TRADE DEALS UPDATE: Feb. 5, 2016

[Oscar]

Trade Minister Needs to Break Out of Bureaucrat's Bubble on TPP

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/05/Ch ... at-Bubble/ ]

Deal's massive risks demand independent, government-funded assessments.

By Murray Dobbin, February 5, 2016 TheTyee.ca

Are Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland's officials misleading her about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)?

Freeland signed the agreement Thursday in New Zealand, but repeated her assurances that critics shouldn't worry -- the government hasn't committed to ratifying it and consultations and a full debate will precede a vote in Parliament. That could be up to two years away.

Yet so far the consultation process has not penetrated the ideological bubble created by trade department officials.

Take one example. By far the biggest concern of critics (including Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz) is the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision. This allows corporations to claim damages if they believe a government's laws or regulations unfairly harm their interests or hurt profits. http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/01/18/TP ... Investors/ ]

Freeland seems to be either ill informed or misled about the provision's impact. At a panel discussion in Vancouver last month she seemed unaware of the ISDS. Her fellow panelists, both economics professors, downplayed the threat. [ http://canadians.org/blog/vancouver-bur ... -vancouver ]

For many of us who have dealt with trade bureaucrats promoting these investment protection agreements it is easy to suspect that Freeland is being deliberately misinformed by her own staff.

The Trudeau government is eager to portray itself as open to persuasion on the TPP. To bolster the position that they still might say no, the government has engaged in a flurry of consultations across the country and has made a point of inviting concerned citizens to send in questions and criticisms to Global Affairs Canada: TPP-PTP.consultations@international.gc.ca.

Sounds good. But the execution raises serious questions about how genuine the consultation will be.

First, the vast majority of consultations have been with groups supportive of these agreements: Provincial government ministers, business groups, industry reps, universities, etc. [ http://international.gc.ca/trade-commer ... x?lang=eng ]

Of 74 such meetings (as of Jan. 31), there have been a handful with "students" (but not with student council representatives who have actually studied the TPP) and a couple with labour -- with the Canadian Labour Congress and Unifor.

There have been no meetings with NGOs who have taken the time to examine the TPP closely, like the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, with First Nations (whose agreements with governments can be trumped by ISDS) or environmental groups.

Obviously there is still time for such engagement, but the process so far does not bode well for balanced input.

MORE:

[ http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/05/Ch ... at-Bubble/ ]


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LISTEN: TPP would be disastrous for Canada's innovators, Jim Balsillie warns

[ http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the- ... -1.3433248 ]

Thursday February 04, 2016

Canada has just put its signature to the biggest free trade deal ever negotiated. Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland was at the formal ceremony in Auckland, New Zealand, where the Trans Pacific Partnership was inked. [
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/freelan ... -1.3431631 ]

The TPP, as it's known, links together 12 Pacific Rim countries, including the United States and Japan, in a broad trade pact representing 40 per cent of the world's economies. Though that's if all member countries ratify the pact. And there are plenty of voices urging Canada not to.

One of the TPP's most vocal critics has been Jim Balsillie. The former co-CEO of Research in Motion, now known as Blackberry, helped create Canada's most successful technology company ever, before leaving in 2012 over strategic differences. [
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... e28462854/ ]

Balsille, co-founder of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, [ http://ineteconomics.org/ ] is adamant ratifying the TPP would be Canada's worst-ever foreign policy move. He fears signing the deal would cripple the innovation sector, which he adds is already lagging behind the rest of the world.

What do you think the TPP deal would mean for the country, or your industry?

Send us an email. Find us on Facebook or tweet us @TheCurrentCBC.

This segment was produced by The Current's Julian Uzielli.

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Related Stories

Jim Balsillie fears TPP could cost Canada billions and become worst-ever policy move - Nov. 8, 2015
[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/jim-bal ... -1.3310179 ]


Chrystia Freeland signs Trans-Pacific Partnership deal in New Zealand - Feb. 3, 2016
[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/freelan ... -1.3431631 ]

32% of Canadians support TPP trade deal but many uncertain, poll suggests - Feb. 4, 2016
[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier ... -1.3432143 ]

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The TPP: A Corporate Bill of Rights

[ http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinio ... -0006.html ]

By: Larry Brown Published 3 February 2016

One common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

Governments from around the world are gathering in New Zealand on Thursday to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the TPP.

People around the world are mobilizing to make sure that the agreement, even if signed, does not get ratified.

