Well, isn't that the entire problem at the US side? Your Congress has 60 days to read and understand several thousand of badly written legalese, and make a decision on it.
At any rate: every member of Congress has a staff with a million dollar annual payroll.
Are they going to carefully review the TPP for problems? Of course not. But the negotiation process has nothing to do with that. They'll vote for or against free trade as a valence issue and nothing more. What few surprises we'll get will be a pure result of election year posturing against Obama.
As for whether this is a problem, again, I think that boils down to a valence issue. Either you believe that free trade and trade rule harmonization led by the US is a good thing, or you (reasonably) do not. If you don't, then the process we have now is terrible, because that process creates the potential that trade deals will happen. Because of course, if Congress was looped in on TPP negotiation from the outset, with advise-and-consent on each successive draft, there could be no trade deal. This Congress couldn't work out an agreement to fund a pothole repair if the repair was close to a contested district.
Remember here we're talking about Congress deciding about laws for other countries, much more so than for their own.
I wish we wouldn't speak about such things in singular form, without qualifying what we mean specifically.
A normal trade agreement is something along the lines of "we promise to not tax import of European cars, if you promise to tax Asian lawn mowers", or "if you promise to allow antibiotics for farm animals", or something else a commissioner wants to see implemented.
Is this for or against free trade? It is part of a free trade deal so one could argue it is for, by definition. But that stance makes it very hard to discuss these things, especially in media sound bites. And that's exactly where we are today.
I think if it's one thing we've seen during the past ten years, it is that such negotiations needs to become more transparent. They have turned into political issues where's there is an opinion (which is a good thing!) many years before the facts are public.
Do you really not think this is a problem? And how will society push Congress to represent its interests if nobody had time to read it either?
(And, no, that's not about the US Congress deciding about laws for other countries. Each country on the treaty must accept the bill independently. Each one of those countries has a process for it, that's usually at least as broken as the US one - it's just that I was commenting on the US process.)
EDIT: tptacek is right: it is important to be clear that it is becoming open.
So having said all that: I'm not arguing in favor of the TPP. I'm simply pointing out that the most common criticism of the TPP --- that it's a "secret" deal --- is both inaccurate and not particularly significant.
I disagree. The scope of this deal, particularly the ISDS (which seems to have been amended due to widespread criticism), is incredibly broad. Undermining the basis of justice and democracy in secret negotiations without any feedback from the public is a terrible idea. If it was just about tariffs, sure, go ahead. But if business can get awarded massive damages in private courts because a democratic system decides not to tolerate their harmful practices anymore, well, that's unbelievably harmful to any semblance of justice and democracy. Stuff like that should never be negotiated in secret, but be subject to democratic checks and balances. The status of ISDS is to me still the primary factor in whether this deal will be acceptable or not. And as long as it's an inseparable part of the treaty, the treaty as a whole should fall if this part of it is considered unacceptable.
I don't know what one thing you don't like in the TPP has to do with the level of transparency involved in its ratification. If the ISDS process is a grievous flaw, rather than a mechanism that is similar to those used in many/most other trade treaties, surely it won't be ratified.
Either way, you'll soon have the full text of the treaty, months before it comes to a vote.
The reason why the secrecy makes ISDS even worse is that it undermines democratic means of the people to improve their country. They might vote for a good law, but doing so might lead to steep damages paid to the companies whose behaviour made the new law necessary in the first place. It seriously undermines the country's sovereignty, and that's not something that should be bartered away in secret.
This is an important point. And furthermore, I'd even argue that it was necessary. The lack of transparency in the negotiations was to allow country's negotiators to be able to put their cards on their table without being immediately skewered out of context. For example, if Japan's negotiator proposed eliminating tarries on rice imports into her country as a carrot, the uproar back home would be enormous. But if it resulted in say, a removal on tariffs for exported Japanese cars, then the country could see it as a net win when the final agreement was put forth.
The secrecy was only there to let them barter freely before arriving at a conclusion. Otherwise, the negotiations would have gotten nowhere, and free trade would be nowhere.
