Right here in Atlanta, a dozen Pacific nations along with the United
States have finalized a massive trade agreement called the Trans Pacific
Partnership. But is the TPP literally the worst trade deal in the
world?
This is a Reality Check you won’t see anywhere else.
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, like
President Barack Obama,
is a big supporter of the TPP. The mayor told Sharon Reed that what is
really important about the TPP is beating China to other Asian-Pacific
countries.
“It really is essential that we beat China into a
relationship with these Asian-Pacific countries and that the United
States the rules of the road and the terms of the engagement and we have
an important ally in Japan and that we send a message about who they
want to place their global future,” Reed
said.
Is that the case?
The
truth is that defining what the TPP actually is, is very, very
difficult. Why? Because the text of the agreement is super secret.
Seriously—it is so secret that not even all members of Congress have been
allowed to read it.
Even weirder, those who have been allowed to read it must do so in a
secret room in the basement of the Capitol building. Seriously.
That
doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t know anything about the TPP. And
the bits that we do know about it reveal that this really isn’t a trade
deal.
Take, for instance, the latest meeting over the TPP with world leaders who met here in Atlanta. What were they discussing?
The
United States argued for longer protections for exclusivity for
prescription drugs. The U.S. delegation was arguing that the trade
agreement should expand globally at a 12-year exclusivity period for
drugs that treat diseases like cancer.
Australia, which only
allows five years of exclusivity, and five other delegations argued
against it, saying that would keep life-saving medicines from patients
who cannot afford them.
Doctors Without Borders came out against this stating:
“TPP
countries have agreed to United States government and multinational
drug company demands that will raise the price of medicines for
millions. . . . The big losers in TPP are patients and treatment
providers in developing countries. . . . The TPP will still go down in
history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in
developing countries.”
That’s not very encouraging. What else do
we know about the TPP? Well, it is not just an agreement extending
monopolies for drug companies. It is also an agreement that creates
massive copyright protections.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation
says that, “Despite its earlier promises that the TPP would bring
‘greater balance’ to copyright, more than any other recent trade
agreement, the most recent leak of the intellectual property chapter
belies their claims. The U.S. Trade Representative [Michael Froman]
(USTR) has still failed to live up to its word that it would enshrine
meaningful public rights to use copyrighted content in this agreement.”
U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry has said otherwise: “…It will create
jobs. The net result for the United States is that it will grow our
economy and strengthen America’s position in the world.”
But that’s not actually true, according to the Washington Post who gave Kerry four “Pinochios” for that statement.
The
claim that the TPP would create jobs does not take into account income
gains and changing wages. According to the government’s own sources,
imports and exports would increase by the same amount, resulting in a
net number of zero new jobs.
A trade agreement that creates no
jobs sounds like NAFTA (North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement). A trade
agreement that creates greater global monopolies on medicine, and one
that creates more enforcement of copyright and intellectual property,
would make it much worse than NAFTA.
President Obama must wait at
least 90 days after notifying congress of the deal before he can sign it
and sent it to Capitol Hill, and the full text of the agreement must be
made public for at least 60 of those days. We’ll learn more then.
But
what you need to know is that the worst thing about the TPP is
something called the ISDS—the Investor-State Dispute Settlement.
Under
the ISDS, foreign corporations would be allowed to appeal legal
decisions to international tribunals rather than face domestic courts.
That’s Reality Check. Let’s talk about that on Twitter @BenSwann_
