Secret TPP Talks Continue as the Deal Grows More Controversial | Hacker News Reader

Secret TPP Talks Continue as the Deal Grows More Controversial

eff.org

166 pointsghosh61 comments

For a harbinger of what's to come, look into what's happening in Romania with their Rosia Montana gold mine.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-11/paulson-ba... http://www.miningfacts.org/Blog/Mining-News/Canadian-Miner-P...

Basically a Canadian company will most likely sue the Romanian government for refusing to allow an open pit gold mine. They won't do this in a Romanian court.

Just like we saw with Greece, sovereign nations are no longer all that sovereign. Treaties like TPP, and TTIP will further remove decision making capabilities from sovereign states. It's kinda crazy.

Welcome to the new corporate imperialism I guess. Was a matter of time. But really what is this about? It's about economic growth at all costs, while tooting the horn of environmentalism.

My understanding of this case is that the mining company signed a contract with the government for development of this mining project, and there is now the possibility that the parliament will at the eleventh hour break the terms of the agreement. I don't see why the government should be exempt from making restitution in cases where it breaks contracts.

To get the viewpoint of people championing this agreement, I recommend reading this article by the Economist[1] where they say "for all its flaws, the biggest trade deal in years is good news for the world"

[1] - http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21659716...

For the record, I think the TPP is pernicious for all the reasons pointed out by the EFF.

I'm confused by this statement in the article you linked, and I've heard it before:

> the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is the most important free-trade agreement in years

How does "29 chapters of dense rules and hundreds of tariff lines " == "free trade"? Free trade is meant to be open, without restriction, and free. Some of the conditions being reported are anything but.

It's lowering barriers to trade, making it easier for goods made in one country to be sold in another. One way it does that is by harmonizing regulations, so you don't need to make different versions for different countries, or pay for lawyers to explain compliance laws separately for each country.

As an example, it lets farmers in Europeans buy soya beans from Brazil to feed their cows in winter. [http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/soy/co...]

Only part of that results in lower barriers to trade. Mostly that reads like "follow these rules, update your processes and factories to these other specifications" - significant barriers themselves, just upstream from the actual trade.

More significant is that there is little transparency and a, seemingly, active avoidance of public discourse about the rule-setting. The rule-setting is where the power lies, and that's what most of the objection is about.

The word-game being played with the TPP is when they talk about "free trade", it isn't generally referring to the free trade of goods or services. The last century of trade agreements already removed most tariffs[1].

Instead, when the TPP (et al) talk about "free trade", they are referring to the free trade of capital, which is an absolutely insane idea[2]. As you note, as it relates to actual goods and services, the TPP is generally restrictive, which is probably part of the larger goal of creating corporate sovereignty (e.g. ISDS), and general export of western power (e.g. the IP restrictions).

TL;DR - It's imperialism via corporate corruption and regulatory capture.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_histo...

[2] http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/

"Free Trade" is like "Frictionless Wheel". It's trivially easy to talk about and is simple in theory, but in practice they both involve a lot of messy engineering.

For example, free trade in mayonnaise. That should just mean that anyone can import/export mayonnaise right? Well, no. Mayonnaise is food so there's certain health standards and facility inspection regimes. And you and I have different ones now they need to be harmonized. Also, what is Mayonnaise anyway? We need to harmonize our labeling requirements. Also. is your country producing subsidized eggs (major ingredient in mayo)? Well now we need to add a line to our contract that eliminates those subsidies.

The lists of this kind of stuff goes on and on.

> And you and I have different ones now they need to be harmonized.

Hum... No. Not at all. A company is perfectly capable of making mayo for different health requirements.

There are a few cases where harmonization is needed (mostly between small and poor countries), but overall "harmonizing" laws is just a propaganda presentation of giving exorbitant benefits for an external company that is bribing your government.

It is also about allowing a small player into the market. If there is no harmonization then then only producers who can afford to play the game are ones that can dedicate the resources to producing a hundred different types of mayo to meet various different local production requirements. Alternatively, this lack of harmonization simply allows the largest market to dictate the terms of the market for all other countries: consider situations where US states have different requirements for certain products and how this lets some states dictate terms to others, at times this leads to stricter emission standards when CA writes the rules ("yay" says the left) and at other times it leads to school textbooks declaring the US a judeo-christian nation and undermining the separation of church and state because TX writes the rules ("boo" says the left.)

As always, it is not as simple as it initially appears.

I think it is a bit of an inside joke. It's laughable that anyone would consider a secretly negotiated agreement (have you seen any text?) "free".

If you want to understand why the TPP is the way it is, look at the Japanese domestic auto market. Their tariff on imported cars is zero, but somehow foreign cars almost never make it to market. Maybe they fail a safety inspection at the port. Maybe there are local registration fees that mysteriously appear and driven up the cost. Maybe the Japanese-run local affiliate is really really slow to move inventory into the stores, or sends a shipment back.

