Read the TPP
readthetpp.com
readthetpp.com
1. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter.
The annotation:
In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development.
That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself.
I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.
Isn't this just semantics though? If you can use economic force (damage claims against the governments themselves), its just as effective as using executive/legislative force to "override" local law [1].
> I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts.
Luckily, they can! It's on Github. Its just a matter of finding legal experts willing to mark it up.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...
The equivalence between allowing a trade treaty to literally rewrite our laws and allowing a trade treaty to settle economic claims is not at all clear to me.
This does not seem like a minor detail.
A corporation should never be able to seek damages from a government due to legislation (unless, possibly, property rights are involved).
Obviously, I do not concede that the TPP enables foreign governments to "ruin" each other in legal disputes.
There are a substantial number of companies with financial resources greater than the GDP of some countries who a party to the TPP.
If it is so easy to find sources of these ruinous settlements, as you claim, why don't you list some too?
Try searching for "Argentina IMF", "Zapatistas NAFTA".
I mean, In the same way that one might see an execution as justice being done, one might see a ruining as justice being done, and consider it to be ruining in the same way?
I think "ruining" might be more like "killing" than it is like "murdering". But I am not sure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlem...
> Between 1995 and 1997 the Canadian government banned the export of toxic PCB waste, in order to comply with its obligations under the Basel Convention, of which the United States is not a party. Waste treatment company S.D. Myers then sued the Canadian government under NAFTA Chapter 11 for $20 millions in damages. The claim was upheld by a NAFTA Tribunal in 2000
And there's more:
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/nafta...
> Canada has been the target of over 70% of all NAFTA claims since 2005. Currently, Canada faces nine active claims challenging a wide range of government measures that allegedly interfere with the expected profitability of foreign investments. Foreign investors are seeking over $6 billion in damages from the Canadian government. These include challenges to a ban on fracking by the Quebec provincial government and a decision by a Canadian federal court to invalidate a pharmaceutical patent on the basis that it was not sufficiently innovative or useful.
So I wonder: did you actually have a look yourself and came up empty, or do these examples somehow not fit the bill? I'm not claiming to be up to speed on this stuff, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here.
EDIT locals -> local laws
Country X and country Y are trading partners.
Country X wants concession A from Y, who in turn wants concession B from X. They agree to trade concessions and encode it in a treaty.
For several years, X and Y enjoy the economic benefits of those concessions.
Then X passes a law that vitiates, say, 50% of the economic benefit of concession B. It is now free-riding off Y; Y is giving it concession A, but X is only giving 50% of concession B owing to the law that contravenes the treaty.
Y is entitled to make a claim for damages. Not to change the law (treaties don't work that way), but rather to make and resolve the argument of the form "I am giving you (A) and you're only giving me 0.5(B); make up the difference in cash."
This is presumably supposed to be a strong incentive to prevent host governments from changing their laws in such a way that they might damage guest company profits. Much like a fine for breaking the law.
Why would you consider that a controversial point of view?
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/18/austra...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay
That's how the "concession" will pay out in practice.
Y is entitled to make a claim for damages
Your example is slightly off. In the TPP, it's not the countries that are parties to the treaty that are suing, but individual businesses.
(There are plenty of treaties that oblige the passing of laws directly, as a means of implementing the treaty; everything from the Montreal convention on air passenger compensation to NAFTA)
Party means any State or separate customs territory for which this Agreement is in force;
https://www.readthetpp.com/ch01.html
Too bad they don't have anchors for significant sections/items, I'd direct link the definition of "Party" given in the treaty. But the text I quoted is on that page there.
Trying to get damages instead is denying Country X's sovereignty to defy the treaty.
>provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter
Specifically, if there is a local law that requires measures that are not consistent with the provisions of the mentioned chapter, it can easily be argued that this agreement overrides that local law.
Also, why even include this language, if it does nothing special, as you seem to be claiming?
How do you think it would even work, for a trade treaty to override a law in New Zealand? Is the idea that the US would invade New Zealand to revoke the law at the RIAA's behest?
Kim Dotcom didn't even step foot in US jurisdiction, and the US copyright cartel is using the US Federal Attorney's office to attempt to extradite him from New Zealand.
http://sputniknews.com/us/20151223/1032223132/new-zealand-ju...
That is most probably evidence for a rather weaker point, cf. the one you argued against.
