You can’t stop the trade machine

[applegrove]

You can’t stop the trade machine

by Fareed Zakaria at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/you-cant-stop-the-trade-machine/2015/05/14/208d74a2-fa6e-11e4-a13c-193b1241d51a_story.html

"SNIP..................



For those who worry that, after the TPP, the United States would have to compete against low-wage countries — it’s too late. As Zachary Karabell notes, we are already living in a free-trade world. The average tariff in the developed world is about 3 percent. And in the past three decades, developing countries have cut their tariffs substantially as well. The World Trade Organization notes that China’s average is less than 10 percent today, down from about 40 percent in 1985.

......

The technology revolution has accelerated globalization, as digitized products can be sent across borders at minimal cost. And almost everything is getting digitized in some sense, as even the taxi industry is being reshaped by companies such as Uber that use big data and smart software. How would you stop the globalization of digital goods and services? Could you pass a law that says that a lab in New York cannot send your X-ray to a doctor in Chennai for her to read and interpret? Can you prevent an accountant in Manila from preparing your tax returns and sending them to you via e-mail? Whatever you think of these forces, they can be resisted in some places for some time, but look around the world — they keep on rolling.

The United States has one of the world’s most open economies. Any trade deal like the TPP is going to open other economies — the Japanese or Vietnamese, for example — far more than the American. And the nature of the opening and the new rules will reflect American ideals and interests.

......

If something similar were to happen with the TPP in Asia, the effects would be even broader. The world we live in is one of rising new powers and declining old norms. The struggle is on to write new rules — for trade, cybersecurity, intellectual property and much more. Let’s hope we don’t look back 20 years from now, under new rules written by China, and wish we had been more assertive when we had the chance.

.................SNIP"

[applegrove]

1. Do you want Obama writing the new rules or do you want to roll the dice?

[Dont call me Shirley]

3. No Obama is not writing the rules, he is selling the rules the monopoly corporations have written.

[neverforget]

4. that's why McConnell is for it to give Obama more power. Not.

McConnell: Trade deal about next president, not this one

"The Obama years are coming to an end," McConnell said during an interview in his Capitol hideaway office. "So now the action is on the Democratic side. And you are seeing that on trade. You've got the energy of the Elizabeth Warren faction kind of driving the agenda, pulling Hillary Clinton further to the left.

"This is a six-year bill," he added. "So what I've said to my members, if we want the next Republican president, who we hope will be sworn in less than two years from now, to have a chance to do trade agreements with the rest of the world, this bill is about that president as well as this one."

I'd also mention that their corporate masters (donors) want this bad.

[cali]

6. he isn't. and your simplistic

pov doesn't capture reality

[GeorgeGist]

2. Ooga booga ...

we're not as bad as the other guys.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. One of the nations benefiting from this

is his home country of... INDIA.

Where a lot of the IT is going...

Though he has a point, but I would modify it, we also live in a world of a declining world power, that be us.

[msongs]

7. shocker, corporate servant criticises TPP opponents. Should we try him in a coporate court where

he cannot plead defense by using american local, state,and federal laws that are overruled by international corporate tribunals sponsored by barack obama?

[Fred Sanders]

8. Exactly what some folks have been saying for weeks...does America want China to write the rules?

The opening of Japan for American exports is.....huge.

[DJ13]

9. The loss of jobs is a secondary concern with the TPP

Its the loss of national sovereignty to regulate corporate behavior, the inability to punish malfeasance in order to protect local citizens from harmful corporate actions thats the worst of the TPP.

Then theres the unlimited copyrights it grants, and the guarantees of perpetual profits that no TPP signatory can ever challenge, but those are but a few of the things that are bad about the "trade" bill that isnt.