Then under the short time frame, the argument becomes 'we worked for years on this deal' don't vote no on any one point you disagree with because it's tied up in a big Gordian knot with a hundred other points. If software were written the way we negotiate trade deals, we'd fire the programmers.
I know they won't review the enabling bill carefully. But it's not because the bill isn't transparent. It's because reviewing the bill is work, and none of them are excited about spending their precious cycles on work rather than political status games.
If this bill had been public 9 months ago and voted on 9 months from now, the amount of scrutiny legislators would give it would be roughly equivalent.
It's not just staff to read the text, it would be identifying and lining up experts with context in each area to weigh in. So far corporate lawyers have been embedded into the process but few representatives of the people. So I think we should approach this with deep caution.
Even if it was the only policy they need to get their head round, what's the rush? Is the world going to fall apart if it takes a year to debate? Isn't our understanding of the intricacies of the bill likely to improve over a longer debate?
If I wouldn't have time to read it all, if it were all I did other than eat or sleep in the allotted time, then there is not enough time for it to be sufficiently considered, and should not be passed.
Do you mean "every TYPE of job" or every instance of job? Plenty of jobs have been exported, and plenty more will be, until the world is basically flat. As one example, right now, US doctors are still commonly reading and interpreting X-rays and CAT scans. This is being automated and also outsourced. In other words, this TYPE of job is already being done by doctors in China. But large portions of work remain here in the US. The export and automation of jobs will continue.
Maybe you're right by qualifying your comment with "cost effectively". Surely that's the case in an efficient market. But "cost effective" will change as technology and culture develops. As hospital administrators become less tech-phobic, more xray-techs will work from Shanghai.
> I don't think job exports are a good thing
Why not? It's the most efficient way of providing economic well-being to less developed countries, which means better food security for their people, better education, better healthcare, and more stable politics. You might say exporting jobs is the #1 best way the USA can deliver aid to foreign countries.
> also don't think TPP has much to do with it.
For a counterpoint, see this link previously posted here: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/26/417851577/episo...
Why not? Do you think automating jobs with technology is also a bad thing?
And that's where we come in as well. We'll get to see the agreement, review it ourselves (with the help of interest groups we support) and contact our congressmen if we deem those things to be worth scuttling the deal over.
And before I'm accused of being too idealist, don't forget that The aforementioned health care act was passed, and net neutrality was preserved. In sufficient numbers, your representatives /do/ listen.
Anyway, here is what I recommend: RUN THE COUNTRY BY CONTINUOUS POLLING http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=212
OTOH any popular TV show is a worse waste of time, given that its on weekly and not once a year. I think we can give representative democracy at least as much effort as one episode of Bachelor.
Random samples means pollsters will be bothering only a "few" people at a time for their opinion. A statistically significant sample. Instead of everyone turning out to vote for a guy or gal who will MAYBE represent them, policy will be informed by what a random sample of America thinks.
The idea that your vote counts, when Public Choice Theory says it's irrational to vote, ... and then that the representative will actually do what they ran on, which most of the time every representative would do roughly the same thing ... and that lobbyists have just as much as voice as huge blocs of Americans, which a recent Princeton study showed when it claims America is now an Oligarchy... all this shows that maybe the idea of representative democracy is a dangerous fiction.
Myself, I favor a proxy system, where you can delegate your vote to anyone - your minister, your boss, your sister-in-law. They in turn can delegate their proxies to another. Up the graph somewhere (with loops dealt with somehow) are those with 100,000 or more proxies, who make the bar for voting on national issues directly. Stories have been written about it.
Less easy fix 2 - make voting compulsory, with a small fine, like $20/$40 for not showing up to vote. Remember I said showing up, not actually voting, since you can simply cast a blank ballot and then leave having done nothing just as if you didn't vote.
Not really.
The TPP is largely a mechanism for stripping sovereignty from signatory countries and handing it to corporations. It does this by creating a mechanism whereby they can sue governments in secret courts for lost profits.
Sure, there are probably a few provisions in there about agricultural tariffs, but trade liberalization isn't really what it's about.
