It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and it involves 9 nations: The United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, has very little actually to do with trade and is top secret.? How secret?? Well members of Congress who are permitted to view the text can only see limited parts, they cannot bring their staff in and are sworn to secrecy.
So what?will this?so called trade agreement do?? For starters, it will strengthen intellectual property rights and weaken regulation.??Want?to prevent Japan from exporting radioactive fish to the U.S.?? No can do, at least not according to the TPP. ?Want to know if that corn or tomatoes you’re buying is genetically modified?? Too bad.? The TPP will nullify that.? Remember SOPA?? Yes the anti-piracy bill that had everyone in a frenzy?just a year ago but with grassroots action and public outcry was defeated.? Well you didn’t think they’d give up that easy did you?? Yes, they’ve manage to sneak it through the backdoor in the TPP deal.
Another one of the chapters in the trade deal includes financial services which according to the provisions will decrease regulation, a free fall for the banking cartel.?? Nation based laws enacted to prevent financial crises such as that of 2008 would take a back seat to the guidelines of the TPP.??This means laws such as Dodd-Frank?would become irrelevant.? The law of the land would be whatever the TPP permits.
The agreement would also have a huge impact on the cost of pharmaceutical drugs and medical procedures.? Instead of lowering these costs which is essentially what free trade is suppose to do, it would increase them.? It would also extend the term of patents making it longer for drugs to become generic. It is in fact the very opposite of free trade.? In fact only five of the?twenty-nine chapters actually have anything to do with trade.
So the question remains what exactly is the TPP?Agreement?and?what does?the?American public?stand to gain from it?? All one has to do is take a look at what NAFTA did to the American working class to answer that.? According to many economists more than 1 million American jobs were eliminated as a result of the 1994 trade act.? And if that isn’t convincing enough, just look at all of the secrecy surrounding the agreement.? If it’s?secret that can’t be good.
Edited/Published by: SB
