Excellent texte d'opinion contre le PTP (TPP)

[cgelinas]

Texte d'opinion par Mark Bittman du NYTimes, datant du 22 avril 2015... mais c'est toujours d'actualité...

Obama and Republicans Agree on the Trans-Pacific Partnership … Unfortunately

There’s an important issue out there you may never have heard of, which is just what its proponents would like. That’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), currently being pushed by the Obama administration and its corporate (and mostly Republican!) allies. It’s a blatant attack on labor, farmers, food safety, public health and even national sovereignty.

And the details of the deal are largely secret. Other than what’s been leaked, the public has no access to its contents, and even members of Congress don’t know much. (On the other hand, “cleared advisers,” mostly corporate lawyers, have full access.) That’s because the TPP is way too important to its sponsors to allow little details like congressional or public input to get in its way, even though constitutional authority over trade is granted to the legislative, not the executive, branch.

This is a bipartisan effort if ever there was one; George Will has called the TPP “Obama’s best idea.” Thus we see the administration, along with pro-business Democrats and Republicans, trying to bulletproof the deal. Last week, a bill was introduced that would give the president “fast-track authority” on the TPP. If that passes, Congress could vote only up or down on the deal, not amend it. That’s quite a bit of presidential power for a scheme that would have a striking impact on the global economy — and the food on our table.

The TPP is little more than enhanced corporation power branded as free trade. It gives corporations the right to challenge government regulations and seek compensation if they think they’ve been treated unfairly by any of the 12 Pacific Rim nations in the deal. (China is currently, but not necessarily permanently, excluded; part of the thinking behind the TPP is to lock up an agreement with these partners before China does.)

Even if you look “only” at food and the environment, the TPP should be ripped apart and put back together with public and congressional input. The pact would threaten local food, diminish labeling laws, likely keep environmentally destructive industrial meat production high (despite the fact that as a nation we’re eating less meat) and probably maintain high yields of commodity crops while causing price cuts.

It would certainly weaken food safety. For example, more than 90 percent of our seafood is imported, a figure that includes fish that were caught domestically and sent overseas for processing before coming back in, which makes the inspection process even more complicated. All told, that’s more than five billion pounds of imports annually, and according to the Center for Food Safety, just 90 federal inspectors guarantee its safety. (The Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 2 percent of imported seafood.) By reducing restrictions on Southeast Asian imports, the TPP would allow more fish containing chemicals that are illegal in domestic aquaculture to reach our shores; by making inspections less effective, it would virtually guarantee that those chemicals make it to our tables.

The agreement would even allow countries to challenge one another’s laws, so that “equivalency” may simply mean that the least powerful regulations become the norm. The United States would have no special standing: If our laws are seen as restraining trade or limiting profits, they could be challenged in special courts, per the TPP’s “investor state” clause. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay over that country’s antismoking laws under just such circumstances; there are several examples of American companies’ flouting local laws and citing trade agreements as an excuse; and Mexico has been sued repeatedly for theoretically diminishing investor profits.

When individual governments have little say, corporate “efficiency” amounts to the global economy’s being run as an ill-regulated business model (an equally egregious trans-Atlantic agreement is currently being negotiated). The projected benefits to the public – as usual, “job creation” leads the list — are mythical, and you don’t have to take my word for it.

Historically, trade laws were geared to enrich the “mother” country — look at the 19th-century Opium Wars in China, which forced open illegal markets so Britain and its allies could benefit. Between World War II and the 1990s, free trade arguably benefited the economies of the countries involved. But the new laws, starting with 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), recognized that capital is now mobile — it doesn’t “live” anywhere — and owes no allegiance to any flag; only shareholders matter.

Nafta is the paradigm of what are most accurately called deregulation deals. It promised better jobs in both the United States and Mexico. Instead, as well-paid workers in the United States were losing jobs to worse-paid workers in Mexico, badly paid Mexican workers were losing jobs to worse-paid workers in China, which in turn put more pressure on workers in the United States.

In fact, if you wanted to single out a culprit for income stagnation and the decline of the power of labor in the United States, Nafta would be a good candidate. It allowed large corporations to move where tax breaks were best and environmental regulations weakest, while forcing labor to compete against lower global wages. While likely not the only cause, since its passage collective and individual gains have been nearly frozen in Mexico; in the United States, the story is much the same.

The situation may be most dire for Mexican farmers. Millions have been displaced, many emigrating north for menial jobs. Meanwhile, imports of American corn (a basic staple in the form of tortillas for 5,000 years), increased fourfold. Imports of wheat, rice, cotton and soybeans have increased similarly. In brief, Mexican farmers have gone to work for transnational companies, whether in Mexico, the United States or elsewhere. Nor did this do much good for farmers to the north, who have seen corn prices fluctuate wildly, leaving them to scramble to maximize yields, which in turn causes environmental damage.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich called the TPP “Nafta on steroids” (“corporate coup d’état” is also good). As the economist Dean Baker said to Bill Moyers, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for corporations, and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this country will be purely incidental.” At this point, nothing about Obama should surprise us, but it’s worth noting that in 2008, as a presidential candidate, he said, “I voted against Cafta, never supported Nafta, and will not support Nafta-style trade agreements in the future.”

All of which is making for some very odd alliances and demonstrating that “far right” and “far left” labels are increasingly useless. That’s because this is a struggle between transnational corporations and just about everyone else.

Of course, some Republican opposition could be crafty positioning, so that when the TPP is found to cost jobs and endanger public health rather than create them and assure it, cynics could simply say, “I told you so.” But in this case Obama has asked for the bad publicity. And although Hillary Clinton’s husband was the architect of this kind of policy, and she worked hard for the TPP while secretary of state, she’s now backing away from what may well be a losing proposition.

