Trans Pacific Partnership is NAFTA On Steroids

[Left Coast2020]

The functional, or technical, definition of a “free market” is one in which the state regulates the market – the realm of economic exchange and activity – for the benefit of large transnational corporations and banks.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/13082-the-trans-pacific-partnership-what-free-trade-actually-means

IMO, we can't sit on our hands like we may have with NAFTA. I get feeling we will really be screwed if this goes through.

Here's more:

The estimated value of the Chinese laborers in assembling the iPhone was 3.6% (or $6.50) of the total value of the finished product, estimated at $178.96 in 2009. Yet, the wholesale cost of the shipped iPhone is credited to China as an export. China was merely the last stop in the production cycle, but China records the total value of the finished product as an export, while the United States records it as an import. Thus, the researchers at the Asian Development Bank Institute concluded that “even high-tech products invented by U.S. companies will not increase U.S. exports.”

Pascal Lamy, director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), commented, “What we call ‘Made in China’ is indeed assembled in China, but what makes up the commercial value of the product comes from the numerous countries... The concept of country of origin for manufactured goods has gradually become obsolete.”

[msongs]

1. pact makes US law subject to overrule by foreign corporations & we will have to comply

[pampango]

2. If our international agreements involve us being "ruled by" foreigners that's OK as long as

the "rules" are progressive.

Wether the rules are administered by Americans and/or by foreigners doesn't matter as much to me as does the nature of the rules. I would prefer progressive "rule by" anyone (assuming our government has agreed to these international rules) to regressive rule by pure Americans (as we seem to have been getting over the past few decades as our income inequality has gotten worse and worse).

[cadaverdog]

4. I have a feeling

you didn't read the article at Truth Dig, or you wouldn't be so cavalier in your response.

[snot]

6. These rules are fascistic.

[bvar22]

7. SEE: NAFTA Chapter 11

And it isn't "rule by foreigners" it is Rule by Global Corporations
who are given the power through these "Free Trade Treaties" to Levy TAXES (place fines) on the citizens of countries that THEY judge to have interfered in the Right of Global Corporations to Make a PROFIT.

They decide these cases in secret tribunals.


The facts have been collected.
The Jury is IN.
The verdict has been decided.
One can NOT support "Free Trade",
and be Pro-LABOR or Pro-American Working Class at the same time.
The two positions ARE Mutually Exclusive.

[snot]

5. K&R'd!