A better way to describe the relevant clauses is that corporations can sue governments under an international tribunal system if governments are failing to uphold their commitments to an international law. It's basically the same sort of process that was used when, say, the US and Great Britain had a dispute about the boundary of Maine.
From an outsider's perspective, the international tribunal system is too susceptible to corruption. Three lawyers debating in secret, no public or government oversight of the proceedings, with a small pool of lawyers that are eligible to work in these tribunals. If I remember correctly, there are 15 lawyers that end up working on 75% of all international tribunals worth over $4 billion USD.
This talk lays out a number of the problems with the ISDS system, including the figures I've either remembered correctly or got wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fDCbf4O-0s . If anyone watches it and finds the point in the video where ISDS is discussed, please advise others where to find the relevant information.
It's got jack shit to do with international law.
The wording in the agreement uses the term "indirect expropriation".
It's defined as "where an action or series of actions by a party (government) has an effect equivalent to direct expropriation without formal transfer of title or outright seizure".
i.e. lost profits caused by legislation. kinda like when Australia decided to put warning labels on cigarette packs.
Oh, and the supra-national court will be adjudicated by some corporate lawyers who can probably relied upon to interpret the wording of the above agreement in the "right" way.
Various state laws give up sovereignty and allow individuals and corporations to sue the state for negligent actions taken by state employees. The Tucker Act strips sovereignty and allows various contracts to be enforced against the government.
Governments sometimes give up sovereign immunity. It's actually a very important component of the rule of law, allowing the government to be bound by law in addition to the people.
Stripping states of sovereignty and giving it to the federal government is still moving it from one democratically accountable government to another.
This is not quite the same thing as stripping the federal government of sovereignty and giving it to a secret court of supposedly (but not really) independent lawyers.
If you think that it was a great thing that Philip Morris was able to sue Australia or Uruguay for lost profits for putting warning labels on cigarette packets then I suppose you'd be in favor of the ISDS provisions in the TPP.
If, on the other hand, you think governments should legislate for the benefit of their citizens' health, then perhaps not so much.
BAT suing Australia over plain cigarette packaging wasn't a one off case of ISDS being used to sue a country. Another example would be Lone Pine Resources suing Canada $250 million (USD I believe) over Quebec trying to ban fracking.
In other words, whilst I'll be glad if the tobacco industry aren't able to use ISDS to sue a country, there are plenty of other industries that could cause problems with this clause.
The whole concept of a trade agreement is that countries agree to a series of regulations.
There is no such thing as "international law". It is entirely ad hoc. There is no court that has proper jurisdiction over international trade dispute.
Shouldn't it be immediately obvious why a company that ostensibly had mining rights in Canada can't expect a fair result to a dispute with Canada by suing in Canadian court?
In a court system with public oversight, just like the rest of us.
> "Shouldn't it be immediately obvious why a company that ostensibly had mining rights in Canada can't expect a fair result to a dispute with Canada by suing in Canadian court?"
This is the reason why ISDS clauses came into being, to discourage governments from changing rules that may affect their profits, even if the choice was made democratically.
Whilst I understand why companies would want it, I see democratic decisions as having precedent over company profits. If there's a situation where one side has to lose out, then I'd want that to be the company rather than the people of a country.
It's a risk investing in infrastructure or products that can cause problems with public or environmental health. Why should the people of a country have to carry the can if a company chooses to make a risky investment?
Here's another example of a ISDS trade dispute, El Salvador being sued $301 million USD by OceanaGold, with El Salvador resisting the gold mining that OceanaGold want to carry out because of the risk of poisoning their water supply...
http://www.equaltimes.org/will-el-salvador-be-forced-to-pay?...
This is the type of thinking that leads to nationalization of property without compensation, such as that being done in Venezuela and that which is expressly prohibited by the US Constitution - and it's prohibited for good reason.
In answer to your question, not on the whim of a government, but in the case of the electorate, yes, whenever they feel like it.
We're not talking about a life or death situation here, we're talking about a company's profits vs. the will of the people. The population of a country should have the final say in what they want to do with their country, if a government makes a bad decision on their behalf that benefits companies over people that's their mistake. It's up to companies to decide if they want to risk profiting from these deals.
