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Korten: A Trade Rule That Makes it Illegal to Buy Local?
From Yes Magazine:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/trade-rule-illegal-favor-local-business-tpp-leak-wikileaks?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20150417
1. Favoring local ownership is prohibited
Let’s start with the Investment Chapter’s section on how the TPP’s member countries should treat foreign investors:
(snip)
Put in plain English, the above paragraph means that signatory countries renounce their right to favor the domestic ownership and control of the lands, waters, and other productive assets and services essential to the lives and well-being of their people. The 12 countries further renounce their right to favor locally owned businesses, corporations, cooperatives, or public enterprises devoted to serving their people with good local jobs, products, and services. They must instead give equal or better treatment to global corporations that come only to extract profits.
2. Corporations must be paid to stop polluting
Another provision limits what member countries can do in regard to corporate investments:
(snip)
This provision may sound reasonable, until you look at the chapter’s definition of “investment,” which includes “the expectation of gain or profit.” This odd definition means that a corporation can sue a signatory nation if the country deprives the corporation of expected profits by enacting laws that prohibit the company from selling harmful products, damaging the environment, or exploiting workers. Other language in the chapter makes it clear that this applies to actions at all levels of government. In other words, a country in the TPP has every right to stop a foreign corporation from harming its people and the environment—but only if the country compensates the corporation for the expense of not harming them.
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Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)with corporations and wealthy transnationals. It makes 'national security' a quaint notion of the past. If you have no control over your land or resources, your people can simply be 'bought out' and the country taken from you. Multinational corporations and transnational wealthy elites buying up absolutely everything not nailed down, and forcing the masses into Brazilian-style shanty towns that are the only places they can afford to live, with no water rights, no mineral rights.
The harder Obama pushes the TPP and the more that is revealed about it, the more I begin to wonder if I should be apologizing to Tea Partiers for mocking them and their 'NWO' and Illuminati-style ramblings.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)No wonder they openly diss us, they know that we don't have a say and soon it will be a legality. Tiny homes for everyone! The future is looking very grim.
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)The harder Obama pushes the TPP and the more that is revealed about it, the more I begin to wonder if I should be apologizing to Tea Partiers for mocking them and their 'NWO' and Illuminati-style ramblings.
This indeed would be a new world order and not one that improves the average citizen's well-being or that of our children. We must join with them to defeat it
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)measures, many of the other countries do which hurts the US' ability to trade with them. THIS IS A GOOD THING PEOPLE!!!
Put in plain English, the above paragraph means that signatory countries renounce their right to favor the domestic ownership and control of the lands, waters, and other productive assets and services essential to the lives and well-being of their people.
4. Speculative money must remain free
Yet another provision prohibits restrictions on movement of money from one country to another:
Each Party shall permit all transfers relating to a covered investment to be made freely and without delay into and out of its territory. …
Forms an investment may take include: (a) an enterprise; (b) shares, stock, and other forms of equity participation in an enterprise; (c) bonds, debentures, other debt instruments, and loans; (d) futures, options, and other derivatives.
Thus, the TPP guarantees the right of speculators to destabilize national economies through the manipulation of exchange rates and financial markets, without interference from national governments.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/trade-rule-illegal-favor-local-business-tpp-leak-wikileaks?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20150417
jwirr
(39,215 posts)USA as well. Corporations no longer have any national loyalty. They want to govern us in the same way they want to govern other countries. They want the New World Order. They do not like our environmental and labor laws any more than they do in the other countries. Why do you think they move to the countries with the least environmental protections and no strong unions?
It is bad enough that we lost our jobs with the help of NAFTA now we are set to lose the right to protect our own environment and to keep our unions even strong. They will have no say over the work place because we can be sued for doing it.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)can't export goods to other TPP countries and then forbid or tax/overregulate the importation of goods". That is where American jobs have been hurt. Some of these countries have wanted to export everything and import nothing.
One of the reasons corps don't like the regulations is because other countries don't have them which makes it cheaper for other countries to produce goods. What the TPP does is add environmental, labor and patent protection regulations to those countries. It will make foreign goods more expensive and help American made goods compete.
The TPP has labor protections, such as the right to unionize.
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-chapter-chapter-negotiating-4
You say: "they do not like our environmental and labor laws any more than they do in the other countries". True, by having the majority of countries follow the same regulations we do, there will be fewer places for corporations to go. There is still China and India, but by isolating China hopefully we'll force them to comply with more laws which will make their goods more expensive.