Why? It’s just another in a long line of trade deals that are aimed at growing our economies by increasing trade between our countries, right? At least that’s what we’re told.

What we aren’t told by our governments is that these so-called trade deals are really not very much about trade at all. They are international corporate constitutions, aimed at limiting the ability of our governments to control transnational corporate behavior: an international Corporate Bill of Rights.

These deals weaken democracy, increase income inequality, endanger our public services, give corporations more rights than the citizenry, further endanger our already stressed environment, and kill jobs. They sound like they should be of concern only to manufacturing industries, since they are called "trade deals," so a union like ours (the Canadian Labor Union), mainly public sector, should not be concerned. However, the modern trade deal is also about trade in services – which is what public services are – and these agreements create pressure to privatize public services. These deals are about lowering wages and cutting jobs, which affects the tax base which should support a vibrant public service. These deals are about preventing new public services, so no growth in the sector.

Here’s an interesting fact: most of the governments that want to sign on to the TPP seem to have no real idea how their country’s economy and social systems will be affected. Freer trade has been an article of faith for decades, but there have been few government studies of the concrete, measurable impacts of all the deals that have been signed, and little forecasting of the effects of signing such a massive new agreement as the TPP. If a government wants to sign on to the TPP, shouldn’t they first have to prove there is a demonstrable benefit from doing so?

Promises that these deals will be good for all of us are little more than lies. NAFTA is one of the biggest of these trade deals. It’s an agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, that has been in place for years. Since NAFTA was signed in 1994, Canada has lost over 550,000 manufacturing jobs. The U.S. has lost over 1 million manufacturing jobs. Mexico has seen a drastic decline in working conditions and wages. Wages in all three countries have stagnated. Income inequality has increased. Environmental
measures by governments have been successfully challenged by corporations. We haven’t seen a significant new social program here in Canada since we signed on to this deal.

Were there any winners from NAFTA? The biggest corporations in Canada, the ones that had pushed hard for the deal, all saw their profits increase. At the same time the number of people these corporations employed went down. These are facts, available for everyone to see. Unfortunately, these facts are seldom discussed by our governments. They don’t fit the narrative about how positive these deals supposedly are.

Here’s another interesting fact: these mega deals are always, always, pushed by the largest corporations. There has never been a union demonstration demanding a trade deal, never a people’s assembly requesting one, never a popular movement agitating for one.

Sometimes small and medium sized businesses think they will benefit, but that doesn’t happen. Our own government has done a study concluding that 99 percent of Canadian businesses have not participated in international trade and most are not equipped to do so.

Granted, the TPP is not NAFTA. But it’s very similar in content and intention. And one common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

Tufts University in the U.S. did an actual study of the likely effects of the TPP. They used modeling based on the United Nations Global Policy Model. The result was sobering – economic losses for the bigger economies, and insignificant growth for the smaller economies, along with a net loss of 650,000 jobs throughout the TPP countries. Labor’s share of the national income will decline throughout the TPP, and income inequality will therefore rise even further.

For this, we are asked to give up democratic control over our economies, the right to make decisions about our environment, the right to regulate corporate behavior. That is a huge price to pay for, at absolute best, a negligible return.

The TPP will not increase the number of jobs, or wages, or provide any real benefit to the peoples of the signing countries.

Here’s what it will do.

It will give corporations the right to challenge laws and regulations of our governments. They would have more right to challenge our governments than we do as citizens. And if the challenges are successful, our governments will have to pay out billions of dollars to these companies.

A ban on fracking, a ban on poisonous chemicals for lawn care, refusal to allow a huge quarry on a scenic coastline – all these decisions, and dozens more, have been challenged under this provision in NAFTA. We taxpayers have paid out big dollars as a result. This flagrant abuse of every democratic principle ever articulated, this absolute priority of corporate profit over people’s rights, is called Investor/State or ISDS. It’s a monstrosity, and it’s in the TPP.

The TPP has a provision that no government in the future could safely develop a new publicly run social program. It’s called the negative list, and it says that if you don’t list something now as exempt from the TPP, you can never protect it in the future. How a government can list a program it hasn’t even thought of yet, has never been explained.

The TPP would have a provision that governments can freely decide to privatize their public services, but once they make that decision they can never reconsider. It’s called the ratchet effect. Governments can only move one way, toward privatization, even if the decision to privatize was a dreadful mistake.

The TPP would increase corporate patent rights, so our drugs will be more expensive, forever more.

