Think Local
By Chris Hoffman
Over the past several years, many of us in CNY have been fighting a war: against NYRI, against shale gas hydrofracking, against foreign energy companies hell-bent on installing industrial wind farms in residential areas, and against a seriously flawed Farm Bill that caters to Big Ag at the expense of local growers and producers.
A massive new threat now looms on the horizon. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is a sweeping policy being pressed by corporate America and its global partners that has the potential to offshore millions of American jobs, free the banks from oversight, ban Buy America and Buy Local policies, decrease affordable access to medicine worldwide, allow importation of unsafe food and products, and empower corporations to litigiously attack national, state, and local health and environmental safeguards.
In ongoing talks between the U.S. and Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, 600 corporate advisors have access to the TPP draft process, while the public, members of Congress, journalists, and civil society are intentionally excluded from the process.
According to Public Citizen, specific threats to citizens and local government posed by the all-encompassing, multifaceted TPP include:
More Power to Corporations: foreign corporations (such as energy companies) would be empowered to attack health, environmental, and other laws before foreign tribunals to demand taxpayer compensation for policies they think undermine their expected future profits. Counties, towns, and villages, for example, that have enacted bans on hydrofracking could be sued for denying future profits to gas companies that want to drill for shale gas.
A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for the TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor-state” system that elevates corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country’s government and above all citizens and local and sub-national entities.
Under TPP, foreign investors can avoid domestic courts and laws and sue governments directly before tribunals operating under World Bank and UN rules to demand taxpayer compensation for any domestic law that investors believe will diminish their “expected future profits.”
Public Health: U.S. negotiators representing the agenda of the pharmaceutical industry are pushing for longer monopoly control on drugs, which would effectively cut off life-saving medicines from millions in developing countries and sustain higher prices in developed countries.
Buy America and American Jobs: Special investor protections incentivize offshoring by providing benefits for companies that leave the U.S. TPP would also impose limits on how elected officials can use tax dollars and would ban Buy America or Buy Local preferences. The TPP procurement rules would not only constrain how national and state governments use tax dollars in local construction projects and purchase of goods, they would also limit what specifications governments can require for goods and services and the qualifications for bidding companies.
Food Safety: TPP would mandate the importation of food that does not meet U.S. safety standards and would limit food labeling.
Internet Freedom: TPP would require internet service providers to police user activity and treat individual violators as large-scale for-profit violators.
Financial Deregulation: TPP would roll back reregulation of Wall Street, prohibit bans on risky financial services, and undermine “too big to fail” regulations.
On Nov. 13, in response to President Obama’s request that Congress delegate to him its constitutional trade authority via Fast Track for TPP, 151 House Democrats sent a letter to Obama opposing Fast Track authority. Additionally, 25 House Republicans are opposed to Fast Track, as are most Democratic Ways and Means Committee members.
Fast Track Agreements delegate to the executive branch Constitutional authorities explicitly reserved for Congress, allowing the executive branch to unilaterally select trade partners, set the terms of agreements without a Congressional vote, write implementing legislation without committee review or amendment, and override Congressional control.
Also fueling congressional opposition to Fast Track is the abysmal outcome of the Obama
Administration’s only major free trade agreement to date, the U.S.-Korea FTA, which is the template for the TPP. In contrast to promises that the Korea deal would boost exports, in the first year U.S. exports to Korea fell 10 percent, imports from Korea rose, and the U.S. trade deficit with Korea exploded by 37 percent, creating a net loss of approximately 40,000 U.S. jobs.
The fight for local sovereignty and determination is ratcheting up, driven by ever-increasing offensive maneuvers of corporate entities seeking nothing less than complete control. If TPP becomes law, we will lose.
Chris Hoffman lives in the village of Sherburne in her 150+ year-old house where she caters to the demands of her four cats, attempts to grow heirloom tomatoes and herbs and reads voraciously. She passionately pursues various avenues with like-minded friends to preserve and protect a sustainable rural lifestyle for everyone in Central New York.