Not Down With TPP…Now You Know Me

     Last week, the House of Representatives gave President Obama the half-loaf that he and Third Wayers alike always advocate you and I fight for.   It came in the form of "NO" votes on the TAA (the displacement assistance portion of the Transpacific Partnership debacle), but "YES" on the TPA (the “fast track” negotiation authorization portion). 

     Just what was President Obama thinking?   The TPP agreement, while made available to the Congress but only under very strict security (no discussion of details under penalty of criminal indictment, no notes taken into the room, no recording devices, nothing), and is being kept secret from the public – save for our transparency savior Wikileaks!  Did he actually think that he would be able to get TPP/TPA/TAA passed without a hitch just by saying “trust me”?    I’ve fought for the workingman every day for my entire presidency, he says.   But don’t they all say that?  This is the most “progressive” trade deal negotiated yet, he also says.   So HOW is it that way?  Where are the specifics?   And why the big, hard sell (harder than for the Public Option, that’s for DAMNED sure!), and why the secrecy surrounding it, and why NOW?

More after the break…

 

     The case made for the TPP, and this administration’s handling of it, can be summed up as such:

1.     “Fast Track” ensures that there is one party negotiating the deal, not 535;

2.     Open Markets, in the long run, create a “net positive” benefit for the economy (never mind the more expensive American jobs that will inevitably be lost);

3.     If we don’t dictate the terms of trade with the Pacific-Asian countries who are parties to this “deal”, then the Chinese will;

4.     It will be too late to try to pass a deal like this, as we get closer to the 2016 Election season.

     I’m not buying any of it.   For one, abdicating their duty of advice and consent, through “Fast Track”, is an unconstitutional power grab by the Executive Branch.  The secrecy this deal is being negotiated with can only mean that the corporate representatives who are actually writing this deal know that there will be a lot in there that we the people have no appetite for, and what’s more, they are using the President as the front man for their song-and-dance.   Judging from some of the leaked details – ranging from the trade tribunals that are supposed to supersede local court jurisdictions to the new intellectual property language, as well as the negative effects on the pharmaceutical industries of countries like New Zealand, and many, many other things – this isn’t looking like a show of the quality of a Kander/Ebb or Sondheim variety.  

     Then there’s the issue of the “net positive” effect to the economy.   This phrase, which smacks of Orwellian double-speak to me, basically admits that there will be losers in this deal.   The losers are always the workers – as attested by the countless businesses who have disassembled their American and European floor spaces for reassembly in China and other low-wage economies.   The positive is supposed to come in the form of lower prices for goods, representing a substantial part of Wal-Mart’s entire current business model.   But try this on for size:

     How are consumers able to consume?   How do they obtain the means (money) with which to consume?

     That’s right, they WORK FOR IT.

     How can you consume, if you have nothing with which to consume?   How can you consume, if you don’t have the means which to obtain the necessary money with which to consume (namely, a job with an adequate income)?

     The point is this:  WORKERS and CONSUMERS are ONE AND THE SAME.    You hurt one, you are going to hurt the other.

     This sordid scenario is playing out in the US right now, in light of the recent, 20-year anniversary of the passage of NAFTA (Thanks a Freaking Million, President Clinton).   The international business textbook I recently had to read through for my final undergraduate college class stated that NAFTA was a mixed bag of both harm and good for the parties involved.   Tell that to those whose jobs were lost to the maquiladoras over the southern border, with many of THOSE jobs being relocated to China and other regions with rock-bottom labor rates.   

     Then there’s China (who, BTW, just very recently overtook the US as the world’s largest economy.)  They hold over one trillion dollars of American debt.   They are essentially the world’s manufacturing floor.  They are ALREADY DICTATING THE TERMS OF TRADE in Asia and elsewhere.   They have also been flexing their military muscle of late, with their recent naval exercises and island disputes with Japan and other countries in the region.  

     As for the election season, I think that a delay strategy might be just the ticket for killing this thing.   The closer we get to the primaries, the less appetite the potential candidates will have for controversial issues like TPP.    Notice that Hillary Clinton is not mentioning one thing about it? 

     Finally, there’s BHO.    Why now?   A host of reasons have been bandied about.    Legacy.   China’s influence.  Cashing out to the tune of millions of dollars once you leave office, like Clinton did.   I think they all carry weight.  But I’m loathe to forget the photograph of him, taken around the time of his first inauguration, where he was seen walking to a beach chair, holding a copy of Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat.   I think that explains most of the motivation – he’s a true believer, and has guzzled a barrel full of the Friedmanist cool aid.  

     It’s sad that those of on the left have had to fight the man who we thought was more sympathetic to our worldview than he apparently is.   But maybe his true colors are showing.   Those colors are not black, brown, white, yellow, or anything other than…

…green.