Obama is pushing the Senate to give him fast track authority to cut a massive trade deal because he doesn’t have the needed 2/3’s vote to ratify the treaty in question. That alone should tell you something is amiss. Even when Democrats were in charge fast track was out of the question. But our leading Senate RINO Mitch McConnell is on-board even as he acknowledged that it’s an “enormous grant of power” but needed as “an important part of America’s economy.”
For those not familiar with fast track, it strips Congress of its authority to control the content of the trade agreement, handing that authority to the executive branch. Congress eventually gets a vote after the negotiations are completed and the agreement signed, but it would only be an up or down vote, an all or nothing, with no amendments and no possibility of a filibuster to kill it. What it amounts to is an open invitation for Obama and his cronies to use this authority to extend their left-wing agenda.
The treaty in question is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP or TPA) which has more to do with greasing the wheels of world commerce and increasing the ruling elites control than it has to do with the American economy or the economy of any participating nation.
Negotiated in total secrecy without Congressional input with thirteen Pacific Rim nations by 600 multinational corporations and industry trade groups, the TPP will undermine federal, state and local laws, including those governing food safety, environmental protections, internet freedom, worker’s rights, healthcare and drug prices, banking and financial regulation. It will kill American jobs and destroy America’s sovereignty.
All that is known of the treaty to date is from leaked drafts. So far we know that it will force all participating countries to harmonize food safety standards to the lowest common denominator of participating governments. Americans could end up having to import seafood, beef or chicken products that don’t even meet basic US food safety standards and the FDA would be powerless to shut down these imports.
We also know that the treaty contains numerous gifts to Big AG, among which is a backdoor entry for genetically modified seeds and crops to prevent countries from banning or from requiring the labeling of GMO products if biotech companies determine that those countries’ strict policies restrict fair trade and infringe on the companies’ “rights” to profit. And that “right” to profit? Well, any disputes of that right would be dependent upon an international tribunal.
The IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples’ abilities to innovate. In the US, this is likely to further entrench controversial aspects of US copyright law, such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA]) and restrict the ability of Congress to engage in domestic law reform to meet the evolving IP needs of American citizens and the innovative technology sector. The recently leaked US-proposed IP chapter also includes provisions that appear to go beyond current US law.
The TPP would force the adoption of the US DMCA Internet intermediaries copyright safe harbor regime in its entirety. It will compel signatory nations to enact laws banning circumvention of digital locks (technological protection measures or TPMs) that mirror the DMCA and treat violation of the TPM provisions as a separate offense even when no copyright infringement is involved.
Dangerously vague text on the misuse of trade secrets could be used to enact harsh criminal punishments against anyone who reveals or even accesses information through a “computer system” that is allegedly confidential. It creates copyright terms well beyond the internationally agreed period in the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), possibly extending protections from the life of the author to another 50, 70 or 120 years.
A genuine free trade agreement between the U.S. and the emerging markets throughout the Pacific would create economic windfall for all rather than for a few left-wing elites or big corporate Democratic donors.
I think economist and founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker, summed it up nicely when he wrote last year that “the TPP is not about free trade, but can more accurately be described as a pact designed to increase the wealth and power of crony[ists].”
Contract your Senator and demand NO FAST TRACK
