Quebec dairy farmers panicked over Trans-Pacific deal
Conservative candidates say they would protect Canada’s best interests in any trade deal
Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations resume in Atlanta
(Canadian Press) Negotiations on the TransPacific Partnership, a massive free-trade proposal involving Canada and 11 other nations, will resume in Atlanta, Georgia today.
Chief negotiators from the 12 countries, which have a combined population of 800 million people, will hold sessions through to Tuesday. And those meetings will set the stage for further talks involving TPP trade ministers on Wednesday, Sept., 29 and Thursday, Oct., 30.
Canada’s supply management system has been a significant sore point in the ongoing negotiations.
The United States and New Zealand, in particular, have been pressuring Canada to reduce its tariffs on foreign dairy products, which are among the highest of all TPP members.
Canada recently committed to increased imports of European cheese in a trade deal with the European Union, however, Prime Minister Harper has vowed that Canada will stand by its dairy producers in the TPP talks.
24 September
Obama contacts Mexico, not Canada, to help conclude Pacific Rim deal
U.S. President Barack Obama is reaching out to his Mexican counterpart, Enrique Pena Nieto, as Washington launches a charm offensive to close a massive Pacific Rim trade deal next week.
As of Thursday afternoon, he had not made a similar call to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The White House announced Thursday that Mr. Obama called the Mexican President on Wednesday regarding Trans-Pacific Partnership talks to discuss “the importance of bringing the negotiations to a swift conclusion.” Mr. Harper’s staff said the Conservative Leader had not received a phone call from the White House.
Both Canada and Mexico, NAFTA partners with the United States, are standing in the way of of a TPP deal because of a dispute with Japan over how much of each auto or car part can be made overseas and still qualify to be sold in North America without duties under the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mexico, though, is arguably a far more vital auto-sector ally for Mr. Obama in his quest to seal a TPP deal. Mexico ranks second behind the United States and ahead of Canada in annual auto production, and its output is growing every year. The country once considered the junior partner in NAFTA will be producing five million vehicles annually by 2020, while Canadian output is expected to be about two million vehicles.
23 September
Ed Fast confirms attendance at Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations in Atlanta
While the Conservatives would undoubtedly use a TPP deal to bolster their economic record during an election campaign, Fast rejected the notion his attendance at the negotiations was to win votes.
“By no means is the fact that we’re at the table today a political gesture,” he said.
5 August
The TTP (Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership) talks in Hawaii stalled. Writing in Forbes, John Brinkley says TPP Is Still Alive But Prognosis Is Iffy at Best, adding that “Last week’s failure to close the deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership set the clock ticking. Negotiators are running out of time to reach an agreement and get it ratified by the 12 governments involved.” For Canada, the continued negotiations are a bit problematic – some question whether the minister has a mandate to negotiate anything during the campaign. After an election writ is signed, the government of the day transitions into caretaker mode, with ministers limited to routine business unless there is an emergency. But according to guidelines released Monday by the Privy Council Office, which oversees the public service, ministers and officials may continue treaty negotiations. “When negotiations are at a critical juncture with timelines beyond Canada’s control, the failure to participate in ongoing negotiations during the caretaker period could negatively impact Canada’s interests,” the guidelines state. “Under such conditions, a compelling case may be made for ongoing efforts to protect Canada’s interests.”
1 August
Pacific Rim free trade talks fall short of deal
(Reuters) Pacific Rim trade ministers failed to clinch a deal on Friday to free up trade between a dozen nations after a dispute flared up over auto trade between Japan and North America, New Zealand dug in over dairy trade and no agreement was reached on monopoly periods for next-generation drugs.
Trade ministers … fell just short of a deal at talks on the Hawaiian island of Maui but were confident an agreement was within reach.
“The undergrowth has been cleared away in the course of this meeting in a manner that I would say is streets ahead of any of the other ministerial meetings that we have had,” New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser said.”You can see clearly that there are one or two really hard issues, and one of them is dairy.”
Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb said the problem lay with the “big four” economies of the United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico. “The sad thing is, 98 percent is concluded,” he said.
Failure to seal the agreement is a setback for U.S. President Barack Obama, given the trade pact’s stance as the economic arm of the administration’s pivot to Asia and an opportunity to balance out China’s influence in the region.
26 July
Trans-Pacific trade negotiators face high-wire act in Hawaii
(CNBC) Pacific Rim officials meet in Hawaii this week for talks that could make or break an ambitious trade deal which aims to boost growth and set common standards across a dozen economies ranging from the United States to Brunei.
