Michelle Chen argues that the Obama administration has every reason to be secretive about just what the Trans-Pacific Partnership really is.
Thanks to some intrepid activists with Public Citizen and the Citizens Trade Campaign, the public can glimpse at the closed-door negotiations through a batch of leaked documents. So far, what’s trickled out suggests that Washington is determined to scale up the controversial framework of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), creating a new trade regime that exploits inequality between workers and employers within countries, and global inequalities between the “developed” and “developing” worlds.
The TPP, if current proposals are enacted, would grant extreme powers for corporations to act as quasi-legal entities, and to take states to court in order to dismantle environmental, consumer safety, or labor protections that they feel “unfairly” pinch their profit margins. Building on previous trade agreements like NAFTA that have given foreign investors sweeping powers to circumvent domestic regulations, the proposed framework would establish a litigation system designed to protect the “rights” of investors above citizens.
Such trade deals have often been marketed to American workers as a boon for jobs and domestic industries, but they’ve generally been condemned by unions and activists as a lose-lose for workers at home and abroad, encouraging companies to capitalize on poorer economies where sweatshops can flourish unfettered by regulatory protections. Historically, trade deals like NAFTA and its Central American counterpart, CAFTA, are associated with economic displacement and instability, the erosion of labor and human rights standards, and the subordination of national sovereignty to foreign investors.
Infidelworld 