This Global Ruling Is Just Not Cool

[eridani]

Fuck TPP!!!

http://www.nationofchange.org/news/2016/01/09/this-global-ruling-is-just-not-cool/

Last May, the WTO — an oligarchic, autocratic governing entity essentially run by and for multinational corporations — ruled that a U.S. consumer protection law called “COOL” violates one of WTO’s obscure trade rules.

COOL stands for “country-of-origin labeling,” a straightforward requirement that meat sold in the United States be labeled so consumers can know where it came from. This law was passed by our Congress, signed by our president, upheld by our courts, and is supported by 92 percent of our people.

But corporate meat processors in Canada and Mexico (including U.S. meat conglomerates with operations there) don’t want you and me to know this basic information.

So they got Canadian and Mexican government officials to do an end run around our laws by filing a claim against COOL in this shadowy corporate trade organization. A ruling by the WTO in May dutifully put the profits of these few global meat purveyors over the democratic will of some 300 million Americans: COOL must go, decreed these faceless, unelected servants of the corporate order.

Now for today’s toad.

To enforce this demand, the WTO dictated on December 7 — ironically, Pearl Harbor Day — that Canada and Mexico may now punish us by imposing import bans against some of the products we ship to their consumers.

[cantbeserious]

1. Know Thy Enemy - Oligarchs, Corporations, Banks And Their Media Minions And MIC Henchmen

eom

[Hortensis]

6. And the House GOP, which RUSHED to appeal

country-of-origin labeling. Needed to be done to avoid fines on business, of course, but aren't these the "representatives" who proudly refuse to act all legislation related to constituent and national maintenance needs?

Fwiw, our own meatpackers can put country-of-origin labels on the packages; it's just that, currently, our government can't require it. So demand labels and shop stores that comply. Big Business is watching to see if sales drop on unlabeled meat.

[djean111]

2. Since they have not made labeling illegal - YET, I am sure it is on their agenda - I will only

buy meat with the label. I already have stopped buying shrimp, because either the shrimp are from places where conditions are disgusting, or there is no label of origin.

[Scuba]

3. That Obama would serve us even more of this shit sandwich is a betrayal of the first order.

[Dustlawyer]

4. +1!!! Spread this far and wide! This is why we need Bernie!

[pampango]

5. Unless we go back to a pre-FDR world of no international trade organization, the WTO

(or some multilateral organization) it not going away, TPP or no TPP. Going back to the 1920's when we refused to join the League of Nations and acted unilaterally on trade, really is not what FDR planned.

[eridani]

8. Since when does having international trade organizations make it OK--

--for corporations to sue democratically elected governments for potential loss of profits? This is not about tariffs, unlike the first trade agreements.

[pampango]

9. Never.

This is not about tariffs, unlike the first trade agreements.

The International Trade Organization of FDR and Truman was about much more than tariffs.

At its core, the countries of the world, rejected the idea that it was possible to maintain a firewall between trade, development, employment standards and domestic policy. Its most distinctive feature was the integration of an ambitious and successful program to reduce traditional trade barriers, with a wide-angled agreement that addressed investment, employment standards, development, business monopolies and the like. It pioneered the idea that trade disputes had to be settled by consultation and mediation rather than with legal clout. Further it established an institutional linkage between trade and labour standards that would effect a major advance in global governance. Finally it embedded the full employment obligation, along with "a commitment to free markets" as the cornerstone of multilateralism.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/csgr/papers/workingpapers/2000/wp6200.pdf

[eridani]

10. Since TPP does not have any full employment provision, fuck it n/t

[pampango]

11. It should be. Interesting that FDR and Truman thought the ITO should control countries' policy

towards full employment and their internal labor standards. That angered republicans in congress ("no international group is telling us what to do&quot and led to its defeat.

[eridani]

12. TPP = fuck the environment with Keystone XL

Full employment is something that all the neolibs and neocons have given up on.

[Octafish]

7. Tip of TPP iceberg

Money trumps the law.