I think one of the things I considered when I first heard all the concern about losing jobs due to the TPP was, we've already lost all the jobs. There isn't anywhere else for the corps to go that is cheaper. I was reading a business article not long ago that said Bangladesh was the last place still cheap enough to set up clothing factories. The article was in response to the fire that killed workers there. The gist of the article was that Bangladesh would now pass laws that regulated these factories and it would no longer be cheaper to make clothing there. Apparently, Bangladesh was the last house on the block so to speak.
The best thing the US can do to promote jobs is force others onto our playing field. We'll never be able to compete with China and their $5 a day wage, not paying for patents and very little environmental regulation. Indeed, we don't want to. What we want is to make goods in those countries more expensive and give their workers and the environment better protection.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)What the US does is sell in our tax payer supported markets all products from around the world. That is why our trade deficit is so absolutely huge. If the US stopped selling everyone's crap, the world economy would collapse. China could NOT survive if we didn't sell their slave labor products in Mal-Wart. Japan and Germany would roll over and die if they could NOT export their crap to us.
This is NOT about trade. This is about getting rid of labor unions in the US by shipping those jobs to Asia. It's about opening up US markets to every Tom, Dick and Harry with a corporate logo. It's about taking out all the wealth of the US and putting it into the pockets of the already wealthy. It's about an irrational belief in the free trade, trickle down fairy.
You can't believe that a pumped up version of NAFTA is going to -this time- actually help average Americans. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is definition of crazy.
Overseas
(12,121 posts)And it wasn't a good thing.
If our Buy Local provisions are protected and allow our small businesses to grow, I don't mind other countries' small businesses growing too.
I want fewer multinational conglomerates and more small local businesses and stronger regional economies rather than multinational monopolies.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)local.
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)Put in plain English, the above paragraph means that signatory countries renounce their right to favor the domestic ownership and control of the lands, waters, and other productive assets and services essential to the lives and well-being of their people.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)things about the TPP. The US doesn't have protectionist measures, the other countries do. Now the consumer will be able to purchase what is best for them, whether it be local or imported. A good benefit for American labor since we have been disadvantaged by other countries protectionist measures while we had none of our own.
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)Our hands are tied, they are free to do what they want.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)with each other will become much easier and isolate China or force it to comply. We can't stop people from trading with China or India but we can make it easier and more fair to trade with anyone but them. That is pretty much what the TPP will do.
I'f China and India want to join the TPP they are going to have to play by the rules the rest of us do, namely patent and intellectual property rights, labor protection and environmental protections. China will likely get tripped up by transparency requirements and the rule barring government owned businesses from being subsidized by the government.
True our hands are tied, they have always been. TPP doesn't change that, but the answer isn't for us to compete on China's level (do you want to work for $5 a day?) its to force China to compete on our level. That is what the TPP is attempting.
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)Hopefully doing business with each other will become much easier and isolate China or force it to comply.
China can enter into separate bi-lateral agreements with these countries if it wanted too, and those agreement do not have to follow the parameters of the TPP. What do we the people, gain from this agreement
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)In this example, Vietnam would be able to quality for 0% tariff on imported clothing under the TPP but they would have to stop buying their yarn and fabric from China and start buying it from the US. They were trying to switch the rule, but it hasn't worked:
This is unlike most US free trade agreements which adopt a "yarn-forward rule", which states that yarns used to make the textile or apparel must have been produced in the TPP country.
The yarn-forward rule benefits the US yarn and fabric industry because it exports yarn and fabrics to TPP countries like Vietnam. The industry accounts for two million jobs in the US.
However, the "yarn-forward rule" does not benefit Vietnam since most of its yarns and fabrics are sourced from China and South Korea, which are non-TPP countries.
LiberalArkie
(15,713 posts)favor their own companies over multi-nationals than come in with real low prices thus forcing the locals out of business and then the multi-national raises their prices way up because there is no competition. No big deal after all. Nothing to see he that will hurts us at all.
cali
(114,904 posts)look bad.
There is NOTHING in the TPP that has been leaked that makes it illegal to buy local. There are concerns, but they are much subtler and more complicated.
Your op makes me angry because it does far fucking more harm than good. It's all heat and NO light.
That article is a steaming pile of dog shit.
yup.
Put in plain English, the above paragraph means that signatory countries renounce their right to favor the domestic ownership and control of the lands, waters, and other productive assets and services essential to the lives and well-being of their people.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)"Each Party (country) shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favorable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory..."
