concerns, President Obama accused her of misrepresenting or misinterpreting the agreement. In response, Warren asked the president to declassify TPP documents in order to promote an honest and open national conversation on the topic. Obama refused. So if the American public and our elected representatives aren’t the ones writing or revising this agreement, who is?
In addition to the executive branch, there are 500 official corporate “trade advisors” behind the TTP. These folks are not trained in writing national or international laws, nor do they have any constitutional authority to do so. They all possess one highly specific skill: rigging the rules of the game so as to maximize the profits of their employers.
This proposal is nonetheless characterized by glaring hypocrisies. For instance, the majority of Congressional support for the TPP has come from Obama-adverse Republicans, most of whom have consistently voted against increasing the minimum wage here in the U.S., on the basis that doing so would interfere with the principles of “free trade.” Why, then, would these selfless proponents of unfettered capitalism at home support minimum wage laws abroad? Furthermore, if this agreement is the economic blessing it is purported to be, why can’t we all bask in the glory of its specifics? Why did President Obama ask Congress to put the proposal on the fast track to unamendable approval if it’s as thoughtful and historically momentous as he’s portrayed it to be? And why do so many non-profit NGOs and interest groups oppose an agreement that is supposedly designed to promote their mission statements?
In my opinion, the answer is obvious. The TPP has not been made public because it would evoke resistance among the American people, and the failed fast-track bill was an attempt to steamroll public opposition. As previously mentioned, the few documents that have been released have been met with disagreement by pretty much everyone who doesn’t own significant shares in any of the top 500 multinational corporations.
The thought of corporate entities blatantly devising backdoor schemes to permanently hijack our hard-earned democratic government makes my stomach churn. If the Trans-Pacific Partnership proposal succeeds, it will catalyze the legitimization of global-scale crony capitalism, effectively turning national governments into comically powerless puppets of multinational corporations. It is encouraging that Congress took a stand against this ill-conceived corporate scheme, and I hope that our legislators will continue to combat this blatant threat to our democratic principles.