As one would expect for a deal negotiated behind closed doors with 500 corporate advisors and the public and press shut out:
The TPP would make it easier for corporations to offshore American jobs. The TPP includes investor protections that reduce the risks and costs of relocating production to low wage countries. The pro-free-trade Cato Institute considers these terms a subsidy on offshoring, noting that they lower the risk premium of relocating to venues that American firms might otherwise consider.
The TPP would push down our wages by throwing Americans into competition with Vietnamese workers making less than 65 cents an hour. The TPP’s labor rights provisions largely replicate the terms included in past pacts since the “May 2007” reforms forced on then-president George W. Bush by congressional Democrats. A 2014 Government Accountability Office report found that these terms had failed to improve workers’ conditions. This includes in Colombia, which also was subjected to an additional Labor Action Plan similar to what the Obama administration has negotiated with Vietnam.
The TPP would flood the United States with unsafe imported food, including by allowing new challenges of border food safety inspections not provided for in past trade pacts.
The deal would raise our medicine prices, giving big pharmaceutical corporations new monopoly rights to keep lower cost generics drugs off the market. The TPP would roll back the modest reforms of the “May 2007” standards with respect to trade pact patent terms.
The TPP includes countries notorious for severe violations of human rights, but the term “human rights” does not appear in the 5600 pages of the TPP text. In Brunei LGBT individuals and single mothers can be stoned to death under Sharia law. In Malaysia, tens of thousands of ethnic minorities are trafficked through the jungle in modern slavery.
ACCESSION OF NEW COUNTRIES/ FINAL PROVISIONS CHAPTER:
Congress Not Guaranteed A Meaningful Role in Docking/Accession Regime that Lets Not Just China, but Nations Beyond Pacific Rim Join
The TPP is open to be joined by any nation or separate customs territory that belongs to the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Pacific Rim bloc AND “such other State or separate customs territory as the Parties may agree…” if the country is prepared to comply with the TPP’s obligations and meet extra terms and conditions that may be required by existing signatories. (Article 30.4.1)
The executive branch alone gets to decide whether to initiate accession negotiations with a country seeking to join the TPP. Congress would only be given any role in deciding whether negotiations about any country’s prospective TPP accession should even begin if Congress explicitly requires this in legislation implementing the TPP. Absent such a requirement, under the TPP text the executive branch alone would decide for the United States. (Article 30.4.3-4)
o The TPP text calls for establishment of a working group to negotiate the terms and conditions for a new country to join the TPP. The U.S. administration and any current TPP country can participate. The working group is considered to have agreed on terms if either all countries that are members of the working group have indicated agreement, or if a country that has not so indicated fails to object in writing within 7 days of the working group’s consideration.
o Once this working group completes negotiating accession terms with a new country, it is to report to the “TPP Commission” with a recommendation for accession and terms. The Commission is the TPP governance body (Article 27.1) on which the executive branch represents the United States.
o The TPP Commission is deemed to have approved the terms if all countries agreed to the establishment of the working group in the first place or if a country that did not indicate agreement when the Commission considers the issue does not object in writing within seven days.
Please continue this article here: https://www.citizen.org/documents/analysis-tpp-text-november-2015.pdf
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