And this does not even get into the barriers that foreign manufacturers face in trying to set up local manufacturing in Japan. There are a million ways a government can stall an investment or construction project if they want to.

These are collectively known as "non-tariff trade barriers" or NTBs. They are the weapon of choice these days to restrict trade, so modern trade agreements have to spend many of their pages addressing NTBs.

To name another example that might resonate with HN, consider the local restrictions that a nation might put on data. For example, a nation might require that any company serving its citizens build data centers within its borders and keep all data within those data centers. That would make it extremely difficult for any but the largest U.S. tech firms to enter foreign markets. That's not a tariff but would obviously slow down trade in Internet services.

As I understand it, TPP will have language to allow data to cross borders.

Thanks for that, you make a lot of sense. I'm really interested in seeing commentary on the actual content of the TPP once it's released.

Me too. In theory a lot of it sounds reasonable to me, but a lot of things sound good "in theory." :-)

If its THAT good why does it need so much opacity and secrecy?

All trade agreements are negotiated in secret. All of them. Just like your salary was not negotiated in the company break room...

> Just like your salary was not negotiated in the company break room...

But hopefully you were there.

This is like you (the people) hiring a lawyer (elected representative), who then goes to negotiate your salary in secret without you.

And who receives all kinds of benefits for himself in exchange for accepting a low salary for you.

This article [1] linked from the OP contains the following fact: the pro-TPP lobby spent $135 million in the second quarter of 2015.

I mean, I know lobbying costs money, but where can that much money possibly go?

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/23/us-trade-tpp-lobby...

Let me guess... corruption?

We missed you, Markov activist.

Read the Reuters article carefully: that's all the money spent by all the members of the "US Business Coalition for TPP" on all lobbying, it's in the same order of magnitude as it was prior to TPP, and even the surge in spending now isn't all TPP. For instance, Boeing doubled their lobbying --- to lobby against the proposed elimination of the Export-Import Bank.

Sure, but even if it's not all TPP related - that is a truckload of money. I have no idea what you even spend that amount of money on - it would buy a lot of champagne and hookers for representatives.

Not only is it not all TPP related, it is mostly not TPP related. They cited the aggregate lobbying of all the (gigantic) members of a trade coalition, and that statistic is misleading.

The "champagne and hookers" snark is silly. Where do hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying fees go? Approximately the same place as the hundreds of millions of dollars of donations to giant institutional charities go:

* Salaries for formal employees of the organization

* Contractor fees for copywriting, advertising, event planning, legal

* Giant advertising and promotional campaigns

* Fundraising

* Direct political donations

* PAC donations

Just replace "food banks" and "medical care" with "report writing" and you're close.

Lobbying isn't a great thing, and it interacts very badly with PACs, but it certainly isn't millions of dollars in strippers. Mostly, it's a scam to skim money off the political process and into the pockets of lobbyists and their firms.

Of course it goes to hookers and blow

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3174689/Lord-Snorty-...

How ignorant of human nature can someone be?

Slight correction: lobbying spending numbers do not include donations to candidates or PACs. Federal law prohibts organizations from giving money to either.

Organizations can pay the expenses for a "captive" PAC (usually in the form of hosting it within their headquarters with all the costs that implies), but that spending is also excluded from reported lobbying numbers.

Other than that, you are spot on. Once people realize that lobbying expenditures include salaries and media buys, it's not hard to see how the total gets into many millions of dollars.

And you thought you didn't know where it went, you sly rascal you.

lobbying is synonymous with legalized bribery.

Thanks for posting this story. I shared it on Stumbleupon (where apparently it hadn't been prior) along with the petition and signed it. I'm a card carrying EFF member but I don't read the site every day.

The lengths they've gone to to hide this is proportional to how bad it will be for the general public.

Every time I hear about an awesome "free trade agreement", I need to look no further than the disastrous NAFTA agreement:

"Such outcomes include a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after "investor-state" tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies."

and

"For instance, we track the specific promises made by U.S. corporations like GE, Chrysler and Caterpillar to create specific numbers of American jobs if NAFTA was approved, and reveal government data showing that instead, they fired U.S. workers and moved operations to Mexico."

and

"The data also show how post-NAFTA trade and investment trends have contributed to middle-class pay cuts, which in turn contributed to growing income inequality;"

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta-at-20-one-m...

This too was being touted as a great free trade agreement for the US and its economy and the exact opposite happened. I can only assume the outcome for the TPP will be similar.

Well here goes my tiny store of karma points but as a contrarian I can't resist going against the comfortable consensus that the TPP and TIPP (which is of more relevance to me as a European) are evil and sinister.