The will of the people is fickle and ruthless - that is the most pressing reason why the USA was cast as a republic rather than a democracy.
Where does the ultimate power of the electorate end? Does the will of the people override your ability to travel to another state for better work or pay because you're needed desperately at your current locale? Does the will of the people stop you from working in tech because we need more people swinging a hammer? Where is the line in the sand?
I know this comes off as a slippery slope argument and it is easy for people who agree with you to simply write these questions off because, gosh darnit, tobacco is bad and we've seen this with tobacco on an HBO show - but really, where is the line?
I'm not demonising all companies, it's possible to run a company with an ethical focus, so it is possible to put people or the environment over pure profits. However, companies that would put pure profits over people will not get my sympathy.
As for life or death for a company's employees, that's one of the benefits of social security, you can remove undesirable economic activity without jeopardising the lives of the people linked to that economic activity. So basically in a well run country, it isn't really a matter of life and death to stop a company from trading in your country.
On the other hand, it can be a matter of life and death if profit is put over people. The El Salvador gold mining story I linked to is one example of that, I have plenty of other examples if you're interested.
>"Where does the ultimate power of the electorate end? Does the will of the people override your ability to travel to another state for better work or pay because you're needed desperately at your current locale?"
The rights of the majority vs. the rights of the minority is one of the classic debates around what is important in a democracy. There's a need for a balancing act between the two.
However, when it comes to the rights of the majority vs. the rights of a corporation to make money, the answer is much more clear cut. What we're talking about in this case is the laws we set to give the people the society they want, as well as (in our current society) the bounds that set what a company can and can't do. If a company relies on a certain law being the way it is to make money, and then the law changes, then the company either has to adapt or fold or convince people to change the law.
Yes. The idea that contracts should be sacrosanct is bullshit.
>This is the type of thinking that leads to nationalization of property without compensation
Remember when they freed the slaves? Slaveholders wanted compensation too. They almost got it too.
In the country's courts, much like any other commercial dispute.
>Shouldn't it be immediately obvious why a company that ostensibly had mining rights in Canada can't expect a fair result to a dispute with Canada by suing in Canadian court?
No. If you assume a fair, transparent legal system, which Canada more or less has then you should expect a fair result. The legal status of the mining rights can be agreed upon as part of the treaty, much as it is in any other trade treaty.
It ought to be immediately obvious that a secret court that supersedes national law overseen by corporate lawyers is not going to deliver a fair result.
Somebody is clearly more well versed in popular culture than I am.
>The dispute resolution process excludes tobacco, according to the NYT.
Which apparently happened just yesterday. Perhaps "pop culture oversight" of trade treaties isn't such a bad thing.
Do you also consider the regulatory state (in which various unelected bureaucracies such as the EPA or SEC write regulations with minimal democratic oversight) to be a problem?
In any case, I do favor the rule of law, which includes allowing unsympathetic parties to have their day in court and to have those cases decided on the legal merits. I also have no particular affection towards democracy or national sovereignty (I use protection of individual rights as my normative basis, and favor sovereignty and democracy only insofar as they protect individual rights).
The problem is that TPP is a one-way transfer of power -- the costs of (democratically choosing to) flaunt these courts would be overly onerous to citizens of many signatory states.
Because TPP is de facto irreversable, your argument here is structurally similar to the argument that dictators make when their transition to power happens via reforms approved by democractic mechanisms.
I.e., just because a democracy at one point approves of a reform, doesn't make that reform tautologically democractic at all future points in time.
Lots of laws are "irreversible" in that regard. For example, Obamacare is irreversible because if we reverse it, the people currently receiving wealth transfers will suffer in the exact same way they suffered prior to Obamacare. Does this mean Obamacare is a "one-way transfer of power" and somehow anti-democratic?
I hypothesize that for many signatory nations, it is de facto irreversible.
> just as they currently suffer them now.
Obviously I don't have the text, but it would be surprising if TPP contained no punitive clauses for openly flaunting the agreement.
