Close to a decade in the making, the most important trade pact in a generation moved closer to becoming a reality on Monday.
Thanks to the alphabet soup of acronyms and the byzantine path the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has taken, and the secrecy in which talks have been conducted, many people have ignored the pact. But as a deal gets closer to being sealed, tempers are fraying and the TPP is set to make its way up the news agenda. Here’s your guide through the maze – what we can see of it anyway.
So we have a deal.
Yes, at least the beginning of a deal.
In a final round of negotiations, Pacific trade ministers from Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam reached the widest-ranging trade deal in a generation, covering everything from pharmaceuticals and banking to milk. The terms of the agreement will now have to be approved by each of the TPP countries.
Who is missing?
The notable exception is China. In part, the deal is meant to tackle China’s dominance in the region. China has its own trade plans under discussion but could one day be part of the TPP.
Will the US sign off?
It should do – although the effort won’t be without friction. Hoping to avoid a long, drawn-out fight over the TPP, Obama asked the US Congress to give him Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to negotiate the trade agreement. TPA gives Congress the ability to review and vote for or against a final trade agreement, but they are not able to amend it or filibuster. Getting the TPA through Congress wasn’t easy, but after weeks of back and forth the bill was finally passed in late June.
Who is against this trade deal?
Among those speaking out against the agreement are unions, workers’ rights groups and environmentalists, all of whom have traditionally been Obama supporters. Many in the president’s own party – including senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – oppose the trade deal. Free speech advocates and financial reformers are also worried about the deal. Warren is specifically afraid that if it is passed, a future president could use the TPP to change regulations like Dodd-Frank that are meant to safeguard US investors.
In a statement issued on Monday, Sanders said that he is “disappointed but not surprised by the decision to move forward on the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that will hurt consumers and cost American jobs.
“Wall Street and other big corporations have won again. It is time for the rest of us to stop letting multinational corporations rig the system to pad their profits at our expense,” he said. He added that this agreement was akin to failed trade deals with Mexico and China which cost the US millions of jobs and vowed to do what he could to defeat the agreement in Congress.
Who supports the agreement?
Big businesses like Nike – from whose headquarters Obama controversially chose to shill for the deal – support the agreement because it would reduce the tariffs on the shoes they produce overseas and then ship to the US. (Right now 98% of shoes in the US are imported.) They also argue free trade will benefit US companies and create more jobs at home. The deal would clarify trade rules that currently ensnare businesses large and small in red tape and would arguably make trading in the Pacific rim far easier.
Did the corporations lobby for passage of the deal?
They sure did. An analysis of Federal Election Commission data showed that corporate members of the US Business Coalition for TPP donated more than $1m to members of US Senate campaigns between January and March of this year, when fast-tracking the TPP was being debated.
Here is what that analysis found:
- Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.
- The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.
- The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.
Wasn’t there another agreement that promised much the same but cost the US jobs?
Yes. That was Nafta – the North American Free Trade Agreement – signed in 1994 between the US, Canada and Mexico. As Sanders points out, post-Nafta the US lost nearly 700,000 jobs, and over 60% of the lost jobs were in manufacturing.
Obama is really tired of people making the Nafta comparison. While speaking at Nike HQ in May, he told the audience that Nafta was a different agreement, passed 20 years ago.
“In fact, this agreement fixes some of what was wrong with Nafta by making labor and environmental provisions actually enforceable,” he said. He argued the agreement will not cost US jobs and will raise standards for workers in countries like Vietnam, where many large US companies currently outsource work.
So who is right, and what does the agreement actually say?
Well, that’s the thing: we don’t know. The agreement is secret. The most detail we have had so far comes from WikiLeaks, which leaked chapters on intellectual property proposals that have caused consternation online. “If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs,” said the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, Obama insisted that the deal is not secret at all.
… how?
Well, he says that people will get to see it before he officially signs off on it. This is what he said in May:
[Y]ou’ve got some critics saying that any deal would be rushed through; it’s a secret deal, people don’t know what’s in it. This is not true. Any agreement that we finalize with the other 11 countries will have to be posted online for at least 60 days before I even sign it. Then it would go to Congress – and you know they’re not going to do anything fast. So there will be months of review. Every T crossed, every I dotted. Everybody is going to be able to see exactly what’s in it.
So what now?
Now, we wait for the 30 chapters of the agreement to be posted. Everyone – from lawmakers to unions to lobbyists – is eager to get their hands on a copy of the deal to see what exactly it contains.
“We ask the administration to release the text immediately, and urge legislators to exercise great caution in evaluating the TPP,” Richard Trumka, president of the largest labor union federation in the US, AFL-CIO, said on Monday.
After it receives the text of the agreement, Congress will have 90 days to review it before a straight yes-or-no vote. Thanks to the TPA, there will be no amendments and no filibusters.
Wait, so this is not over yet?
Nope. Let’s get together in another three months and see how it’s going then.
Jana Kasperkevic
The Guardian October 5, 2015
