TTP: The Final Secret Trade Deal

                             The July 16/23 issue of Nation Magazine, has an article on the Trans-Pacific-Partnership

         Negotiations now being conducted between the United States and several other countries.   The

         article, “TPP:  NAFTA ON Steroids”, is by Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade

         Watch. Every year or so, we hear a rumor by some conspiracy theorist concerning some

         sinister secret treaty which will transcend our national sovereignty and destroy our way of life.

         But no conspiracy theorist to date has been sufficiently demented to conceive of anything even

         remotely as absurd, outrageous, and probably treasonous as that which our trade

         representatives are currently attempting to inflict on the public.  If you have not heard much about TTP, join the club.  All countries a party to this thing agreed in advance that the entire text of the agreement would we be kept secret till four years after it went into effect. No one, not the public, not the press, and not even Congress has access to this information.  Senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate sub-committee with jurisdiction over TTP does not even have access to our own       negotiators’ proposals.

                     Because certain sections of the deal were leaked earlier this year, we know that the treaty isn’t even about trade per se. We already have trade agreements which eliminate tariffs for all the countries involved.  Only two of the 26 chapters even mention traditional trade matters.  The rest deal with the right of trans-national corporations to sue national governments for passing any laws or regulations which might interfere with profits.  If any country imposed import restrictions related to human rights issues, environmental issues, or even food safety issues, these regulations could be, and probably would be challenged—and thrown out. And so would any legislation designed to slow the outsourcing of jobs, or to protect American interests in any way. And the suits would bypass normal courts and be held in special corporate tribunals.  As in NAFTA, the tribunal would be staffed by a three judge panel, and would be held in secret. The judges would be corporate lawyers, who would rotate between serving as judges and representing the corporate plaintiffs. No representative of the nation being sued would even be present, yet such tribunals would be empowered to levy unlimited damages against any country who dared to have a regulation that might interfere with profits—and there could be no appeal.  No; I’m not making this up.  Click on the link and read it and weep. By the way, once this treaty is in effect, any country in the world could sign this agreement and be eternally subject to all its provisions.  So, if you happen to live in a country that is not currently part of this, don't think that makes you much safer.  In practice, the corporate elites already have control over most of your life. This treaty would formalize that control, and give it the force of law. (But not just state law or national law or constitutional law.  A treaty trumps all  three.)