[Peace-discuss] NakedCapitalism: TPP negotiations in Maui fail in disarray - thoughts on why, what's at stake, and what's to come, from Lambert Strether

[Stuart Levy]

Good article from Lambert Strether of NakedCapitalism on the TPP 
negotiations in Maui last week, which have just failed - for the moment 
- in disarray :-).

Comments on political tensions (e.g. in Canada, "the much-loved CBC is a 
state-owned enterprise" and Canadians want to keep it that way; in 
Japan, "Abe played Obama like a violin", getting a memorandum in support 
of re-militarizing Japan while Abe did nothing much to promote the TPP 
domestically; Malaysia "controls the Straits of Malacca, a global trade 
chokepoint, so they really don't have to do anything they don't want to").

Cheers to Wikileaks for their "mischievous - by which I mean highly 
constructive - role in publishing chapters of the text" from 
investor-state dispute resolution to state-owned enterprises, with 
well-chosen timing.

Reminder that, though the US passed Trade Promotion Authority, that is 
no reason for anti-TPP-and-company activists to give up the campaign as 
lost.   *Anti-TPP activism in the US made a difference*, he argues - "it 
made the victory in Maui possible" - and it's important to keep going.   
The fight against the fundamentally anti-democratic changes which the 
TPP/TTIP/TISA would make is not a short term struggle.

Here's the article.  Thanks and admiration to Strether and Naked Capitalism:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/08/winning-in-maui-tpp-ministerial-negotiations-fail-with-no-date-set-for-the-next-round.html