Trade ministers go into the talks, which run July 28-31 on the island of Maui, with high hopes of an agreement to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the most sweeping trade deal in a generation and a legacy-defining achievement for U.S. President Barack Obama.
But the toughest issues have been left until last, including monopoly periods for new life-saving medicines and preferential treatment for state-owned companies as well as more traditional trade issues such as opening protected markets to competition.
19 May
Jeffrey Sachs: Why Fast Track Is a Dangerous Gift to Corporate Lobbies
The Obama Administration is now on track to get “fast track” legislation through the Senate, heading towards a close vote in the House. The end goal is to conclude two major business treaties: the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The House Democrats are right to withhold their support until key treaty positions favored by the White House are dropped.
One of the key reasons to fight fast track is the Administration’s insistence on including Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in the two draft treaties. ISDS is a dangerous policy that undermines the case for TPP and TTIP. The ISDS framework is an unjustified grant of exceptional power to multinational companies above and beyond the legal system in which the companies operate.
The alarming evidence from recent cases shows that investors are using ISDS to contest a virtually unlimited range of government actions including tobacco regulation, measures relating to taxation, environmental regulation, water and electricity tariffs, health insurance regulation, and health and safety restrictions on pharmaceutical imports, among others.
Under normal law, companies and individuals indeed can and do sue host governments regarding various government actions. Yet those lawsuits operate in a legal framework that evolves over time to balance the need to protect investors’ economic interests with the government’s need to regulate investors and their activities for the safety, health, security, and social interests of other parties. In the US and in many other countries, that balance is reflected in complex and detailed substantive and procedural rules governing who can bring claims against the government, under what circumstances, through what processes, for what types of harms, and for what remedies.
Under ISDS, none of those rules apply.
18 May
Sen. Elizabeth Warren escalates trade war with President Obama
(MSNBC) Warren escalated the war of words Monday, releasing a 15-page report attacking both Democratic and Republican administrations for decades of broken promises to labor groups in previous free-trade agreements, from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1993 to similar trade deals with Panama, Colombia, and South Korea in 2011.
“The history of these agreements betrays a harsh truth: that the actual enforcement of labor provisions of past U.S. [free trade agreements] lags far behind the promises,” the report claims. “This analysis by the staff of Sen. Warren reveals that despite decades of nearly identical promises, the United States repeatedly fails to enforce or adopts unenforceable labor standards in free trade agreements.”
The report, entitled “Broken Promises: Decades of Failure to Enforce Labor Standards in Free Trade Agreements,” takes the United States to task for consistently failing to enforce labor protections in its trade deals, and points to ongoing labor-related human rights abuses in 11 of the 20 countries with which the U.S. currently has free trade agreements.
Pacific trade deal could be two weeks away if US fast-track measure passes
Fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership would give the other 11 signatory countries confidence, says Australia’s trade minister
25 February
Elizabeth Warren: The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose
The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries. Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers? Consumers? Small businesses? Taxpayers? Or the biggest multinational corporations in the world?
One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
6 January
Robert Reich: Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is a Pending Disaster
(HuffPost World) The administration says the trade deal will boost U.S. exports in the fast-growing Pacific basin where the United States faces growing economic competition from China. The TPP is part of Obama’s strategy to contain China’s economic and strategic prowess. Fine. But the deal will also allow American corporations to outsource even more jobs abroad. In other words, the TPP is a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom, giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits.
2014
28 March
Mercosur relevance at risk as Pacific Alliance flourishes
Pacific Alliance looks set to expand beyond its core territory
(Emerging Markets) The Pacific Alliance, which brings together Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, is overtaking other more longstanding alliances such as Mercosur and looks set to expand beyond its core territory.
The alliance, which was officially launched as a trading group in June 2012 at a presidential summit in Chile, has been called the “most dynamic integration process in Latin America”.
Eduardo Ferreyros, a former trade minister in Peru and now head of an exporters’ group, said it had done more in two years than Mercosur (the Southern Cone Common Market), had done in two decades.
Jorge Gerdau, chairman of the Brazilian steel Gerdau group, said Mercosur was at risk of losing its relevance, as Latin American countries on the Pacific coast moved towards integrating their economies in the global value chain.