> Does this mean Obamacare is a "one-way transfer of power" and somehow anti-democratic?
No. The "transfer of power" bit is the part that TPP and AFA don't have in common.
It is the combination of a law that would be overly costly to change together with a transfer of sovereign power that makes TPP anti-democratic. Either one without the other is fine.
Punitive clauses are unenforceable insofar as they extend beyond "if you tariff us we'll tariff you back".
Obamacare transfers sovereign power to various unelected agencies (e.g. HHS) as well. I guess you now agree that Obamacare is an anti-democratic measure?
...appointed by elected representatives.
There's simply no comparison to the ISDS.
>I also have no particular affection towards democracy
It shows.
IIRC one of the judges in the "supersedes-supreme-court-rulings" ISDS dispute resolution mechanism is actually appointed by the investor.
I'm sure they'll be fair.
They agree about who represents them in the tribunal, but I don't think they have much choice over whether they are sued or not.
The point was that the governments do not have a choice about whether to agree to the ISDS proceedings if they sign trade agreements that contain ISDS.
I mean yes - this is pretty clear. If a government chooses to allow oversight by courts, they can't choose who sues them. Why single out laws about free trade, as opposed to laws relating to environmental protection or racial discrimination?
The main reason ISDS would be used is if a company's future profits are put in jeopardy. This is either going to be because a democratic decision or a non-democratic decision restricts these profits. In my opinion, democracy wins over profits, and if the decision is non-democratic it's probably made by dictatorship, which is unlikely to take any ISDS decision seriously anyway.
The main point though is this, the desire for corporate profits must not overrule the will of the people, and there's a strong possibility that trade agreements with ISDS will not meet this criteria (can see how it has been used already). ISDS has the power to negatively impact the quality of life in a country, and this is the main reason why ISDS is undesirable for the general population whereas environmental protection and racial discrimination laws are not.
Incidentally, badly implemented environmental or discrimination laws can also negatively impact quality of life, just as badly implemented trade laws can. Why aren't you concerned that bad workers may file bogus discrimination lawsuits, just as tobacco companies file bad lawsuits. (See Ellen Pao as an example.)
But I guess that stuff doesn't count, because it doesn't inspire the same negative feelings in you that corporations do.
Needlessly personal. Please don't.
Not trying to be snarky, just wondering if you could direct me to parts of the actual document that you are using to draw this conclusion because I would really like to read up on some of the provisions of the TPP.
1. Are the agreements designed to reduce import tariffs, or are they designed to link up product standards and business practises?
2. Are the changes being driven by governments or by businesses?
If a trade agreement is just to reduce import tariffs between certain countries, then there's less of a problem.
The problem arises when free trade agreements are driven by by businesses and designed to link up product standards. I can't say much about the TPP, but if it's similar to the TTIP then the latter is what we appear to be getting.
Businesses generally want less red tape, not more. You could argue they'd push for higher standards to cut out competition that couldn't follow suit, but if that was the case they could already compete without the trade agreements.
It appears to me that the aim is to lower standards to open up new markets, and use the ISDS clause to discourage any strengthening of standards, but perhaps you have a different view on this?
Public Citizen says, "The Fast Track statute requires public posting of a text 30 days after the 90-day notice of intent to sign", which means Congress will have 60 days to review the final TPP text and 30 days to review the proposed U.S. legislation that could implement the TPP.
http://www.citizen.org/documents/tpp-vote-calendar-october-2... (pdf)
The 60-day review period occurs before the Fast-Track vote which can authorize or deny the signing of the TPP.
From a comment by kahirsch: http://i.imgur.com/k6Je0Dz.png
The "secret" thing isn't even going to be relevant in 30 days, and until then, nobody knows what it says about computers. The currently known details are all about things like sheep, cars, and pharmaceuticals.
http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacif...
Furthermore, every congressperson has a whole staff devoted to dissecting these things, and there are numerous activism groups who will be doing the same thing.
If anything, if benefits the US in that thousands of tariffs on US goods will be gone.
The text might leak before then, but there will be a "formal" delivery of the finished doc, and that will be made public.