That’s the good news: The opposition to fast-tracking appears strong. As Patrick Woodall, a senior policy advocate for Food & Water Watch, said to me, “The forces pushing fast-track are huge, but there is unbelievable public opposition, and at this point the wind is at our back.”

There is such a thing as a good trade agreement, though it’s barely conceivable that Obama and Congress could negotiate one. We could imagine, for example, something that did away with tax havens for corporate profits. (For a detailed analysis of this, see this paper from the Economic Policy Institute.)

But even to have a shot, fast-track must be defeated, and a solid debate must be opened among well-informed representatives, with plenty of public input. More exploitation of labor, fewer public health regulations, more facile production of useless goods and bad food — that is not the direction the global economy needs to go.

[cgelinas]

En février 2016, le gouvernement de Justin Trudeau nous a —malheureusement— propulsé dans une suite pour le Canada, à l'intérieur de l'entente toxique du PTP et cet autre texte d'opinion, par Murray Dobbin dans The Tyee explique cet épisode qui s'est passé en Nouvelle-Zélande...

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

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

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.

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.

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: [email protected].

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. 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.

Gifting arbitrary powers to big corps

The more serious sign that trade officials are busy manipulating their minister is revealed in the answers the government provides to Canadians who take it up on the offer to engage. When they write to the government asking about investment protection and the ISDS in the TPP, here’s the response they get: “With respect to Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), the TPP will not impair the ability of Canada or its partners to regulate and legislate in areas such as the environment, culture, safety, health and conservation. Our experience under the NAFTA demonstrates that neither our investment protection rules nor the ISDS mechanism constrain any level of government from regulating in the public interest.”

This is so demonstrably false as to shock even the most jaded cynic. Does Freeland know what is being said in her name? Since the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, Canada has been the target of 35 investor-state claims under the agreement. Nearly two-thirds involved challenges to environmental protection or resource management laws or regulations. Canada has already paid out more than $170 million in damages in six cases (lost or settled) and abandoned most of the “offending” legislation and regulations. We face additional corporate claims totalling more than $6 billion in potential penalties for NAFTA “violations” such as the Quebec government’s decision to ban fracking under the St. Lawrence River.

This does not take into account the legislation and regulations (federal and provincial) that have never made it out of their cribs, killed by the chill of knowing they wouldn’t pass ISDS muster. A recent UN report quoted a former Canadian official as saying: “I’ve seen the letters from the New York and D.C. law firms coming up to the Canadian government on virtually every new environmental regulation... Virtually all of the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day.”

In one of the most egregious cases decided under NAFTA, Bilcon of Delaware, a tribunal effectively overruled federal and provincial governments’ environmental concerns last year and allowed a quarry to go ahead in Nova Scotia. University of Ottawa law professor Donald McRae, one of the tribunal members, wrote a detailed dissenting opinion warning of the negative impact of the decision.

“Once again, a chill will be imposed on environmental review panels which will be concerned not to give too much weight to socio-economic considerations or other considerations of the human environment in case the result is a claim for damages under NAFTA Chapter 11,” McRae wrote. “In this respect, the decision of the majority will be seen as a remarkable step backwards in environmental protection.”

Even one of NAFTA’s strongest supporters, Toronto trade lawyer Larry Herman, expressed concern that the dispute tribunals were unilaterally expanding their mandate to circumvent domestic courts. The decision, Herman observed, “will feed ammunition to those who oppose international arbitration as a form of dispute settlement.”

Just as these unaccountable panels are expanding their powers to interfere in the democratic legislative process, Canada is about to extend these arbitrary powers to corporations in nine more countries in the TPP.

Selling free trade

Yet so far the “ammunition” provided by this evidence has run smack up against the Kevlar vests in the Global Affairs bureaucracy. The department’s name has changed under the Trudeau government, but its approach is powerfully reminiscent of the bad old days of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Development, when a priesthood of trade bureaucrats protected the Holy Grail of “free trade” against all detractors. So deeply did they believe in their mission that factual analyses of agreements like NAFTA and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) were not even acknowledged, let alone heeded.

Noel Schacter, chief trade policy negotiator for the B.C. NDP government in the late 1990s, recalls dealing with federal officials.

“Federal government trade negotiators sold free trade by overstating the upsides and underestimating the downsides,” he says. ¨This was especially true of investor-state provisions, which had the potential to be lethally damaging to critical social policy areas such as medicare or the environment. These public servants appeared to have little knowledge of these social policy areas and little concern. During my tenure I never saw any independent analysis that demonstrated why provisions in trade treaties were necessary or how the broader public good would be served. It often felt like being in a temple of true believers and those of us who questioned the doctrine were heretics.”

Is there any way to counter the pernicious influence of these free-trade zealots? The most powerful antidote would be independent analyses of the controversial areas of the TPP -- in other words, genuine consultation. The only time this has been done was under the NDP government of Glen Clark, which provided funding for many social sectors -- such as First Nations, women, unions, and environmentalists -- to hire experts and study the impact of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment on their constituencies. The resulting studies led the B.C. government to oppose the MAI (which eventually failed to win needed international support).

If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Freeland are truly committed to broad consultation beyond the business community, they should follow the same model.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency already does something similar. Its Participant Funding Program “supports individuals, non-profit organizations and Aboriginal groups interested in participating in federal environmental assessments.” It would be a tragic irony if this consultation program led to new environmental legislation -- which then triggered a multi-billion-dollar claim by a foreign corporation under the TPP.