24 February
‘Trade’ Deals on the Ropes
By Robert Kuttner, co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect
The globalization agenda of American financial elites that has dominated both parties’ trade policy for three decades is on the verge of crashing and burning. There is escalating, perhaps fatal, opposition to the proposed Pacific and Atlantic deals in both the U.S. Congress and among partner nations. …
The World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and a series of bilateral trade deals have been less about reducing barriers to trade (which are already very low in the U.S.) and more about dismantling the regulatory framework of managed capitalism both in the U.S. and abroad. These agreements have sought to achieve this longstanding goal of organized business by defining as illicit trade barriers and entirely legitimate forms of purely domestic health, safety, labor, financial, and environmental regulation.
The two proposed trade deals on the table, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), would double down on that strategy. Both would create new rights for corporations and investors to sue to block regulations in special tribunals that could do end-runs around courts. Both would freeze existing regulations in such areas as banking, where abuses of capitalism continue to evolve. Even the most extravagant claims by sponsors show trivial gains to GDP.
The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is particularly bizarre in conception as well as execution, because it tries to link several different policy goals in a complex bank shot. First, TPP was advertised as a “pivot to Asia,” as if the U.S. had not been paying attention to China, Japan, and East Asia all along. The hope was to offer new trade benefits to nations in China’s trading orbit, such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan, as a counterweight to China’s regional economic muscle, and to send China a geo-political message. Second, TTIP hopes to pry open Asian markets long closed to American exporters due to the mercantilism of the East Asian economic model.
But the first goal is at odds with the second. Smaller Asian nations like the idea of the U.S. as a counterweight to China, but don’t want to liberalize their markets. We do need a trade deal to open Asian markets to American exports in exchange for the openness of the U.S. consumer market, but the TPP isn’t it.
In addition, the proposed TPP doesn’t address the genuine (and immense) challenges posed by China directly. We desperately need a grand bargain with Beijing, one that includes currency imbalances, geo-political conflicts, Beijing’s own mercantilist economic policies, and global climate change. The proposed TPP naively (or willfully) tries to get at these far more consequential issues by indirection. Mercifully, it is about to collapse of its own weight.
The TPP has been negotiated in secret. Its intellectual property provisions, for instance, don’t address the genuine problems of piracy on the part of some Asian firms, but do impose needless restrictions promoted by the drug industry on dissemination of affordable medicines in developing countries.
21 February
The Trans-Pacific Partnership — Try Procrastination and Prevarication
(Banyan | The Economist) NEGOTIATIONS for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which enter a crucial phase this weekend with a ministerial meeting in Singapore, seem to take place in two parallel universes. In one, the 12 countries pursuing this ambitious “21st-century” plurilateral free-trade agreement, including America and Japan (but not China) and representing 40% of the world’s GDP and one-third of its trade, came tantalisingly close to meeting their deadline of finalising the deal last year, and are now one last big push—perhaps in the next few days—away from success. In the other, TPP talks are bogged down in intractable disagreements on the most fundamental issues. The notion that it might be signed—let alone implemented—in the near future seems a delusion. …
the reforms the TPP is seeking are politically sensitive in all of the 12 countries—to Japanese agriculture; the Vietnamese textile industry; New Zealand’s dairy farms; the procurement policies of state-owned enterprises in Malaysia, etc etc. (Here is a good summary of just some of what is at stake.) Domestic lobbies will be overcome only if it is clear that other countries are making big reciprocal gestures. So, to keep up the pressure on them, it is in every government’s interest to make it seem a deal is close.
19 February
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Who wins, who loses, why it matters
(LA Times) As President Obama travels to Mexico on Wednesday to meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the one-day summit is expected to focus partly on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious 12-nation trade pact being negotiated between North American and Asian countries. Here is a primer on the talks:
Q: What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
A: The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is a free-trade pact being negotiated among 12 Pacific Rim countries. The TPP is an ambitious effort to shape a comprehensive agreement that would not only reduce tariffs and other barriers to open markets, but establish standards on a range of issues affecting trade and international competition. For instance, negotiators are working to set up rules on intellectual property rights, government procurement and the role of the state in private enterprise.
14 January
Partnership or Putsch?
(Project Syndicate) … trade agreements negotiated by members of the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth) contain just such a provision [the principle that the United States should sign trade agreements only with countries that are democracies.]. The logic is obvious: If we in developed democracies had lacked the right to protest, speak out, organize unions, and vote for representatives of our choosing, we would never have ended child labor or established the eight-hour workday. Having used these rights to raise our own living standards, we should not now put developed countries’ workers in direct competition with workers who lack the basic freedoms needed to improve their own conditions. …
Indeed, part of international investors’ attraction to countries like Vietnam and China is not simply that wages are low, but that the absence of democratic rights promises to lock in cheap labor for years to come. For example, when China revised its labor law in 2008, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and other members of the US-China Business Council lobbied successfully to limit the expansion of Chinese workers’ rights.
