DEBATE ON TPP THE BIG CORPORATIONS TRAP in DEMOCRACY
NOW
TPP EXPOSED: WIKILEAKS PUBLISHES SECRET TRADE
TEXT TO REWRITE COPYRIGHT LAWS, LIMIT INTERNET FREEDOM Thursday, November 14, 2013
WikiLeaks has published the secret text to part of the
biggest U.S. trade deal in history, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). For the past several years, the United States and 12
Pacific Rim nations have been negotiating behind closed doors on the sweeping
agreement. A
95-page draft of a TPP chapter released by WikiLeaks on
Wednesday details agreements relating to patents, copyright, trademarks and
industrial design — showing their wide-reaching implications for Internet
services, civil liberties, publishing rights and medicine accessibility.
Critics say the deal could rewrite U.S.
laws on intellectual property rights, product safety and environmental
regulations, while backers say it will help create jobs and boost the
economy. President Obama and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman reportedly wish to finalize the TPP by the end of the year and are pushing Congress to
expedite legislation that grants the president something called
"fast-track authority." However, this week some 151 House Democrats and 23 Republicans
wrote letters to the administration saying they are unwilling to give the
president free rein to "diplomatically legislate." We host a debate
on the TPP between Bill Watson, a trade policy analyst at the Cato
Institute, and Lori
Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: WikiLeaks is back in the news after it published Wednesday
part of the secret text of a massive new trade pact called the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, or TPP. For the past several years, the United States and 12
Pacific Rim nations have been negotiating behind closed doors on the sweeping
agreement. On Wednesday, WikiLeaks released a 95-page draft of a TPP chapter
focusing on intellectual property rights. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange appeared in a YouTube
video Tuesday talking about the leak. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YyVlOGG-KE ]
JULIAN ASSANGE: We released today the secret international—the secret intellectual property chapter,
what they call intellectual property, but it’s actually all about how to extend the monopoly rights of
companies like Monsanto, which has genetic patents over wheat and corn;
extending the ability of Disney to criminally prosecute people for downloading
films, prosecute Internet service providers; Japan introducing
something they call a patent prosecution highway—Japan has. And so, we released all this, their secret
negotiating positions for all 12 countries.
AMY GOODMAN: The WikiLeaks release of the text comes a week before a TPP
chief negotiators summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. President Obama and U.S.
Trade Representative Michael Froman reportedly wish to finalize the TPP by the
end of the year and are pushing Congress to expedite legislation that grants
the president what’s known as "fast-track authority." However, this
week some 151 House Democrats and 23 Republicans wrote letters to the
administration saying they’re unwilling to give the president free rein to,
quote, "diplomatically legislate."
Well, for more, we go to Washington,
D.C., where we host a debate on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership TPP. Bill Watson is
trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. And Lori
Wallach, the director of the fair trade group Public Citizen’s Global Trade
Watch.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Bill Watson,
why do you support the TPP?
BILL WATSON: Well, we need to remember, when—when we see some of these
reports about the intellectual property chapter, we need to remember that the
free trade agreements are about fundamentally something very different: They
are about free trade. And the value of free trade, I think, is really
incontrovertible. The United States has been lowering its barriers for 50 years
to engage in the global economy in a way that increases growth economically, that
improves the quality of life of people in the United States. We still have a
number of protectionist measures in the United States that an agreement like
the TPP will address. Particular to Asia that are at interest in this agreement
are tariffs, quotas and subsidies dealing with things like footwear and
clothing, consumer items that these barriers really act as taxes on the poor,
mostly, who end up paying a larger portion of their income to support an
economic policy that benefits a select few.
The protectionist measures in place,
these trade barriers, are special-interest handouts to big businesses that have
good lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C. The purpose of a free trade agreement
is to overcome an inherent political difficulty in getting rid of those
barriers. We know we want to get rid of the barriers, but it’s hard to
counteract these special interests because they have a lot of influence in
Congress. So, the idea of a reciprocal free trade agreement, where the U.S.
lowers its barriers and, in exchange, other countries lower theirs, is a way to
gain—to—really, to gain special-interest support for the free trade agreement
that U.S. industries that benefit from export access abroad will lobby. They
have a concentrated benefit in the agreement. And so, they will counteract the
special interests that are supporting the existing barriers. The end result,
ideally, is open markets at home and abroad. And this is a very good outcome.
