Although the TPP pact, which the Obama administration has been negotiating with 11 other Pacific nations for years, has not been finalized and much of it has been classified, American corporate interest groups have already voiced strong support for the TPP, describing it as a free trade deal that will encourage economic growth. The Office of US Trade Representative has also defended the talks, insisting that the TPP will include robust regulatory protections. But labor unions and a host of traditionally liberal interest groups, including environmentalists and public health advocates, have sharply criticized the deal.
Chomsky argues that much of the talks address issues outside trade, since the talks seek to limit the activities governments can regulate, impose new intellectual property standards abroad and boost corporate political power.
According to Chomsky, calling it free trade is a joke, for the extreme highly protectionist measures under discussion are designed to undermine freedom of trade. Actually, much of what’s leaked about the TPP is about investor rights, rather than trade.
The Obama administration has made the precise terms of the deal classified information, so the deal's only publicly available negotiation documents have come to light through document leaks, published by WikiLeaks and HuffPost recently.
According to these leaked documents, the TPP would empower corporations to directly challenge laws and regulations set by foreign nations before an international tribunal that would be given the authority to both overrule that nation's legal standards and impose economic penalties on it. Under World Trade Organization treaties, corporations must convince a sovereign nation to bring trade cases before an international court. According to Chomsky, the deal is an escalation of neoliberal political goals previously advanced by the WTO and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Several members of Congress, including Obama’s fellow Democrats, have attacked the intense secrecy surrounding the talks. But others want to give the TPP the "fast track" to passage, such as Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who have introduced legislation that would prevent members of Congress from offering legislative amendments to whatever final trade deal Obama reaches.
But the move to fast track the TPP has hit headwinds in the House, where no Democrat has agreed to co-sponsor the legislation. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the fast track bill cannot pass without Democratic support.
Chomsky quipped that it’s understandable that administration and lawmakers would want to speed up a sweeping trade deal that’s largely in the interest of corporations and keep it a secret from the public. "Why should people know what’s happening to them?” Chomsky said.
(Voice of Russia, Huffington Post)
18 јануари 2014
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_01_18/Obama-TPP-deal-is-assault-seeks-to-further-corporate-domination-Chomsky-4877/