7 January
Australians to Canadians: Beware TPP economic fallout
(rabble.ca) Over 125,000 people — including tens of thousands of Canadians — have now spoken out about the damaging Internet censorship proposals in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We know from leaked drafts all about how the TPP would make your Internet more expensive, censored and policed.
Now, our friends in Australia are sounding the alarm about how the TPP could wreak havoc on Canada’s economy. Australians know well the economic damage that unbalanced and extreme Internet censorship rules can cause. Australia was forced to adopt extreme copyright rules as part of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) — rules which caused over $80 million dollars worth of damage to the Australian economy.
Here’s what Australian experts are telling Canadians about their experience:
“‘A net loss’ is how the Productivity Commission labelled the copyright obligations,” wrote Trish Hepworth, Executive Director at the Australian Digital Alliance. “The copyright extension alone was estimated to cost up to $88 million per year in revenue flowing overseas.”
The U.S. is trying to force Canada and the other TPP countries to agree to extended copyright terms, along with many other economically damaging Internet censorship measures in the TPP.
2013
U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership talks end with no deal
(CTV) After four days of meetings in Singapore, ministers issued a statement Tuesday saying that “substantial progress” had been made on finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It said they had identified “potential landing zones” for most of the outstanding issues and would meet again next month.
Trans-Pacific Partnership: a guide to the most contentious issues
The free trade agreement is being negotiated in Singapore this week, with 12 countries jostling to secure the best deal
(The Guardian) The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement is being negotiated in Singapore this week between Australia, New Zealand, the US, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Canada, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan. The countries have a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of US$28,136bn on 2012 figures, which represents almost 40% of the world’s GDP. Australian trade within the TPP countries represents A$214,224m.
The attempt to create the partnership agreement builds on the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement, established in 2006 between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and ingapore.
There have been many contentious issues around the TPP: critics are particularly concerned about the secrecy around the agreement given it has the capacity to change many local laws and regulations.
9 December
Wikileaks exposes secret, controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations
(PC World) Global intellectual property (IP) legislation continues to be negotiated behind closed doors this week in Singapore where discussions are underway on a secretive international trade treaty that could have far-reaching effects on Internet services, copyright law and civil liberties. The negotiations, however, are covered in secrecy. Anyone not closely connected to the talks is being kept in the dark about the exact proposals being discussed. The Australian government, for instance, refused to give the Senate access to the secret text of the draft treaty being negotiated in a final round of talks in Singapore, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday. But texts of purported drafts of the treaty have been leaked to the public, most recently on Monday by Wikileaks, which published two documents said to show the state of negotiations after talks held in Salt Lake City from Nov. 19 to 24.
Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership May Undermine Public Health, Environment, Internet All At Once
The Obama administration since 2010 been leading negotiations on the international trade accord … , and urges countries to reach a deal by New Year’s Day. The U.S. has deemed negotiations to be secret — banning members of Congress from discussing the American negotiating position with the press or the public.
Memos obtained by The Huffington Post show the U.S. is having trouble gaining support for the agreement among the 11 other participating nations.
Ben Beachy, research director at Public Citizen, said the leaked documents show U.S. negotiators are isolated from other countries as well as from the U.S. Congress.
21 November
TPP secrecy in Salt Lake City: Public locked out of trade talks for first time
(rabble.ca) Arthur Stamoulis of Citizens Trade Campaign (pictured below) told the crowd, “Although TPP negotiations have long been been shrouded in secrecy since it began four years ago, the latest round of talks in Salt Lake City is the first which does not present any formal opportunity to the public and civil society to present their views.” He said the only thing that wasn’t a secret was who the TPP would benefit — big multinational companies.
Canada joined the 12-country TPP negotiations about a year ago after corporate lobby groups said they didn’t want to be left out of any new global supply chains created as a result. It certainly wasn’t because of the economic promise of the deal, which is almost insignificant for Canada, and most TPP countries for that matter.
13 November
WikiLeaks publishes secret draft chapter of Trans-Pacific Partnership
Treaty negotiated in secret between 12 nations ‘would trample over individual rights and free expression’, says Julian Assange
(The Guardian) WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations.
The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.
Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. …
“We’re really worried about a process which is so difficult for those who take an interest in these agreements to deal with. We rely on leaks like these to know what people are talking about,” says Peter Bradwell, policy director of the London-based Open Rights Group.
9 November
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA): When Foreign Investors Sue the State