The problem at this point, if you
can say there’s a problem—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Bill Watson, if we can, if we could bring in Lori Wallach
to respond to some of your comments, especially in terms of the—we’ve had lots of
publicity over pharmaceuticals and the huge disparities in prices of
pharmaceuticals around the globe and how this might affect the—under the TPP
agreement. Lori?
LORI WALLACH: Well, free trade is a pretty theory, but as yesterday’s WikiLeaks showed,
the TPP has very little to do with free trade. So, only five of the 29
chapters of the agreement even have to do with trade at all. What’s
in that intellectual property chapter? What the Cato Institute would call rent
seeking—governments
being lobbied by special interests to set up special rules that give them
monopolies to charge higher prices. What does that mean for you and
me? In that agreement, we now can see the
United States is pushing for longer monopoly patents for medicines that would
increase the prices here. They’re looking for patenting things like surgical
procedures, making even higher medical costs. They’re looking to patent life forms and seeds. And with respect to
copyright, the U.S. positions are actually even undermining U.S. law.
So, for Internet freedom, if you didn’t like SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act,
the domestic law that Congress and amazing citizen activism killed last year
when it was attempted to be pushed here domestically, huge chunks of SOPA are
pushed through the backdoor of this intellectual property chapter.
Now, what the heck is that doing in a free trade agreement? I would imagine the Cato Institute is also wondering: Are
Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the free trade philosophers, rolling in their
graves? Because that
is protectionism. This is patent monopolies. This is copyright extensions.
This is actually exactly what Bill just talked about, which is powerful special
interests—Big
Pharma, Disney and the other big-content guys—undermining us as consumers—our
access to the Internet, our access to affordable medicine—and they’re using
their power to put that into an agreement that they’ve got misbranded as
"free trade." That’s what’s the real TPP. So maybe,
actually, we agree, between the consumer group Public Citizen and Cato, that
what’s in TPP, whatever you think about free trade, ain’t so good for most of
us.
BILL WATSON: This is a rare occasion where I do agree with Lori Wallach.
I agree that what’s going on in the IP chapter is a special-interest
free-for-all, a grab bag, that U.S. companies are pushing to get what they want
in these agreements. And the problem, really, with that is that intellectual
property is not a trade issue, and it shouldn’t be in the agreement.
Originally, adding intellectual property into the agreement was a way to bring
on more political support, to be able to bring in U.S. companies to counter
other U.S. companies that would oppose the agreement. At this point, I think
we’ve gotten to where the intellectual property chapters are so expansive that
what you’re seeing is a domestic constituency, people concerned about copyright
and patent reform, who are opposing the TPP, not because of anything having to
do with trade, but just because it’s going to reform U.S. copyright and patent
laws. So, the—what I would say is that we need to have a renewed focus within
these trade agreements to be more about free trade and less about some of these
other issues like intellectual property rights.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Bill Watson, why
should we even have to depend on WikiLeaks to provide information on what’s in
this proposed agreement? Isn’t the actual—just the super secrecy under
which this agreement has been worked out, raise questions for ordinary citizens
about why all the secrecy?
BILL WATSON: You know, I’m certainly glad that WikiLeaks published this
report. Personally, I like to be able to read it. It’s very interesting. I wish
that they would publish the rest of it, to show us the rest of the draft text.
I don’t think that it would be, at this point, particularly harmful to the
agreement to let us know something about the countries’ negotiating positions.
But I really—I really disagree that
the TPP negotiations are especially secret. There’s a lot that goes on in
Congress that the public doesn’t know about. When Congress writes a law, we
don’t know in advance what it’s going to be before it gets proposed. So,
they’re still trying to figure out what the contents of the agreement will be.
They don’t know yet; they’re working on it. So, eventually, we’ll see
something. We’ll see it well in advance of when it becomes law, and Congress
will have a chance to decide to vote yes or no on the agreement.
AMY GOODMAN: Lori Wallach, what most surprised you about seeing the TPP
agreement for the first time yesterday, you know, the WikiLeaks leak?
LORI WALLACH: Well, first of all, this is extraordinarily secret. I’ve followed these
negotiations since 1991 with NAFTA. And during NAFTA, any member of Congress
could see any text. In fact, the whole agreement between negotiating
rounds was put in the Capitol, accessible for them to look at. In 2001, the
Bush administration published the entire Free Trade Area of the Americas text,
when it was even in an earlier stage than TPP is right now, on government
websites. They’ve
even excluded members of Congress from observing the negotiations. I
mean, this is extraordinary.
