2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumIt's About Letting Giant Corporations Rig the Rules
Here's a lot more background on Warren vs TPP:
Andrea Germanos
Common Dreams
The deal, Warren says in the video, "isn't about helping American workers set the rules. It's about letting giant corporations rig the rules—on everything from patent protection to food safety standards —all to benefit themselves."
One specific provision of the deal drawing Warren's ire (as it has before) is the "wonky-sounding" Investor State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS.
"This is the part that gives a huge boost to big multinational companies when they want to challenge a country's laws they don't like," she says. They do that not through courts but "industry-friendly arbitration panels staffed with corporate lawyers." Faced with potential billions in fines, "some countries will just back down and change their regulations," she says.
"Workers, environmentalists, and human rights advocates don't get the right to use ISDS; only big corporations do. That's a rigged system," she says. Warren cites specific examples of ISDS challenges— last year when Canadian taxpayers got stuck with a $300 million bill after the country said a company couldn't expand of a quarry off the coast of Nova Scotia, and when Keystone XL company TransCanada used the ISDS provision of NAFTA to seek $15 billion from the U.S. for its rejection of the pipeline.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy,also criticizes the trade deal on Thursday, writing at The Hill that the TPP "is strongly disliked by the base of the Democratic Party, as well as by a sizable majority of Democratic voters and the general public. There's an awful lot not to like about this thing." He cites, for example, how the deal "would grant corporations the right to sue governments for all kinds of decisions, laws or regulations that infringe on their profits or potential profits" and "would increase the price of prescription drugs."
Despite the widespread party rejection of the deal, specific opposition to it was kept off of the DNC's platform during a drafting session in St. Louis, and Weisbrot argues that even if the full DNC platform committee fails to includes opposition to it when the group convenes in Orlando on July 8th and 9th, "the Sanders team and its many allies and delegates will take the fight to the floor of the Democratic National Convention, which begins in Philadelphia on July 25."
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silvershadow
(10,336 posts)arcane1
(38,613 posts)The question every politician needs to be asked on this topic: just whose side are you really on?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)The trade agreements are much more than just trade, not to mention they are about the world, not just keep America the world's 1%ers. American workers are important, but so are other countries and the 6,670,000,000 people who are Americans. Using trade agreements to say screw the rest of the world is wrong too. Besides, even if you want to make it all about America, we aren't going to produce the jobs and tax dollars necessary for healthcare, education, "welfare," etc., trading among ourselves. Worse, long-term, the rest of the world will pass us by if we decide to become nationalistic isolationists who can't be trusted to even negotiate an agreement that these 12 countries have agreed to and other countries -- including European and Scandinavian countries -- have agreed to the in the past.
One simply cannot look at this kind of agreement only from the USA's standpoint, but many are, and they aren't thinking about the real long-term impact.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Is that how they're going to develop strong local markets and democratic institutions?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)People aren't going to invest in a country that can pass a law favoring domestic companies over foreign countries. That's why they do it, and why we do too -- ever seen the lines for jobs at Toyota, Honda, Seimens, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, etc., plants in rural America?
So the idea is for foreign capital to come in and build factories and extract wealth. Colonialism is a viable model, but not for the people.
What is wrong with developing a locally owned economy? It worked for us, South Korea, etc.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)The poor countries like Mexico, Vietnam, etc., have begged to get foreign investment, rather than just our jobs or Americans treating them like scabs because their economy supports lower wages.
Not going with the TPP, is simply protection for Americans, Germans, etc. -- who have used or stolen more than our share of resources from around the world -- at the expense of poor people. That's not right either.
So, you want to deny poor countries a chance to leap forward by saying tough chit -- pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. Besides, advancing trade in poor countries will provide America, Europe, etc., jobs in the long-run.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)The American School, also known as the "National System", represents three different yet related constructs in politics, policy and philosophy. It was the American policy from the 1860s to the 1970s, waxing and waning in actual degrees and details of implementation. Historian Michael Lind describes it as a coherent applied economic philosophy with logical and conceptual relationships with other economic ideas.
