The TPP was actually written by corporations, not by politicians. It actually allows corporations to sue governments to circumvent their laws. It’s a fascist dream trade deal.
The TPP is so secret that members of Congress can’t even see the agreement unless they obtain special permission, then they must adhere to strict confidentiality about what they read.
The agreement was discovered on a corporate computer and published by Wikileaks in June 2014.
“While the TPP is being called a trade agreement, the US already has trade agreements (with most of the) countries involved in the talks. Instead, the TPP is a major power grab by large corporations,” states Margaret Flowers, MD and former congressional member of Physicians for a National Health Program.
“The text of the TPP includes 29 chapters, only five of which are about trade,” Flowers added. “The remaining chapters are focused on changes that multinational corporations have not been able to pass in Congress, such as restrictions on internet privacy, increased patent protections, greater access to litigation and further financial deregulation.”
President Barack Obama is again pushing international leaders to finalize the trans-Pacific trade deal between 12 countries that would eradicate tariffs and regulations, but critics say the secretive negotiations have been a boon only to corporations.
Leaders of the countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal at this week’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings have not set a timetable for settling the pact, but the Obama administration is optimistic that by end of his eight-day visit to Asia a deal can be reached.
If finalized, it would eliminate tariffs on goods and services and change regulations for labor, government procurement, state-owned enterprises, intellectual property and environmental protections. The deal would also enhance the United States’ presence in Asia, something the White House has wanted to do ever since President Obama was first inaugurated.
“This has the potential for being an historic agreement,” Obama said as he opened the trade talks being held on the sidelines of the broader Asia-Pacific conference in Beijing, according to The Associated Press. Notably, China is not a party to the pact.
READ MORE: Secret trade agreement covering 68 percent of world services published by WikiLeaks
In a joint statement following the meeting, leaders from the 12 nations involved said they have been encouraged by recent progress.
“We remain committed to ensuring that the final agreement reflects our common vision of an ambitious, comprehensive, high-standard, and balanced agreement that enhances the competitiveness of our economies, promotes innovation and entrepreneurship, spurs economic growth and prosperity, and supports job creation in our countries,” the statement read.
Source: rt.com
The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks on Thursday as the transparency group’s editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press.
In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said“proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets,” and have participated in “a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre” by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research.
Touting the deal earlier this year, the United States Chamber of Commerce said a successful TISA agreement would benefit America’s services industry and its 96 million, or 84 percent, of the nation’s private sector workers. “As its chief goals, the TISA should expand access to foreign markets for US service industries and ensure they receive national and most-favored nation treatment,” the chamber said of the deal in February. “It should also lift foreign governments’ sectoral limits on investment in services,” “eliminate regulatory inconsistencies that at times loom as trade barriers” and “prohibit restrictions on legitimate cross‐border information flows and bar local infrastructure mandates relating to data storage.”
WikiLeaks warns that this largely important trade deal has been hardly discussed in public, however, notwithstanding evidence showing that the policy makers involved want to establish rules that would pertain to services used by billions worldwide.
“The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals – mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt – into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers,” WikiLeaks said in a statement. “The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data.”
Additionally, the current draft also includes language inferring that, upon the finishing of negotiations, the document will be kept classified for five full years.
In Australia, journalists at The Age reported that experts say the proposed changes included within the WikiLeaks document “could undermine Australia’s capacity to independently respond to and weather any future global financial crisis.”
Dr. Patricia Ranald, a research associate at the University of Sydney and convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, told the paper that the documents suggest the US wants to “tie the hands” of other governments, including allied ones, by way of sheer deregulation.
“Amendments from the US are seeking to end publicly provided services like public pension funds, which are referred to as ‘monopolies’ and to limit public regulation of all financial services,” she said. ”They want to freeze financial regulation at existing levels, which would mean that governments could not respond to new developments like another global financial crisis.”
Un-necessary!!!