Yet the net effect will be exactly that. The distinction is barely worth making.
EDIT: A downvote is not an answer. I'm looking for a legitimate reason why a corporation should be able to sue a government for damages.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7dpsalzwmdhwu3/Screenshot%202016-...
I don't make a habit of downvoting people who argue with me.
Philip Morris moved to Switzerland. Switzerland had a trade agreement with Uruguay. Uruguay take public health actions (increase size of warnings on cigarette packets). Now PM tobacco can sue Uruguay for enacting laws that harm a Swiss company. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...)
That seems a reason not to allow this sort of thing.
Or at very least to ensure that certain types of actions of states are allowed regardless of impact on extra-national corporations profits - anything that improves the health of citizens for example.
A limitation of recompense up to the total tax paid by that corporation in the relevant country would be a good clause too.
Imagine is coffee is found to cause bowel cancer and instead of using funds to help your citizens your country pays Starbucks for their lost profits because you issued a notice to your citizens warning them of the detrimental effect; meanwhile Starbucks through clever IPR moves have offshored most of their profits and avoided paying tax in your country ...
Companies won't invest unless they have a way to work out disagreements. Nations want foreign investment, so they are willing to provide an alternate way to work out disagreements--and that alternate way is ISDS.
I don't recall this sort of thing except in fines by the EU on member states - can you give examples to demonstrate to us all how commonplace it is?
Of course the claims will be by corporations - like the issues states have had with the tobacco corps suing when attempts to improve the health of the populous have cut in to profits.
Example(s): http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat... Philip Morris taking legal action against Uruguay and Australia for damaging their profits by enacting laws to reduce smoking.
Assuming the foreign government in question actually decides to pursue action, more than one country has a history of ignoring WTO rulings not in their favor, despite their obligation to obey them.
Why would the TPP be different?
I think the TPP is not a great thing, but talking about foreign governments overriding local law is somewhat of a exaggeration.
At any rate, I'd urge everyone to take a look at Brad Delong's critique of the TPP[2], which focuses heavily on the dispute resolution process. Surely we can all agree that he knows a little more about international economics than the average HN poster?
[0]: Step 1) Pass an international treaty with a corporate/government dispute resolution process. Step 2) Get sued for having non-mandated local laws, lose, and receive expensive economic sanctions. Step 3) "Regrettably" change local laws to conform to the agreement.
This is analogous to Sir Humphey's three-step process for dealing with international crisis: 1) Nothing's going to happen. 2) Something may happen but there's nothing we can do. 3) Perhaps there was something we could have done but it's too late now.
[2] http://www.bradford-delong.com/2016/01/the-grand-strategy-of...
Second, the site you're pointing to alludes to concerns about the newness and untested nature of the settlement process in TPP, but contains none of the sovereignty arguments that thread is concerned with.
Third, the site you've linked to only alludes to those concerns, which he must have written about elsewhere. It does not "focus heavily on the dispute resolution process".
Brad DeLong has a lot of negative stuff to say about TPP (he's a longtime opponent of rent extraction through intellectual property; it's one of the "beats" on his blog at NBER, and if unifying Asia and the Pacific Rim in a trade agreement against China is the #1 goal of TPP, harmonizing global IP laws with those of the US is the #2 goal), and I find a lot of what he says persuasive.
But I'm not commenting here in defense of TPP. I am happy to substitute DeLong's opinions on the economic impact of TPP for my own.
But the annotation FFTF wrote on TPP is misleading and wrong, like much of what FFTF writes.
2) Delong's point is that the members are binding themselves to an international framework that will be difficult or impossible to back out of. He connects this with the problems of the EU. This is absolutely about sovereignty.
3) Unfortunately the main article appears to be a Monk debate which isn't available online.
4) Delong is a voracious advocate of free trade and also a political ally of the president who's trying to ram this one through. The fact that he's increasingly become hostile to this particular agreement is an indictment of the agreement, not of him as a critic.
No. That's exactly how it's going to work in real life: The weaker parties (countries) will get sucked through legalize gibberish and the local governments will have no power over some corporation. So instead of serving the public good, they will have to serve some corp. This is not the reason they were elected though - I see this happening as we speak and it's not going to stop in my country, unfortunately. The TPP is just a trojan horse, nothing more.
