Tag Archives: tpp

Japan proposes tariff cuts for products sourced from TPP countries

Posted on by

Kyodo     Aug 29, 2013    http://www.japantimes.co.jp

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN – Japan has proposed tariff cuts for products made from materials produced in countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks, negotiation sources said Thursday.

For Japan, the proposal made during the ongoing round of TPP talks in Brunei means lower or no tariffs would be levied on Japanese firms’ products, subsequently boosting their competitiveness against those of countries not included in the TPP.

Twelve members of the TPP talks, including the United States, have been negotiating the rules for setting the scope of tariff reductions and eliminations in the working group for “rules of origin” in the TPP negotiations.

The 19th round is under way from Aug. 22 to Friday as countries aim to conclude a deal by the end of the year.

Japan is seeking a common rule among the TPP countries instead of having variations depending on each member country.

The negotiations on the rules of origin had been stalled, however, as Vietnam has been aiming to expand exports of its apparel and textiles by including those items made from yarn produced in China, a non-TPP member, in the target of tariff cuts and elimination, against the U.S. plan to limit the scope.

To facilitate the talks, the TPP countries have separated the negotiations on textiles from those on rules of origin.

The nine other countries involved in the TPP talks are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore.

Concerns Raised That TPP Negotiations Ensure Rights Of Countries Not Impinged On

Posted on by

By Andrew Chernoff    August 29, 2013 Just-saying

Some people in the host country of the 19th Round of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Negotiations in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei are concerned about tobacco and the push by the United States and its’ tobacco multinational companies to water down nations’ rights to enact legislation or rules that discourage the use of tobacco products in the TPP participating countries.

In the August 29, 2013 edition of the Brunei Times newspaper, a letter to the editor raised a further concern that perhaps, it was not just tobacco that countries were being influenced to change their legislation or rules about.

The letter titled, “Solid stance or wishful thinking on TPP?”, the writer says:

“IN A Canadian paper dated August 27, 2013, it was stated that “The Americans, apparently at the behest of tobacco companies, are trying to water down nations’ rights to enact legislation or rules that discourage the use of tobacco products”.

Are tobacco companies the only ones doing this?

The letter from MoFAT published in your paper on the same date stated that “On the queries on whether the TPP will impinge upon Brunei Darussalam’s sovereignty, our accession to the TPP will not prevent us from continuing to apply our laws and regulations”.

“Watering down” national rights to enact certain kinds of legislation or rules would certainly lead to impingement of a country’s sovereignty.”

This concern is not just one the citizens of Brunei should be concerned about. Canadians should have the same concern, and with the secrecy that abounds with negotiations, and the fact that the Canadian government is determined to make the decision on the final look of the partnership agreement, all Canadians must make sure that our politicians inform us of the particulars of the agreement items and get feedback from the Canadian electorate before Parliament gives royal assent.

As one commenter to the article in the Brunei Times said, and I quote, “The public at large (society) needs to participate in this debate so governments can formulate better strategies to balance economic diversification efforts and protection of the public.”

I wholeheartedly agree. How about you?

Japanese farmers’ opposition to TPP waning, Malaysian minister says

Posted on by

Kyodo News International    August 29, 2013

Japan’s minister in charge of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, Akira Amari, has said opposition toward the TPP from his country’s powerful agriculture lobby is dying down, albeit slowly, according to Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Minister Mustapa Mohamad.

Speaking to reporters this week, Mustapa said Amari made the remark to him on the sidelines of the recently concluded TPP ministerial meeting in Brunei last week.

Later, Amari said he had not made a direct remark on farmers’ concerns to Mustapa, but he indicated that someone in his delegation may have made the comment.

Mustapa, however, told Kyodo News, “The Japanese shared with us some issues they have in agriculture, but they told me that opposition is slowly dying down. It wasn’t as serious as it was six months ago. In their view, it’s manageable.”

The agriculture lobby in Japan has been at the forefront in opposing the Trans-Pacific free trade deal, urging the government to protect sensitive farm products like rice, wheat, beef, pork, dairy products and sugar.

Japan, which first participated in the TPP negotiations only at the tail end of the 18th round in Malaysia, is now in full gear at the 19th round in Brunei that runs through Friday.

Mustapa described the Japanese delegation as “very gung ho.”

“Japan is one of those countries that’s very committed. Although they’ve just come on board, they’re very aggressive,” he said.

The Malaysian government is also facing growing opposition toward the TPP.

Leading the dissent is former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who on Monday urged the government to pull out from the talks.

He slammed the free trade pact as a U.S. tool to colonize smaller countries such as Malaysia.

But one of his concerns is that the pact would strip away the government’s affirmative action policy of giving special treatment to ethnic Malays, who account for more than 60 percent of the country’s 29 million population but still lag behind the minority ethnic Chinese in the economic sector.

Mustapa said the government will conduct two cost-benefit analyses on the TPP — one on the impact on small and medium-sized enterprises and the interests of ethnic Malays, and the other on the overall national interest.

The studies, once they begin, are expected to take about two to three months to complete.

Mustapa said the studies will not delay the negotiations that are targeted to be wrapped up by year-end.

