Jim Hightower: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is a Corporate Coup in Disguise

[marmar]

JIM HIGHTOWER ON BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT


What if our national leaders told us that communities across America had to eliminate such local programs as Buy Local, Buy American, Buy Green, etc. to allow foreign corporations to have the right to make the sale on any products purchased with our tax dollars? This nullification of our people's right to direct expenditures is just one of the horror stories in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

This is a super-sized NAFTA, the 1994 trade scam rammed through Congress by the entire corporate establishment. NAFTA promised the "glories of globalization": prosperity across our land. Unfortunately, corporations got the gold. We got the shaft — thousands of factories closed, millions of middle-class jobs went south, and the economies of hundreds of towns and cities were shattered.

Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism:

—Food safety. Any of our government's food safety regulations (on pesticide levels, bacterial contamination, fecal exposure, toxic additives, etc.) and food labeling laws (organic, country-of-origin, animal-welfare approved, GMO-free, etc.) that are stricter than "international standards" could be ruled as "illegal trade barriers." Our government would then have to revise our consumer protections to comply with weaker standards. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18231-jim-hightower-the-trans-pacific-partnership-is-a-corporate-coup-in-disguise

[djean111]

1. There is nothing the GOP can do - shutdown included - to make the TPP any less of an

abomination. I am hoping all of Congress fights this as bitterly as the GOP is fighting the ACA.