This is going to be exactly like the UN: It will work when the stronger parties want it to work (US, China, Russia, etc.) and will not work when choose to bypass it without excuses.
Or, more accurately: Might muddies the waters enough to do whatever it wants regardless.
Distinction without a difference? Unless you're saying it's the companies that "override" the laws, not foreign govs. Then I agree. But the more important point is that the "overriding" happens anyway.
The first half of the sentence is essentially "granting" the country the ability to make its own laws. It can't grant that, those powers pre-exist the agreement, and therefore it's an empty statement. The only purpose of it is to make the second half of the sentence - the one that removes powers - more palatable.
The semantically equivalent sentence without that rhetorical dance is: "A party may only make laws that are consistent with this agreement".
It's the difference between the (rhetorical) Declaration of Independence and its "unalienable rights" and the (technical) Constitution.
This argument in this thread is trying to extrapolate an emotional argument from the selection of words in a technical document.
You seem to be suggesting that somehow the lengthier version is more precise. I don't see how. Am I missing something?
No, they're forms of enforcement; no persuasion necessary.
> They exist only to regulate people's behaviour.
Yes, through mandates.
> They are prescriptive, not descriptive.
Yes.
> That qualifies them as rhetoric.
No, it doesn't. Rhetoric is used to pass laws; once passed, they are implemented via technical non-rhetorical language, laws are not rhetoric.
They said "you can do X, but not Y", instead of saying "You can't do Y". Given that X is emotionally positive, but has no inherent meaning (the treaty is not capable of giving countries the ability to govern themselves, because they already posess it), its only purpose in the sentence is rhetorical (in the actual definition of the word).
So what's going to happen is, laws that protect people from leaded drinking water are going to be annulled because they aren't "consistent with the provisions of the Chapter".
TPP is really simple: it protects corporations at all costs. Dont make this into some complex legal production.
That's how it will work (it's clearly the intention). There are historic precedents already, when local laws were changed to "conform to international obligations" even though it was pretty clear those changes were crooked and should never have been introduced. The most infamous example is DMCA. More on this kind of corrupted policy laundering see https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/ustr-secret-copyright-...
TL;DR: such kind of agreements are a powerful lawmaking tool which bypasses democratic process and creates laws through backdoors.
Some examples. Your annotation to Article 20.2 section 3: "TPP prohibits environmental laws that create a “restriction on trade.”
What TPP actually says in that section is "disguised restriction on trade". Either you missed the word "disguised", or did not recognize that the phrase "disguised restriction on trade" is almost a term of art in international trade agreements and so should be taken in TPP with the same interpretation and effect it has been given in the numerous other treaties in which it appears.
Article 18.2, which says:
A Party may provide limited exceptions to the rights
conferred by a trademark, such as fair use of
descriptive terms, provided that those exceptions
take account of the legitimate interest of the owner
of the trademark and of third parties.
For example, if someone posts a YouTube video
criticizing McDonald's® for making terrible food
and destroying the environment, this would
ordinarily be protected under the U.S. Constitution.
But, under the TPP, any public use of the
McDonald's® brand would only be allowable if it is
in the legitimate interest of McDonald's®, the
trademark holder. Since a video criticizing them
would never be in their “legitimate interest,”
McDonald's® could be able to bring an ISDS
complaint against the U.S. government and force the
video to be taken down.
Article 18.37 section 2 says:
Subject to paragraphs 3 and 4 and consistent with
paragraph 1, each Party confirms that patents are
available for inventions claimed as at least one of
the following: new uses of a known product, new
methods of using a known product, or new processes
of using a known product. A Party may limit those
new processes to those that do not claim the use of
the product as such.
18.37 section 2 is just requiring that being just a new use of a known product does not automatically exclude something from patentability. It does not get rid of each country's general requirements for patentability, such as the US requirement for novelty, non-obviousness, and usefulness.
Isn't that exactly what treaties are for? In this case people are complaining that the treaty allows foreign corporations to claim damages in a court not subject to local laws. This has been argued many times before on HN (I'm on a phone or I'd look up some examples myself by searching for "tpp dispute resolution").
Trade agreements and specifically the investor-state dispute settlements they allow can effectively "override" local laws.
Arguably worse, trade agreements can have a chilling effect preventing local laws from being proposed or adopted if they are deemed inconsistent with existing trade agreements.