Some observations:

These negotiations (at least the TTIP ones) are not being conducted by cigar chomping cartoon evil tycoons. A friend I know is involved and the guy is a very modestly paid civil servant. It's mostly boring and technical bureacratic work.

There are very good reasons to conduct discussions like this in private. Despite the impression the EFF article gives, the biggest losers will be commercial special interests not consumers. Consumers don't form groups to spend millions to lobby politicians to enact laws blocking the import of foreign goods and services - these laws and regulations were campaigned for and paid for by politically connected local commercial interests. The secrecy is required to prevent these special interests from using their power to derail the negotiations. Consider what would happen if public minutes were published while say discussing the US bio-ethenol subsidies? Massive political pressure would be exerted on the US negotiating team from the corn producing states effectively making negotiation impossible. Other countries party to the discussion would face the same impossible pressures.

Finally I don't believe that the ISDS is some evil anti-democratic instrument to allow corporations to subvert the local laws. In fact most countries have had similar instruments for decades as part of bilateral deals. The sole purpose is to prevent governments specifically targetting foreign companies with extra rules while not applying the same restrictions on politically connected local enterprises. I believe an individual should be able to defend themselves from capricious government behavior through the legal system. I don't see why businesses shouldn't have similar recourse.

Why this needs to be done as one giant agreement seems crazy...

A relevant example where this could be a good thing; I'd love for tech businesses in London to be as easy to invest in for Silicon Valley investors as local tech companies - this would be amazing for investors, London startup scene etc. - maybe it would require a special sort of company and also an easy way to move a company to CA if needed.

There are loads of things in TTIP to hate but the above example would be a better use of these bureaucrats time and something that would be easy to pass and help lots of businesses grow!

> Why this needs to be done as one giant agreement seems crazy...

If you want to circumvent debate and controversy, get all your buddies together and write up an omnibus agreement or bill. Bundling different ideas together makes it hard to talk about it, let alone debate it.

I go back and forward on this; is it really this brazen or do the people crafting TTIP and TPP really believe it'll make the world better. There must be some involved who think it'll create jobs and money for everyone.

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic - it certainly does look like what you have said.

Obviously the people involved think it will make the world better for some people.

I suppose it comes back to this crazy religion (Ayn Rand et. al.) that looking after yourself at the expense of others is the only way to make the world stable. It's very convenient for people who are being selfish or making things worse to agree with such crackpot ideas.

Interesting down voting here, any reasons you care to give as to why you disagree? I think the above is a pretty common belief from economics, right wing thinking and Ayn Rand amoungst others.

Here is a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism

There's a good chance they think it will make the world better. With that being the case, I'd argue people are more likely to circumvent debate and controversy if they think it will make the world better.

That's not the point. The point is omnibus tactics will always be used to circumvent debate and controversy. It may be for the better, but if it becomes the norm, there's a good chance it will typically be for the worse.

Planet money had a fascinating podcast on how trade deals are made with the example of NAFTA. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/26/417851577/episo...

I came here to link it as well. It really explained to me why these negotiations are secret, something that seemed a little sinister to me at first glance.

A perspective from New Zealand... https://dimpost.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/nuanced/

I don't think current system (with fast track) is conductive for any partial fixing. TPP should be scraped completely and USTR should taste their own medicine. They don't want open negotiations and democratic oversight? They shouldn't get any agreement altogether.

Can somebody ELI5 the whole TPP thing? As an European should I be concerned? Does it matter only to countries involved?

The TPP is a wholesome beneficial legislation, orchestrated by businesses around the world to ensure their continued profits and ownership of capital creation, such as copyright (it will be harder to share content online without paying for it and DMCA youtube takedown style action will increase.) Furthermore it allows corporations to legally prosecute governments for getting in the way of their hard-earned profits or potential profits, for example if you don't allow a gold mining corporation to mine your gold, you as a country will be sued for the value of that gold.

I can't understand why everyone has got their panties in a bunch over this; that small group of people with capital who makes and influences the laws will do what they can to make sure they keep getting the capital for the future, so that there is less transfer of wealth, which is necessary for a stable global economy.. I personally am looking forwards to when governments are abolished entirely and corporations simply write laws along side their company charters. Whichever corporation has more money, has more rights to enforce their laws.

I hope this is sarcasm because otherwise it is ridiculously short-sighted and naive.

Thank god.

You want for profit entities governing and writing our laws?

Wow.

As a European the one you should be concerned with is TTIP.

It is basically TTP, but involves Europe instead of East Asia and Australia.

There's literally dozens of /r/ELI5 threads on this[1] that are useful:

- https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ubdy/e...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3az0fa/e...

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=eli5+tpp

Someone is getting ripped of deeply by this new agreements if they get done as planned.

Hint: It's not large US coorporations.