And so, to me, what was the most horrifying,
I would say, is
the ways in which the U.S. negotiators are using this agreement to try and
rewrite U.S. law. I mean, I find it morally repugnant and outrageous that the
U.S. negotiators be pushing Big Pharma’s agenda to raise medicine prices for
the developing countries in the TPP. People in Vietnam, in all the developing countries that have HIV/AIDS,
that have malaria, they need access to
generic medicines, and this would cut it off. But they’re actually doing it
also to us. So, to the extent, theoretically, they’re sort of supposed to be
representing our interests, it would
make cancer drugs in this country more expensive. Evergreening of patents, changing just a little tweaky
thing, the six-hour versus 12-hour version of a medicine, you get 20 more years of monopoly. Also undermining our Internet
freedom by rewriting U.S. law? There’s language in there where U.S. law says
there’s an exception for liability for U.S. Internet service providers. The
U.S. is the only country in that bracket that’s saying, "No, we shouldn’t
allow that in TPP." It’s backdoor of diplomatic legislating.
And that ties into that business with fast track. Why were—and it’s now
27 Republican members, because there was a second letter that came out of the Republicans, and 151 Democrats—why were
they all saying together, in the last 36
hours, "No fast-track trade process. We don’t want to
give away our constitutionally granted authority over trade policy"?
And a big piece of the reason is, the left and right in Congress may disagree
on what the policies should be, but they actually believe that, constitutionally, Congress gets to write
our legislation. So the notion of this backdoor legislating, that we saw actually
revealed in this WikiLeak, is precisely what is uniting, animating
congressional outrage at the notion that after being left out of these
negotiations uninformed, somehow they should volunteer to handcuff
themselves so they can be thoroughly steamrollered and have even their
legislating authority undermined through this so-called trade agreement. That’s
really a backdoor coup d’état on domestic policymaking.
AMY GOODMAN: Bill Watson, might this be another place where you and Lori
Wallach agree?
BILL WATSON: Not really, no. I see—on fast track, let me just say that I
don’t have a lot of confidence in Congress’s ability to come in and resist
special interests and make good policies on these areas. But, actually, fast
track is a way for Congress to exert its influence over these agreements. When
it—when Congress passes fast track, it imposes a number of negotiating
objectives. One of those, if Congress imposes fast track, is to—is to have
strong IP measures in the agreement. So, you know, you don’t necessarily want
Congress’s input, you know, if you’re trying to get a good policy here. But you
do get it through fast track, and you get increased transparency. Fast track
will set the rules for what the president—who the president has to talk to and
inform in Congress and how Congress participates in the agreement.
But let me also say, you know, when
Lori talks about how increased patent law on pharmaceuticals is going to harm
people in poor countries like Vietnam, I’d like to point out also that trade
barriers harm people in countries like Vietnam. Our trade barriers harm them;
their trade barriers harm them. It stunts the growth of their economy, prevents
them from engaging in commerce that increases their quality of life. What we
need to do is not ditch the free trade agreement because some parts of it are
harmful; we need to get rid of the harmful parts and recognize the value of
these agreements in improving quality of life around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Lori Wallach?
LORI WALLACH: I’m sorry, right now under the so-called trade authority system, there are 600
corporate advisers who, with the executive branch, are behind closed doors
making these rules, seeing the text. I, myself, have much more faith
in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. public and the U.S. press and the democratic
process, with all of us who will live with the results, messy though democracy
may be, having the ability to make sure these policies work for us. I don’t want a
bunch of unelected U.S. "trade negotiators" and 600 corporate
advisers dictating my future through so-called trade agreements.
I mean, these agreements, once they’re implemented, you can’t change a comma
unless all the other countries agree. It locks into place, super-glues,
cements into place one vision of law that, as we’ve seen, has very little to do
with trade. It’s
about domestic food safety. Do we have to import food that doesn’t meet U.S.
safety standards? It’s about setting up international tribunals—can’t
imagine the Cato Institute likes that, global governance and all—where U.S.
government could be sued and our Treasury raided by foreign corporations, who
are rent seeking, compensation for not having to meet our own laws that our
domestic companies have to meet.
And I’ve got to say something about fast track, which is,
in fact, empirically, Bill, fast track is a huge giveaway of Congress’s authority.