How can you read the clause and NOT think favoring and supporting local business like at a farmer's market would be challenged in a TPP tribunal?
jeff47
(26,549 posts)So local company X will sell widgets for $100 each.
Foreign company Y will sell widgets for $90 each.
TPP means you can't choose X in order to keep money within your country.
There's an enormous number of "small business incentive" laws at the federal and state level that make government buy from small businesses instead of large corporations. Those all go away with TPP.
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... when our planet's life is facing extinction due to climate change from so much shipping of products and labor around the world to help corporate owners maximize profits to put in the 1%'s pockets? WHY is that good if you're not part of the 1%? And even the 1% will go extinct too if we cross that bridge of no return with climate change!
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... where some are seriously advocating the other way. It's been a rough week for me trying to deal with being broke after paying taxes and trying to find from other places amongst a lot of other things that have distracted me from trying to do my due diligence in preventing this POC TPP from getting passed, which I really think may totally blow away our system of democracy if passed.
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)I'm glad we are on the same side of this issue
jeff47
(26,549 posts)The extra money remains in the area where, it is taxed by the local entities. So it costs more up-front, but the higher cost is easily recouped via higher tax receipts as the extra money is spent. It's how the Rust Belt has not completely turned into a dystopian hell.
Remember, this is macroeconomics, not microeconomics. In microeconomics the extra spending is bad because it's effectively lost to the environment. In macroeconomics, one person's expense is another person's income. Cutting that expense also reduces income, leading to lower tax receipts and more expense cutting which cuts more income and you spiral right on down.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)Protectionism in the form of "small business incentives?"
Yes, very.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)why worry about who gets appointed as judge when you can just pass a law that puts corporations in charge of local law?
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)
Omaha Steve
(99,585 posts)
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)"Local business" will not be able to sell goods...is about as imaginative as "my house will be taken away!"
fasttense
(17,301 posts)"Each Party (country) shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favorable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory..."
There is always a couple of people here on DU who pop up and claim that the TPP is being unfairly maligned. So, tell me what that clause means to you?
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)Applies to foreign or American companies in China, etc. also.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)So they pay $100,000 a year to a small, local janitorial company. That way the federal money stays in the local economy - that $100k gets spent in the local economy. That results in the local government actually having more money, since they collect taxes on $100k worth of spending.
Aramark will do it for $80,000. Only $40,000 will go to the local workers. The remaining $40,000 will leave the area. Local government only collects taxes on $40k of spending, and has to either raise rates or let infrastructure crumble.
TPP bans that behavior.
Congratulations, you've just finished annihilating the rust belt.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)would be unequal treatment? Local Farmer's markets are frequently supported by local, state and federal funding. None of the ones I go to allow foreign corporations to sell their wares. So, isn't that unfair treatment for local companies?
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)local trade. What it does prohibit is a country exporting goods to other TPP countries, but then forcing people/gov'ts/businesses to purchase only local. These protectionist measures have been hurting the US and other non-protectionist countries.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)"Each Party (country) shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favorable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory..."
QuestionAlways
(259 posts)so it does not effect them
jwirr
(39,215 posts)Wasn't this what we were fighting in the Revolutionary War? England wanted all rights regarding importation of their goods but taxed ours?
Also - many of us are looking toward local answers to combat climate change. So local is our - corporate rule is in. Well we knew we were not going to win this thing - now our own legislators are going to stop our efforts.
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)goods to other TPP countries and then use protectionist measures to prevent importation of goods.
It will actually help poorer countries by having streamlined regulation and importation rules so smaller businesses don't have to jump through hoops trying to sell their goods to other countries.
Perhaps you should do some research.
Also, your claim about "local answers to combat climate change" is just about the most ridiculous thing i've ever heard. The answers for climate change are not local and NO ONE believes that. The TPP forces countries to abide by climate change beneficial policies that the rest of the world will benefit from. It sets minimum standards, not maximum standards. You can fight for whatever you want locally. YOUR EFFORTS WILL NOT BE STOPPED.
I can't believe you even posted that.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)Minimal need for fosil fuel burning if there is mimimal transport distance of goods and supplies.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)change issues or most issues will have to be local. Or not at all. I was thinking mostly about food issues. Change can come from the local level as much as it does from any corporation. In fact it more often comes from the bottom. Most of the progress I have seen has been local. Drive through Iowa, southern Minnesota and South Dakota and you see all the wind mills creating alternative energy. In many states it is solar. See the community gardens in cities. Farmers in Iowa are trying not till farming. Farmer's markets are everywhere.