“Negotiation is still in progress. There’s no finality to it yet,” he said.

He added, “There are many issues that are still outstanding and we’re not going to be bound by any timeline.”

He reiterated that “if the agreement doesn’t serve the national interest, we will not sign.”

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement involves Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, which together account for about a third of global economic output.

TPP: Prescription for Galloping Corporatism

Posted on by

Michele Swenson    Michele Swenson   Author, activist   http://www.huffingtonpost.com

08/28/2013

Arsenic and Old Lace is a movie depicting two older sisters who spike elderberry wine with arsenic and serve it to lonely elderly gentlemen to ease them out of their misery. Declares their nephew, insanity doesn’t run in the family — “It practically gallops.”

Now in the third year of secret negotiations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been branded a trade agreement on steroids. The TPP signifies the ultimate corporate power grab — galloping corporatism.

TPP negotiations, hidden from public, media or congressional oversight, have been heavily weighted by 500 corporate versus 100 non-corporate advisors. Even Sen. Ron Wyden, Chair of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Trade, the congressional committee with jurisdiction over the TPP, has been denied access to the text of U.S. proposals submitted during TPP negotiations. After two years of being excluded, in May Sen. Wyden submitted legislation requiring access to the proposal for those with congressional oversight.

One of few granted a view of the text on the condition that he not share its contents, Rep. Alan Grayson called the draft “a gross abrogation of American sovereignty” and “a punch in the face” to the American middle class (what’s left of it). He notes the irony that “the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.” Characterizing it an assault on democratic government and the public interest on a variety of fronts, Grayson surmised, “It’s all about tying the hands of democratically elected governments and shunting authority over to the non-elected for the benefit of multinational corporations.”

The TPP represents “The largest corporate power grab you’ve never heard of,” concluded Rep. Keith Ellison. Ratification of the trade agreement portends disastrous economic consequences, and the death of “democracy as we know.”

Some anticipated consequences of the TPP, and its sister European Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), proposal: compromise of environmental and worker protections in virtually every developed nation; banks will become “way too big to fail”; prescription medications will be more expensive; natural gas costs will rise as there will be open season on our lands for fracking in order to export natural gas to the highest bidder; decline of food quality standards will jeopardize health; Monsanto will have free reign for unregulated sale of unidentified GMO foods; and corporations like Nestle will easily corner the market on water as a saleable commodity, rather than a basic right.

Continued Subversion of the Courts by Multinational Corporations

Leaked text reveals that U.S. TPP negotiators are rewriting substantial segments of U.S. law having nothing to do with trade. A two-track legal system would permit foreign firms to sidestep domestic courts and laws to sue TPP governments in foreign tribunals, exposing governments to massive new financial liabilities. Multinational corporations and investors could demand compensation on many different grounds – domestic financial, health, environmental, land use laws and other laws they claim undermine their TPP-defined right to profit.

Critics cite patent and copyright provisions of the agreement that could boost the cost of medicines and restrict Internet freedom, while anti-smoking advocates warn it could create a new forum for tobacco companies to aggressively challenge government efforts to curb smoking.

Further weighting the scales of justice against the people, negotiations reportedly include the condition that foreign tribunals be staffed by “private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as ‘judges’ and as advocates for the investors suing the governments.” Among 12 participating countries, U.S. negotiators alone have sought to expand the functions of the extra-judicial foreign tribunals to enforce foreign investor contracts related to operating government utilities and concessions surrounding natural resources on federal lands.

Continued corporate usurpation of the Courts is represented by recent Supreme Court decisions conceding evermore power to corporations while undermining individual access to judicial redress. Citizens United vs. FEC is just one case conceding individual rights to corporate influence. The Center for Media and Democracy has identified 71 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bills narrowing citizen access to the courts, introduced in the first 6 months of 2013. Fourteen of those became law. ALEC model bills cap damages, limit corporate liability, or otherwise make it more difficult for citizens to hold corporations accountable for products or services that result in injury or death.

A 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision rejected claims of human rights abuse by a corporation on foreign soil based on the Alien Tort Statute. The decision reinforces near-immunity for private contractors operating in secrecy, without accountability for well-documented war crimes. Thus, four former Iraqi Abu Ghraib prisoners who were tortured are being sued by their torturers. The four had filed a lawsuit against private military contractor CACI International for torture experienced at Abu Ghraib Prison: “electric shocks; repeated brutal beatings; sleep deprivation; sensory deprivation; forced nudity; stress positions; sexual assault; mock executions; humiliation; hooding; isolated detention; and prolonged hanging from the limbs.” Not only was their lawsuit dismissed by a federal judge who cited the recent Supreme Court decision, the four plaintiffs are now being sued by CACI International which seeks to recoup $15,000 in legal costs from the four Iraqi prisoners. The plaintiffs’ lawyers are appealing the decision on the grounds that a U.S. corporation operating in a U.S. military prison should be subject to U.S. law.