And for anyone who wants to get into the weeds, please take a look at my book, The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade
Authority . You can get it on tradewatch.org, www.tradewatch.org. [ http://www.citizen.org/documents/Rise_and_Fall_Fast_Track_Trade_Authority.pdf
] We looked at the history of trade authorities since the founding of the
country. Because of the old Boston Tea Party, Congress—the Founders put
Congress in charge of trade, so the king couldn’t just dictate, with a few
special interests, what would be our trade policy. And historically, Congress
has had the steering will, the emergency brake. Nixon came up with fast track
in '73. It's anomalous. Sixteen agreements ever have used this handcuff
procedure. Why are Democrats and Republicans together saying, "No
more"? Not because they want to have a seat at the negotiating table, but
because they want a role in the formative aspects of trade agreements.
In the end, how they vote on it
ain’t the issue. The question is up front: Is it going to be in our interests,
with accountability and actually not having these corporate advisers making the
calls, or is it going to be a trade agreement like TPP, which, Cato must agree,
really is not about free trade but has become, really, the Trojan horse for all
these other issues? So, in the end, the process is really important. And
historically, we’ve had a new trade
negotiating mechanism every 20 years until now. President Obama, as a
candidate, said he’d replace it. You can find out if your member of Congress
was amongst the 200 who said they would hold on to their constitutional
authority, or if you need to do a little conversation with your member. You can
see all of that at exposethetpp.org.
That’s a website, exposethetpp.org.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Lori, if I—if I can bring Bill Watson in, on this issue
of—because you, yourself, Mr. Watson, admit that there are objectionable parts
to this agreement that need to be changed, but how would that change occur if
the pact is being negotiated essentially in secret and then fast-track
legislation would require Congress to vote it up or down? How will the changes
occur?
BILL WATSON: It’s very good question. And, you know, to be honest, the
problem with issues like intellectual property is not just in free trade
agreements. Congress is not very good about intellectual property, either. So,
I think that we need to be more active in explaining to Congress what the right
policies are, to use the democratic process. Fast track and, indeed, these
negotiation—negotiated agreements are not really a way to bypass Congress.
Congress still has say. They still have to approve the agreement. They can—they
can do a number of things to exert pressure on the administration to include
certain things. They don’t always include very good things. So going to
Congress is not really the best way to get the agreements through. And indeed,
fast track is a way to increase the power of Congress, in a number of ways, and
so may—I agree with Lori Wallach there are some dangers to using fast track,
but—but in the end, I just don’t see Congress, and even a little bit more
transparency, as really a panacea for solving these problems. This is a larger
issue.
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap up, Bill Watson, we gave you the first word;
Lori Wallach, you’ve got the last.
LORI WALLACH: The bottom line of all of this is we need a new procedure to replace fast track
that gives the public the role and Congress the role to make sure what will be
binding, permanent, global laws do not undermine either our democratic process
of making policies at home—that we need—or that lock us into
retrograde policies that the current 600
corporate trade advisers are writing to impose on us. So, we need a new way to
make trade agreements to get different kinds of agreements. And the bottom
line with TPP, as this WikiLeak just showed, it’s very dangerous. It’s not
about trade. You’ve got to find out about it. And you’ve got to make sure your
member of Congress maintains their constitutional authority. Democracy is
messy. But I, myself, more trust the American public, the press and this
Congress rather than 600 corporate advisers. We need to make sure what’s in
that trade agreement suits us, and you all are going to be the difference in
doing that.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll certainly link to the document
that WikiLeaks has just leaked, the draft TPP proposal. Lori Wallach, thanks
for being with us, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and Bill
Watson, trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/6/obama_backed_trans_pacific_partnership_expands
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What Specifically Is the Trans Pacific Partnership? http://johnhively.wordpress.com/tag/north-american-free-trade-agreement/
It is stated here
that “The Trans Pacific Partnership is nothing but a
partnership between governments and big corporations to rip you
and your children off by redistributing income from the 99 to the 1 percent, by
shipping your jobs and tax bases overseas, and handing your local and state
environmental and labor laws
over to those multinational
corporations, and curbing your abilities to use the Internet. The difference between the old higher wages in the USA
and the new lower wages overseas will be redistributed into the pockets of the
already rich via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices. TO READ THE FULL CONTENT OPEN: http://johnhively.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/what-specifically-is-the-trans-pacific-partnership/
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