[Peace-discuss] Fw: Trans-Pacific Partnership: Economic Stalking Horse for Military Predominance

[David Johnson]

Trans-Pacific Partnership: Economic Stalking Horse for Military Predominance
Taken from "The Militarization of Ligeralism" by Norman Pollack

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/10/the-militarization-of-liberalism/

by NORMAN POLLACK

Trans-Pacific is actually a good deal worse than one imagines.  Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and Ben Beachy, its research director, have written an article in The Times, "Obama’s Covert Trade Deal," back on June 2, 2013, which, if taken seriously (apparently it has not been), would or should have stopped it in its tracks—and exposed the hollowness of Obama’s liberalism, as conventionally understood.   Secrecy fits nicely into the jigsaw puzzle of authoritarianism, along with surveillance and other measures which violate the principles of democratic government, and in this case it is Trans-Pacific’s most prominent feature.  Wallach and Beachy pull no punches:  "The Obama administration has often stated its commitment to open government.  So why is it keeping such tight wraps on the contents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995?" Good question—a "covert trade deal"?

One’s initial guess as to why, consistent with other precedents established by Obama, is that in the guise of a trade agreement the US is attempting to impose conditions on the region, including on non-trade matters as well, which cover all bases on political-economic hegemony, thereby accomplishing two things: the projection in detail of constraining practices, uniformly applied, that conduce to the welfare of American capitalism; and the projection of power in the form of a tightly woven sphere of influence that, although not strictly part of the agreement, would have military significance in the campaign to isolate and contain China.  If I might suggest, good trading partners make good military allies, as in the discussions to create a trade agreement with EU members currently underway.  What emerges with Trans-Pacific goes beyond the economic factor per se, to what appears as a relationship of dictated power and dependence, what in franker times we labeled as imperialism, and although Obama is not often shy about the practice itself (never admitting its true nature) the reason for secrecy is compelling: the stench reaches even off the page; secrecy because the agreement’s provisions cannot stand the light of day.

(Detailed Provisions, Anti-Regulatory, Benefiting US Capital

The writers state: "The agreement, under negotiation since 2008, would set new rules for everything from food safety and financial markets to medicine prices and Internet freedom.  It would include at least 12 of the countries bordering the Pacific and be open for more to join."  Significantly, Congress, which has "exclusive constitutional authority to set the terms of trade," has been excluded from the trade process, its members denied "repeated requests…to see the text of the draft agreement" or even "to attend negotiations as observers," a clamping down of secrecy extended to "other groups" affected by the rewriting of "broad sections of nontrade policies," their demands for the public release of the "nearly complete text" rejected.  Even the Bush administration, the writers point out, "hardly a paragon of transparency, published online the draft text of the last similarly sweeping agreement, called the Free Trade Area of the Americas in 2001."

Secrecy, however, is highly flexible.  One set of rules applies to Congress and the people, another to mega-business and banking—again faithfully following the Obama paradigm of selective treatment of the wealthy and powerful.  They note, "There is one exception to this wall of secrecy: a group of 600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses, who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators." (Italics, mine)  The stench is getting greater, for slipped into a trade agreement are matters which, for this colossal region (equal to or greater than other spheres of influence), define rules of conduct the mirror-image of what Obama has done for, or rather to, salient features of the US political economy.  "This covert approach," they continue, "is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal.  Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas.  The others impose parameters on nontrade policies."  Here I may be overly suspicious, but I detect the following strategy: Place in the agreement desiderata not yet achieved in the US, thus forcing changes here–obviously unpopular, that might not otherwise take place—so as to stay in compliance.  They say as much, in a single sentence: "Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports."  It is hardly likely that we would draft provisions that would hurt ourselves.

One area dear to American capital is copyright protection.  In early 2012 there was heated debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have penalized "even the most minor and inadvertent infraction of a company’s copyright," creating an "uproar" which "derailed the proposal."  No longer.  The case is instructive of corporate planning onto a wider plane: "But now, the very corporations behind SOPA are at it again, hoping to reincarnate its terms within the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s sweeping proposed copyright provisions." (Italics, mine)  If you are temporarily stalled at home, enlarge the playing field, force others into obedience, and celebrate with victory at home.  It gets worse—although the writers fail to make any connection whatever, Trans-Pacific makes a mockery of Obama’s health care plan by the protection it affords to mega-pharmaceuticals in preventing restrictions on price-maintenance (the industry representatives influencing the drafting process).  Incidentally, we see how the writers cracked the secrecy walls: "From another leak, we know the pact would also take aim at policies to control the cost of medicine.  Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as ‘advisers,’ have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicine down.  Under the agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal." (Italics, mine)

As for outsourcing, they write: "And yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in Nafta—a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy."  Take that, liberals and progressives, into your pipe and smoke it!  Yet Obama remains untouchable in those quarters.  Nor, in this itemization, would one want to leave Wall Street out—for what is an Obama /Democratic program without partiality on that end, in this case the internationalization of exotic financial instruments, as if 2008 had never happened?  Thus they write: "The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.  Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place." (Italics, mine)

At some point, Congress will have to vote, at which time the text would be made public.  "So why," they ask, "keep it a secret?"  And their answer, which bears on Obama’s enlargement of Executive Power, as well as his deviousness (no disrespect intended!), is this: "Because Mr. Obama wants the agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill.  Under this extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before Congress voted on it.  And Congress’s post-facto vote would be under rules limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote."  Even Mayor Daley in his heyday would have blushed at such ramrod tactics.  Wallach and Beachy close: "Whatever one thinks about ‘free trade,’ the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance.  That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government."  But why be surprised?   When I speak of Obama’s incubatory tyranny I have examples like this in mind, in and of themselves not definitive, yet that they can happen puts us on notice of the need to correlate the cases, examine the underlying interrelatedness, and, above all, recognize even a single one—be it assassination, surveillance, or deregulation–would not be possible without summoning the full political-institutional structure of society to bring it forward.

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