Obama Administration Reversal on Trade Policy

President Obama has moved 180 degrees from his 2008 campaign pledge “to oppose Bush-style free trade agreements that lead to thousands of lost American jobs” and his vow not to support “NAFTA-type agreements.” Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch analysis reports that the final 2008 DNC platform draft outlining the Obama Agenda depicted trade agreements as major tools to leverage labor and environmental standards, human rights, poverty alleviation, climate control, national security, as well as other progressive issues.

Instead of fixing foreign trade investment rules to protect the public interest, Public Citizen’s analysis reveals that Obama administration TPP negotiators would expand on the extreme investor privileges outlined in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and subsequent NAFTA-style deals, which some have opposed for undermining public health, the environment, democratic policymaking, and for favoring foreign over domestic firms.
U.S. taxpayers are already on the hook for past trade agreements: Public Citizen notes that there are currently over $13 billion in pending corporate “investor-state” trade pact attacks on domestic environmental, public health and transportation policy. “….mere threats of such cases have resulted in countries dropping important public interest initiatives, exposing their populations to harm that could have been avoided…Over $719 million has been paid out under U.S. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) alone – 70 percent which are from challenges to natural resource and environmental policies, not traditional expropriations.”

State Plans for Public Banks Jeopardized by TPP

Currently 20 states are considering some form of state public banking legislation, plans that could well be jeopardized by the TPP. The United States Representative’s chief TPP negotiator, Barbara Weisel, contends that entities like the Bank of North Dakota unfairly compete with private banks. North Dakota, the only state with a Public Bank, has been able to invest in infrastructure and employment, thus weathering economic crisis better than most. Weisel insists that “preferential provision of goods and services” by a government would be unfairly conferred on “State Owned Enterprises”(SOEs), thus disadvantaging private banks. Weisel frankly protests that “State Owned Enterprises….can be used to undermine what we’re otherwise trying to gain from this free trade agreement.”

One observer writes, “…depending on the [TPP] report’s language, foreign bankers could claim that the Bank of North Dakota (BND) stops them from lending to commercial banks throughout the state.” He cites Rudy Avizius’ New World Order Blueprint Leaked: “If implemented, this agreement will hard code corporate dominance over sovereign governments into international law that will supersede any federal, state, or local laws of any member country.”

Fast Track Authority Bypasses Constitutional Congressional Oversight

Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress exclusive authority to determine the terms of international trade agreements. Public Citizen notes that Obama administration TPP negotiators are pushing Fast Track trade promotion authority for the executive branch, which could then determine contents of the trade agreement and sign it without Congressional review or vote.

In June Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan initiated a letter signed by 35 other House freshmen, addressed to Ranking Ways and Means Member Sander Levin and copied to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, expressing serious concern about Congress relinquishing trade authority. “The administration has yet to release draft texts after more than three years of negotiations, and the few TPP FTA texts that have leaked reveal serious problems,” the letter reads. “Thus, we are especially concerned about any action that would transfer Congress’s exclusive Constitutional trade authority to the president.”

Rudy Avizius names the TPP the ultimate corporate takeover of the public Commons and the overthrow of democracy. He writes, the results of the proposed TPP “would be total corporate global governance with an accompanying police state. In this new system the role of elected governments would be to serve as subservient agents for the transnational corporations, while the armies, police, and courts would serve the interests of these transnational corporations.”

Further information: Expose the TPP
Flush the TPP

Federal NDP trade critic calls for more transparency in TPP negotiations

Posted on by

2013 08 28    http://www.ndp.ca

VANCOUVER – NDP Trade critic Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway) is calling on the Harper Government to give Canadian MPs the same information that US Members of Congress have about the ongoing Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. 

The NDP has learned that all members of the US Congress are being given access to the draft text of the TPP. 

“The TPP is a sweeping agreement covering issues that affect many areas of Canada’s economy and society – including several areas of policy that have never been subject to trade agreements before,” said Davies. “By keeping Parliament completely in the dark on negotiations the Conservatives also leave Canadians in the dark and, for an agreement of this magnitude that is abnormal and unacceptable. 

“If the US can allow its legislators to see the TPP text, there is no reason that Canada can’t,” Davies said. 

Davies further expressed concern that American legislators are being given an undue advantage over Canadian MP’s, saying “it is both unfair and unwise for Canadian parliamentarians to operate from such an imbalanced knowledge base in discussions with our US colleagues.” 

Access to Information requests have also revealed that there is a small group of insider industry associations that have special access to Canada’s negotiating position, but the Harper Government has prevented others from having access to the text, including Parliamentarians. 

“Canadians have a right to know how trade policies are being negotiated, and Parliamentarians have a duty to defend the public’s interests,” said Davies.  “Allowing private actors to have information that Parliamentarians don’t have is inappropriate,” said Davies. 

Recently, trade experts from across the political spectrum have criticized the Harper Government for being far too secretive in its approach to trade negotiations. 

“Canada’s trade performance has suffered badly since the Conservatives took power,” said Davies. “The prosperity of all Canadians depends on healthy, balanced international trade. To get there, we need trade negotiations that are more inclusive and transparent. 

“Mr. Harper’s obsession with secrecy is unhelpful, undemocratic and, as the US practice demonstrates, unnecessary.”