I hope this helps a little. The TPP creates an international "one world" court body, that overrides national sovereignty and laws in all countries, including the US. It covers everything from internet privacy to environmental regulations. It's NAFTA on steroids.
Cali has had many excellent threads about it. Why the Tribunals in the TPP are so bad and how we know that addresses the court issue. Here's another good one: Secret TPP Deal Would Void Democracy. The Teamsters and other labor unions have been screaming at the top of their lungs about it. There are several articles about it everyday on the Teamster site.
Closed-door talks are on-going between the U.S. and Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam; with countries like Japan and China potentially joining later. 600 corporate advisors have access to the text, while the public, Members of Congress, journalists, and civil society are excluded.
http://www.citizen.org/TPPThe Obama administration is currently mired in an ambitious project to accomplish both the continuation of the WTO’s agenda and a restructuring of NAFTA in ways that place corporate property rights over protection of people and the environment. Using the friendly term, ‘partnership,’ the administration is negotiating a sweeping free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which could potentially involve the entire Pacific Rim as well as a sister agreement with European nations. This is being done largely in secret and in a way that subverts the democratic process.
Former US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, who now has a lucrative job in the private sector advising transnational corporations for the law firm
Gibson Dunn, said that
if people knew what was in the TPP, there would be no way to get it signed into law.
As he told one interviewer, if the text were made public negotiators would be walking away from the negotiations because they would be very unpopular.
The new US Trade Representative, Obama’s classmate Michael Froman who worked at CitiGroup, and the more than 600 corporate advisers involved in writing the TPP, have direct access to the text of the treaty, but members of Congress have only limited access and the public and media are excluded. Recent calls for transparency by members of Congress have been denied, so the extent of what we know comes from leaks.
...
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and it’s sister, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP, known as “TAFTA”), are the Obama administration’s response to the failure of the WTO. These two treaties will aim to not only give multinational corporations all of the deregulation and legal rights they sought through the WTO, but are intended to go even further. With the inclusion of Canada and Mexico, the Obama administration will live up to its promise to renegotiate NAFTA, but not in the way that he alluded to during his 2008 presidential campaign.
...
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17472-stopping-the-tpp-a-victory-in-the-global-revolt-against-corporate-dominationExtreme Foreign Investor Rights & Private Enforcement Would Promote Offshoring, Attacks Against Our Laws
Under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "free trade" agreement, foreign firms would gain an array of privileges:
- Rights to acquire land, natural resources, factories without government review
- Risks and costs of offshoring to low wage countries eliminated
- Special guaranteed “minimum standard of treatment” for relocating firms
- Compensation for loss of “expected future profits” from health, labor environmental, laws (indirect or “regulatory” takings compensation)
- Right to move capital without limits
- New rights cover vast definition of investment: intellectual property, permits, derivatives
- Ban performance requirements, domestic content rules. Absolute ban, not only when applied to investors from signatory countries
A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for the TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor-state” system. This system elevates individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country's government- and above all of us citizens.
Under this regime, foreign investors can skirt domestic courts and laws, and sue governments directly before tribunals of three private sector lawyers operating under World Bank and UN rules to demand taxpayer compensation for any domestic law that investors believe will diminish their "expected future profits." Over $3 billion has been paid to foreign investors under U.S. trade and investment pacts, while over $14 billion in claims are pending under such deals, primarily targeting environmental, energy, and public health policies.
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=5411&frcrld=1Even more troubling is the aforementioned Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal the Obama administration has been negotiating in closed-door talks with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam--and perhaps soon Japan and China. The only publicly available information about the TPP has come through leaks, and the administration has kept members of Congress
minimally informed as well. The administration has prohibited Congressional staffers from reviewing the full text and from discussing its specific terms with trade experts and reporters. The corporations that would benefit from the TPP have been, of course, embraced with open arms into the negotiations, and labor and civil society groups have been allowed into talks only if they promise to keep all negotiations confidential and not publicly speak out against them.
Here's a taste of what we know so far about the TPP (courtesy of Public Citizen):
• Foreign corporations would be able to attack member nations’ health and environmental laws before foreign tribunals to demand taxpayer compensation for policies they believe undermine their future profits.
• Large pharmaceutical companies would have longer monopoly control on drugs, effectively cutting off access from millions in developing countries and raising prices here at home.
• No more Buy America or Buy Local preferences.
• Member countries would have to accept food that does not meet national safety standards and would have to limit food labeling (such as for GMOs).
• Internet service providers would be required to “police” user-activity (Think SOPA/PIPA), and individual violators would be treated the same as large-scale for-profit violators.
• The TPP would entail backdoor financial regulation, prohibiting bans on risky financial services and undermining efforts to end “too big to fail.”
Last month, during a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Elizabeth Warren questioned the head of the Export-Import Bank about the backdoor financial deregulation that appears to be in the TPP. Last week, she sent a
letter to Froman demanding more transparency in the negotiating process. Froman denied the request.
Earlier today, Warren
announced that she would oppose Froman's confirmation, referencing his rejection of her calls for greater transparency:
For months, the Trade Representative who negotiates on our behalf has been unwilling to provide any public access to the composite bracketed text relating to the negotiations. The composite bracketed text includes proposed language from the United States and also other countries, and it serves as the focal point for negotiations. The Trade Representative has allowed Members of Congress to access the text, and I appreciate that. But that is no substitute for public transparency.
I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the Trade Representative’s policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant. In other words, if people knew what was going on, they would stop it. This argument is exactly backwards. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States.
I believe in transparency and democracy, and I think the U.S. Trade Representative should too.
I asked the President’s nominee to be Trade Representative — Michael Froman – three questions: First, would he commit to releasing the composite bracketed text? Or second, if not, would he commit to releasing just a scrubbed version of the bracketed text that made anonymous which country proposed which provision. (Note: Even the Bush Administration put out the scrubbed version during negotiations around the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement.)
Third, I asked Mr. Froman if he would provide more transparency behind what information is made to the trade office’s outside advisors. Currently, there are about 600 outside advisors that have access to sensitive information, and the roster includes a wide diversity of industry representatives and some labor and NGO representatives too. But there is no transparency around who gets what information and whether they all see the same things, and I think that’s a real problem.
Mr. Froman’s response was clear: No, no, no. He will not commit to make this information available so the public can track what is going on.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/20/1217433/-Thank-you-Elizabeth-Warren-and-Bernie-Sanders-for-opposing-Obama-s-neoliberal-Trade-nominee
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