It is the macroeconomic philosophy that dominated United States national policies from the time of the American Civil War until the mid-twentieth century. Closely related to mercantilism, it can be seen as contrary to classical economics. It consisted of these three core policies:
1. protecting industry through selective high tariffs (especially 1861–1932) and through subsidies (especially 1932–70)
2. government investments in infrastructure creating targeted internal improvements (especially in transportation)
3. a national bank with policies that promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation.
During its American System period the United States grew into the largest economy in the world with the highest standard of living, surpassing the British Empire by the 1880s.
We built this nation on protectionism. There are lots of protectionism success stories. I'm unaware of any neoliberal success stories. Why would we want to impose neoliberalism on other nations? Why shouldn't they protect and invest in their industries and build national wealth the same way we did and nearly every other developed economy?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)I'm fine with investing money straight into poor countries if that's the way you want to do it. My guess is, we won't raise much money that way, only get a bunch of protectionists people worried about themselves and too myopic to see we'll be better off when the whole world is progressing.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Free Trade is progress if you're part of the 1% skimming off the top. I know this theory came in vogue with Reagan, Thatcher, and Clinton, but I disagree.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Even some guy making $20,000 a year is better off than most of the world.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)
http://www.lcurve.org
But let's not pretend working people in the US have more in common with the 1% than a worker in another country. TPP is for the 1%, not workers in the US, not workers overseas.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)companies properly. We may have some work to do in that respect, but sitting on our asses and not participating in world commerce in the meantime is not going to help.
BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)"Fuck 'em, I got mine." Never thought I'd see such a philosophy associated with progressivism.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Now, to be fair, I get we have a lot of work to do here to protect our people. To me, that includes taxing the hell out of corporations who benefit from lower wages in foreign countries and using that money for social good. I just don't think we protect us -- and "I are one" -- by throwing up walls and believing we can trade among ourselves and prosper long-term. And, heck, the poorer countries like -- China, India, Pakistan, Russia, etc. -- aren't going to sit by and starve. If we want to get out of continuous wars, protectionism is not the best plan.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)It's part of the philosophical package. It's against laissez-faire capitalism, neoliberalism, and corporate power. Words have meanings. You can disagree with the progressive opinion on trade, but that's what it is.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)I think what you're missing here is that there's a wide consensus that free trade doesn't work, because - spoiler alert, it doesn't. But, because a conservative, or a nativist, or a racist might rail against free trade for those reasons, it doesn't mean when a progressive rails against corporate power they agree with the right.
There's also a bipartisan consensus in Washington that neoliberalism is the only way and anyone who questions it is fringe.
If you're pro-free trade, great. But you're at odds with progressives, and an emerging consensus in the electorate.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)American gas guzzlers, etc., to become unpopular among consumers.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Where has free trade produced a vibrant nation? Free trade has allowed transnational corporations to play labor in one country off of another to their own enrichment.
I'm not the one backing a dead-end policy. Wrapping neoliberalism in the mantle of modernity ignores the outcomes.
BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)Free trade isn't about boosting one nation.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)The IMF and World Bank orthodoxy is increasing global poverty
Stephen Byers
The Guardian
As leader of the delegation from the United Kingdom, I was convinced that the expansion of world trade had the potential to bring major benefits to developing countries and would be one of the key means by which world poverty would be tackled.
In order to achieve this, I believed that developing countries would need to embrace trade liberalisation. This would mean opening up their own domestic markets to international competition. The thinking behind this approach being that the discipline of the market would resolve problems of underperformance, a strong economy would emerge and that, as a result, the poor would benefit. This still remains the position of major international bodies like the IMF and World Bank and is reflected in the system of incentives and penalties which they incorporate in their loan agreements with developing countries. But my mind has changed.
The course of international trade since 1945 shows that an unfettered global market can fail the poor and that full trade liberalisation brings huge risks and rarely provides the desired outcome. It is more often the case that developing countries which have successfully expanded their economies are those that have been prepared to put in place measures to protect industries while they gain strength and give communities the time to diversify into new areas.
Just look at some examples. Taiwan and South Korea are often held out as being good illustrations of the benefits of trade liberalisation. In fact, they built their international trading strength on the foun dations of government subsidies and heavy investment in infrastructure and skills development while being protected from competition by overseas firms.
