Trade Backers Pin Pacific-Pact Hopes on Lame-Duck U.S. Congress
Source: Bloomberg
March 22, 2016 — 5:00 AM EDT
Election-year protectionism has trade supporters and some lawmakers eyeing the lame-duck session of Congress late this year as the last chance for the U.S. to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership before a new administration waters down or scuttles a deal.
Opposition to trade has emerged as a rare area of bipartisan agreement in the 2016 election campaign, with leading candidates opposing or criticizing a pact that would boost trade among nations making up 40 percent of the global economy. A tough battle for congressional seats in states where economic concerns loom large makes supporting deals such as TPP a political liability.
In such a hostile environment, where anti-trade rhetoric resonates among voters in key manufacturing regions, congressional leaders point to the legislative session just after the Nov. 8 election as the earliest a deal could be considered.
"I think we’ll probably get it through, but it’s shaky," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said in an interview. "It will probably have to be after the elections. I think we have a better chance to passing it after, but we’ll see” what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to do, he said.
Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-03-22/trade-backers-pin-pacific-pact-hopes-on-lame-duck-u-s-congress
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forest444
(5,902 posts)With all the millions in bribes those worms must have collected, they must be under such intense pressure to deliver.
"Private initiative," as Thatcher referred to it.
Baobab
(4,667 posts)
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)
pampango
(24,692 posts)
pberq
(2,950 posts)From an interview with economist Michael Hudson (emphasis added):
http://michael-hudson.com/2016/02/the-commanding-heights/
. . .The cover story pretends to be about trade, but the real agenda is to force privatization and disable government regulation. This reverses what was central to the whole Progressive Era. For the last 300 years, the assumption of Europe and North America was that you were going to have a mixed economy, with governments investing in infrastructure, roads and other transportation, communications, water and sewer systems, gas and electricity. The role of government infrastructure was to provide these basic needs at minimum cost in order to promote a low-cost, competitive economy. That’s how America got rich. That’s how Germany industrialized and how the rest of Europe did. But the aim of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to reverse and privatize public investment. Its ideology is that the economy should be owned and operated by private owners, private enterprise, whose aim is short-term profit.
There are a number of related aims: to nullify environmental protection regulations that cost money, to nullify protection of labor, and to nullify attempts to tax natural resources or economic rent. The idea is to turn roads and the transport system into toll roads, which will be owned by foreigners and run at a high charge. The Internet and the water system will be sold off and made into toll systems, to charge for their services and for other basic needs. This will impose a neo-feudal rentier economy throughout the world as the finance, industrial and real estate (FIRE) sector takes over the government sector.
I think you could say that at the broadest level, the idea is to roll back the Enlightenment and restore feudalism. That may sound like an extreme statement, but people don’t realize how radical the TPP’s investment agreements are. For instance, when Australia raised the charges on cigarettes and included health warnings on the packs, Philip Morris sued, insisting that Australia pay it what Philip Morris would have made if people would have continued to smoke and get cancer at the existing rate. . .
Baobab
(4,667 posts)yes to privatization generally, TPP likely isnt toll roads, toll roads sounds like services and privatization, so that would likely be TiSA- services may be put up for competitive bidding and they cannot discriminate- there is no reason why Americans would not win with the lowest bid except for wages, so if we got rid of minimum wages they would win the bids and could manage the privatized roads. Discrimination by countries is not allowed, and lowest qualified bid wins. Another alternative would be full automation. they could win by fully automating because then they could have a winning low bid.
Similarly, US companies despite our "high minimum wages" could win bids on construction projects, infrastructure by automating the rank and file jobs (or using globalized services firms as subcontractors)
Also, services procurement is mostly WTO GPA and the long existing GATS- and of course the new (being negotiated in geneva) TiSA and infrastructure TTIP, TPP may have some services but TPP is mostly expensive drugs and expensive IP, surveillance, and Internet backdoor equality.
w4rma
(31,700 posts)Baobab
(4,667 posts)GATS Mode Four was part of the WTO's services deal, signed in 1994 by the President at that time.
This is what I am talking about, these "movement of natural persons" (i.e. "Mode Four" provisions..)
LABOR MOBILITY
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTRANETTRADE/Resources/C13.pdf
Now do you understand what I am getting at.
WTO liberalises government procurement to create a global level playing field for corporations, from both rich and poor countries.
Countries can get business by objective and verifiable criteria, such as low bids.
the US is fighting against local sourcing laws
ViseGrip
(3,133 posts)
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)This is what "compromise" will look like under President Hillary Clinton.