Some government leaders have boasted about the wonderful labor rights in the TPP. More empty promises. The labor rights sections are almost entirely made up of nice statements about what governments should aspire to, very little about what they must do.
Environmental protection? Very minimal. The words "climate change" are not even mentioned. And while there are some modest provisions around environmental controls, they would be eclipsed by the Investor State Dispute Settlement rights of corporations to challenge government controls of any kind.

The TPP would severely limit the right of governments to use public spending on roads or hospitals or schools as a way to build the local economy.

Foreign bidders would have to be given equal right to bid on government contracts, so local public money would be used to bolster the profit of an off-shore corporation, instead of to develop local businesses, or create local jobs, because those foreign businesses can bring their own workers with them.

But the most damning description of the real content of the TPP is probably this: it is thousands of pages long, and there is nothing in those thousands of pages that gives governments, or workers, or the public at large, any new rights. Every single page is about limiting the right of governments to control corporate behavior, in one way or another, or about giving corporations more rights than they have now.

One government official said that the TPP had to be negotiated in secret because if people knew what was in it, they wouldn’t stand for it.

Well, now we know.

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Larry Brown is the National Secretary-Treasurer of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: [ http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinio ... -0006.html ]

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TPP threatens to worsen inequality

[ http://www.hilltimes.com/opinion-piece/ ... lity/45120 ]

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement's non-trade rules ensure that those with the most capital now can protect their position, at the expense of economic development opportunities for the poor and the middle class, and of the environment.

The Hill Times By HOWARD MANN | Published: Tuesday, 02/02/2016 3:59 pm EST

The release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) last fall has unleashed a heated debate over its costs and benefits—or, to put it more crudely, its winners and losers. But that debate tends to focus narrowly on particular sectors of the economy—the auto industry and farmers, for instance, in Canada. As such it misses an appreciation of the broader impact of the 12-nation agreement, which boils down this: the TPP overwhelmingly favours one set of economic actors—current capital owners, investors and large business—over everyone else.

For all the hype surrounding the TPP, the economic impacts that result from lower tariffs on trade will be modest. There is a growing consensus that the total growth in GDP will represent no more than one per cent, on average, for all participating states, from now until 2030. A more robust study by Tufts University trade economists suggests far less, with a growth of just 0.28 per cent over 10 years. While this may be a large number in raw terms, nothing fundamental will change.

More important are the non-trade provisions, such as intellectual property and investment. And it is here that the TPP threatens to widen the gulf between different economic classes. The intellectual property chapter, for example, will provide new support to
big pharma and IT firms, through longer periods of intellectual property protection and easier routes to renewing patents through marginal changes technology. These and other provisions will increase the ability of companies to gouge consumers by making it harder for governments to set maximum prices.

And while the investment chapter features language on protecting the right of governments to enact critical environmental regulations, there is a caveat: such measures, including those to implement the new Paris Climate Change Agreement, have to comply with all the provisions of the TPP. In other words, environmental policies are subject to the primacy of investor rights, which are enforceable by private investors against governments through international arbitration.

In addition, essential development policies that are frequently used to increase the economic benefits from new investments are banned by the agreement. Prohibitions on requirements for investors to use local content or support specific research and development will apply to natural resource projects within Canada, limiting the return that these investments deliver to Canadians.
The TPP rests against a backdrop of increasing anxiety over income inequality. According to the Credit Suisse 2015 Global Wealth Report , less than one per cent of the global population controls over 50 per cent of global wealth. By focusing its rules on the protection of existing wealth owners and large businesses, the TPP will exacerbate this trend. Its non-trade rules ensure that those with the most capital now can protect their position, at the expense of economic development opportunities for the poor and the middle class, and of the environment.

That the TPP should come out so one-sided is not unexpected. The absence of public transparency in its negotiation was exacerbated by the singular access of large industry associations and business representatives to texts and negotiators, including in Canada and the United States.

Canada is expected to sign the TPP this week at a ceremony in New Zealand. But it must still be ratified by Parliament before it comes into force. It is time for Canada to say that this is a deal too far, and instead seize the opportunity to use the TPP experience as a jumping off point to lead a new global dialogue on the future direction for trade agreements. Trade agreements should and can be instruments to support rather than impede sustainable development. But the way that these agreements are negotiated must change fundamentally if that is to happen.

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Howard Mann is the senior international law adviser with the International Institute for Sustainable Development.