> Wednesday’s 300-131 vote repealing the country-of-origin labels for meat follows a series of rulings by the World Trade Organization finding the labeling discriminates against animals imported from Canada and Mexico. [0]
> Canada repealed its ban on MMT and agreed to pay Ethyl $13 million in order to avoid the $250 million damages Ethyl claimed in its NAFTA suit. [1]
> EU moves to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility were shelved following pressure from US trade officials over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal, newly released documents show. [2]
> Countries around the globe are implementing tobacco control policies from graphic warning labels to plain packaging and the tobacco industry has responded, using investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade and investment treaties to both challenge countries’ policies and threaten others. The industry actions have had a significant chilling effect intimidating other countries from moving forward with policies to prevent or reduce tobacco consumption. The tobacco industry’s behavior is a real and direct threat to public health. [3]
[0]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/house-votes-to-remove-country-of...
[1]: http://www.citizen.org/trade/article_redirect.cfm?ID=5479
[2]: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/22/eu-droppe...
[3]: https://www.apha.org/~/media/files/pdf/advocacy/letters/2015...
Philip Morris has sued Australia for forcing warning-signs on tobacco packages. They've used a few methods, one avenue has been to sue through trade agreements.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/austra...
There is another one with Uruguay, where they've also sued under a trade-agreement.
[0](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/austra...)
No. The TPP is an agreement to guarantees foreign corporate interests are served at least as high priority as local civilian interests, and there is no reverse law that give governments the right to fine corporations that harm their citizen (e.g., as in Bhopal)
You seem hung up on the point the governments are choosing to agree to pay off multinational corporations, and choosing not to defend their citizens' interests, as though that's somehow OK because the governments made that decision voluntarily.
Others have commented on this, but I'm curious where you get foreign governments from - is it part of the sections/comment you quote - but just accidentally left out of your quote?
Because as I understand it, one of the many serious grievances people have with the TPP is that it grants international corporations a legal framework in which they can bully states into changing/not passing laws that "limit" trade, even in the name of public interest.
See sibling comments for examples of how corporations have worked against nation states wrt eg nationalising oil, or limiting marketing of cigarettes.
"... the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy, threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing what was being proposed in its name.
The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP, strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP’s many risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely. We respectfully ask that you do just that."
http://genius.com/artists/Transpacific-partnership-tpp-negot...
Whether we like it or not the TPP really is the "gold standard" of international treaties. Unfortunately it turns out no treaty at all is probably better anyway.
Cloudflare's captchas are nearly impossible to solve, which means that Tor users are effectively blocked from seeing the site. Would you consider using something other than Cloudflare to host the site?
I used to try to solve the hard ones, but I found I could not do it; it’s most often impossible to guess what all the letters are in the garbled mess with inverted blobs on top. From your example, I think it’s supposed to be “Thtllyt nthrwhyy”, but I’m usually wrong.
There is also TiSA, which covers services in 50 countries.
Regardless, for better or worse, things that negatively effect the US of A tend to negatively effect the rest of the West.
No body has time for that. It's nice that they have pared this down to 31 different sections, but my guess is that they are not showing the full agreement here.
It would be much nicer if someone just dumped it all into a single PDF and HTML file.
Edit: Care to leave a comment rationalizing your downmods?
The USTR also published the full text on Medium [2] for anyone who doesn't want to download a PDF.
There are plenty of issues worth discussing when it comes to the text itself and the way the original negotiations were conducted, but arguing that the final agreement hasn't been made accessible is really not a legitimate complaint.
[1] https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/about-us/who-we-are/treaty-makin... [2] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership
Authorship is claimed as "Barack Obama", @PresidentObama. [1] https://medium.com/@PresidentObama (Even includes an avatar of Obama's face.)
[2] https://ustr.gov/tpp/ The top header claims "Executive Office of The President".
[3] https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran... Also claims "Executive Office of the President".
The US Constitution only grants treaty making powers to the President. Any treaty that claims to come from someone other than the current US President is not and cannot be a valid treaty.
Edit: "That’s why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read and explore." (Authorship Claim: Barack Obama) [4]
[4] https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership/here-s-the-...
Edit2: Will soon be lobbying HN to publish all downmods.
* There goes what little karma I had
https://github.com/fightforthefuture/readthetpp/tree/master/...