In the England example I was equating the actions of England then with corporations today.
As to helping poorer countries by having streamlined regulations and importation rules. Many of those countries are already ruled by the IMF/corporate rules that encourage huge loans and then regulate them by telling them they have to grow crops that will be exported while the people go hungry. They force privatization of basic needs. These nice regulations of the IMF helps in turn to destroy small farmers and small attempts to build an economy that would help them. These countries have enough outside rules from the corporate world. They need to be free to make their own way.
whereisjustice
(2,941 posts)
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)
asiliveandbreathe
(8,203 posts)and then this BS comes across in my research - I have read Stiglitz - not thoroughly YET - I have read Krugman - before and after - he was pro and now he is against this TPP..
Will someone, somewhere stand up - and address all the issues - explain each chapter....my goodness....
I will continue to research - what affect TPP has on patent protection or not - corp vs country regulations - we have already seen what corps have done in latin American countries...indigenous people losing everyday - land, water - other resources for the almightly buck..
We have a land swap deal pushed through our own congress regarding Resolute Copper Mine (CO already found to be thieves of resources..) and sacred land of the Apache Nation here in AZ - AZ wants Grand Canyon open to drilling...so another American Indian Nation fights on..national parks - go private you say -
Krugman - in his AGAINST position article NYT - quote "Which brings me to my last point: Why, exactly, should the Obama administration spend any political capital – alienating labor, disillusioning progressive activists – over such a deal?"
ND-Dem
(4,571 posts)Yet another provision prohibits restrictions on movement of money from one country to another:
Each Party shall permit all transfers relating to a covered investment to be made freely and without delay into and out of its territory. …
Forms an investment may take include: (a) an enterprise; (b) shares, stock, and other forms of equity participation in an enterprise; (c) bonds, debentures, other debt instruments, and loans; (d) futures, options, and other derivatives.
Thus, the TPP guarantees the right of speculators to destabilize national economies through the manipulation of exchange rates and financial markets, without interference from national governments.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/trade-rule-illegal-favor-local-business-tpp-leak-wikileaks?utm_source=YTW&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=20150417
okaawhatever
(9,461 posts)and the destabilizing national economies is a joke, manipulation of exchange rates and financial markets is still illegal. What it says is that IN LEGAL TRANSACTIONS a country can't hold up money transfers. It does not say that a country can't enforce its laws. Give me a break and stop this b.s.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)is all dried up. (Pun intended.)
You really want this this FTA approved...and I don't think you're above lying to promote that outcome.
So, I don't believe you when you try to explain away sections of the TPP that we all know what they really mean.
PowerToThePeople
(9,610 posts)
annabanana
(52,791 posts)What could possible go wrong with such a sloppy phrase or the legal sledgehammer that will come down to enforce it?
annabanana
(52,791 posts)What it means now is just "free capital".. Money sloshes over all borders and laws unrestricted..
Labor, not so much.
Maineman
(854 posts)AzDar
(14,023 posts)
Overseas
(12,121 posts)If local governments ban fracking, for example, or provide incentives for solar power, they can be sued by multinational corporations' investors' groups for free trade infringement.
Corporations already have too much power over our own government. Let's not promote their control of other countries too.
Adding:
One strong hint is buried in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of trade agreements, is called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but don’t be fooled. Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty.
ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-settlement-language-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership/2015/02/25/ec7705a2-bd1e-11e4-b274-e5209a3bc9a9_story.html
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)As long as we are using a lot of carbon-based fuels to provide that "fluid" labor and goods trafficking, we are screwing everyone, even the 1% at some point.
It is apparent that the selfish 1% just care about themselves and not even their kids and their descendants as it is only they themselves that might live out a full life with the way they are wanting us to trash the planet for the obsessive compulsion with stealing everyone's wealth and using things like the TPP and other ways of owning government to do so.
Overseas
(12,121 posts)We have enough mega-trade. It is too fossil fuel intensive.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Drive the final nail into the coffin of the middle class. Next stop, Soylent Green.
djean111
(14,255 posts)This why a plan like Bernie Sanders' that wants to rebuild our infrastructure by using American workers and American products would never happen - it would be illegal to specify American anything. So we taxpayers would pay the money, and overseas corporation could use materials from overseas (and we dare not specify much in the way of quality assurance there), and use workers from overseas who would not really help our economy all that much. People in the US would not get the jobs.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... by those kangaroo corporate courts, making it even harder for us to grow organic foods, even if there's a demand for them to be produced and consumed..
djean111
(14,255 posts)