In more recent years, those countries which have been able to reduce levels of poverty by increasing economic growth - like China, Vietnam, India and Mozambique - have all had high levels of intervention as part of an overall policy of strengthening domestic sectors.
On the other hand, there are an increasing number of countries in which full-scale trade liberalisation has been applied and then failed to deliver economic growth while allowing domestic markets to be dominated by imports. This often has devastating effects.
Zambia and Ghana are both examples of countries in which the opening up of markets has led to sudden falls in rates of growth with sectors being unable to compete with foreign goods. Even in those countries that have experienced overall economic growth as a result of trade liberalisation, poverty has not necessarily been reduced.
BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/global-poverty-world-bank_us_56119981e4b0af3706e12d67
Pay attention now, because my example, unlike others posted here recently, has actual numbers and data to back it up, rather than a biased writer's opinion.
The Washington-based institution’s latest projections expect the number of people who survive on $1.90 a day to drop from 12.8 percent of the human population in 2012 to 9.6 percent this year. That means 702 million people still struggle to survive.
But that’s a stunning decline from the numbers reported over the last 25 years. According to the World Bank, 37.1 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty in 1990. In 2015, that number is estimated to drop to 9.6 percent.
Single digits, yo.
As for some African nations:
The region’s increased share of the world’s poor is largely explained by poverty in East Asia dropping drastically from 50.6 percent in 1990 to a projected 11.9 percent by the end of 2015, but the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is exacerbated by the region’s rapid population growth of 2.6 percent a year, experts say.
“The rate at which poverty is falling is less than the rate at which the population is rising, so the number of people living in poverty continues to grow,” Laurence Chandy, a fellow with the Brookings Institution, wrote in May. Chandy also pointed to flawed data-collecting practices and a “mismatch between where growth is occurring and where the poor are” in Africa.
Facts > emotions, forever and always.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)Ian Fletcher
Huffington Post
Unfortunately, free trade just doesn’t work as a global anti-poverty strategy. The spreading Third World affluence one sees in TV commercials only means that the thin upper crust of Western-style consumers is now more widespread than ever before. But having more affluent people in the Third World is not the same as the Third World as a whole nearing the living standards of the First.
This is actually not a terribly big secret, and is fairly well known to the people who promote free trade. For a start, the World Bank standard for poverty is $2 a day, so “moving people out of poverty” can merely consist in moving people from $1.99 a day to $2.01 a day. In one major study, there were only two nations in which the average beneficiary jumped from less than $1.88 to more than $2.13: Pakistan and Thailand. Every other nation was making minor jumps in between.
What progress against poverty has occurred in the world in recent decades has not been due to free trade, but due to the embrace of mercantilism and industrial policy by some poor nations. (This is, of course, the same way nations like the U.S. and England became prosperous hundreds of years ago.) According to the World Bank, the entire net global decline in the number of people living in poverty since 1981 has been in mercantilist China, where free trade is spurned. [“2008 World Development Indicators: Poverty Data Supplement,” The World Bank, 2008, p. 10.] Elsewhere, their numbers have grown.
Neoliberalism, like most right wing policies, don't work.
BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)Good day.
portlander23
(2,078 posts)I said good day!
portlander23
(2,078 posts)BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)conservatism than liberalism.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Nothing to do with helping nations, helping workers in any damn country....Nationalism has nothing to do with it..
It about Big Transnational Capital sucking us all dry and eliminating domestic law in every country.Thay want the only to be the Law of Money. Fuck all other concerns.
Stop pretending opposition to that I's just jingoism.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)important than anyone else. Pure greed, Nationalism, America Firstism.Again, we have work to regulate corporations and increase taxes, but can't thumb our nose at the rest of the world in the meantime and live up to "the greedy Americans."
Teamster Jeff
(1,598 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Teamster Jeff
(1,598 posts)AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)We are nationalists?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)It is neocolonialism
Go Vols
(5,902 posts)http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/clinton-picks-warren-the-tpp-is-dead.html
Vattel
(9,289 posts)Go Vols
(5,902 posts)Vattel
(9,289 posts)