(TPP) Free Trade Is a Serious Threat

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/227275/free-trade-is-a-serious-threat/

The U.S. plans to impose its reactionary position on intellectual property in the pharmaceutical industry.

Free Trade Is a Serious Threat
Bolpress, Bolivia
By Xavier Caño Tamayo
Translated By Patricia O'Connor
22 November 2013
Edited by Lau­rence Bouvard

Despite the lack of public comment or disclosure, the U.S. and member governments of the European Union are secretly negotiating a free trade agreement. Newspapers and radio and television news are being left in the dark. Only the governments and multinationals know what is cooking.

The limited amount of information that has been leaked refers only to the “big advantages of the agreement” including a 1 percent increase in the European Union’s gross domestic product as well as new tax revenues of 110 billion euros for Europe and $95 billion for the U.S. Such macroeconomic calculations do not consider any negative impacts on labor, social issues or the environment.

In the 1990s, the U.S. wanted to set up a free trade zone with Central and South America. Repeating the free trade mantra that wealth would flow everywhere, the free trade agreement, which was never signed, would have imposed the neoliberal policies developed by the Washington Consensus — policies that would have benefited economic and financial elites.

But the U.S. proceeded to sign bilateral agreements with Colombia, Peru and Chile as well as one with Mexico and Canada. Newspaper archives show that the agreement with Mexico and Canada had a devastating impact on Mexican agriculture and industry. It spurred intense and abundant migration to the U.S. and it arrested Mexico’s development potential. Things were not much better in Peru, Colombia and Chile; they all have watched inequality grow without a decrease in entrenched poverty.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for the truth. n/t

-Laelth