<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(7,55,99)"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Viet Nam is getting a lot of pressure from the U.S. to sign the TPP. Last year their Embassy staff in Washington told me that they were feeling the heat from Hanoi to "negotiate" faster during meetings being held somewhere in Virginia. The negotiations are secret, no one but corporate lawyers and lobbyists is allowed to take part. Not even members of Congress are allowed to see the working texts. WikiLeaks, however, has disclosed some of the information, and many worries are confirmed: For example, Vietnam would no longer be able to sell cheaper drugs that compete with much more expensive international brand names, because this would be "unfair" to the global pharmaceutical corporations. <br>
<br></span></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(7,55,99)"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Vietnam should also be concerned that TPP would have major impacts on food safety, environmental protections, and agricultural production and exports.<br>
</span></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(7,55,99)"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></span></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="color:rgb(7,55,99)"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Vietnam must be very wary. The government's rush to sign the TPP makes some Vietnamese wonder if the government is really looking after their interests, or trying to please the U.S. Embassy and international investors.<br>
<br></span></span></div><div class="gmail_default"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span style="color:rgb(7,55,99)"><span style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">CHUCK</span></span><br><br><br></span></div>
<div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><span class="">
<span class="">Thursday, Dec 12, 2013 12:56 AM +0700</span> </span>
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Not so fast! Massive giveaway to Exxon and Pharma hits road bump </span></h1><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><h2><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
Trans-Pacific Partnership, a mammoth
NAFTA-style trade deal, faces mounting opposition abroad and at home
</span></h2><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
<span class=""><a href="http://www.salon.com/writer/josh_eidelson/" rel="author" class="">Josh Eidelson</a></span></span><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"></span><br><br><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><div class=""><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><a class="" title="Not so fast! Massive giveaway to Exxon and Pharma hits road bump" href="http://media.salon.com/2013/12/exxon_truck.jpg"><img alt="Not so fast! Massive giveaway to Exxon and Pharma hits road bump" title="Not so fast! Massive giveaway to Exxon and Pharma hits road bump" src="http://media.salon.com/2013/12/exxon_truck-620x412.jpg" height="277" width="420"></a><span class=""> <span class="">(Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)</span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">
</span><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Key
Democrats and leading labor and liberal groups blasted the Obama
administration’s handling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – a
dozen-nation trade deal that advocates warn could expand to be bigger
than NAFTA – after the latest round of negotiations ended without a
hoped-for agreement. As <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/06/14/trans_pacific_partnership_larger_than_nafta/">I’ve reported</a>,
progressives have raised alarm about a battery of reported proposed
provisions in the TPP, including a tribunal system under which private
companies could bring suit against governments for passing policies that
hurt their profits.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">“The failure in Singapore makes clear that
the administration is far from reaching an agreement with other
countries,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro told reporters on a Tuesday conference
call. “And I also add emphatically that it should be clear that it is
far from reaching a deal that Congress can support.” DeLauro was joined
by Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., and by the heads of the Sierra Club,
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and three unions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">“When are we
going to sign a trade agreement that’s good for America, that opens up
markets and puts Americans to work here to ship good American products
overseas?” asked Teamsters Union president James Hoffa. “Isn’t that the
answer? Shouldn’t that be our goal? Unfortunately that’s not the goal of
this administration.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">United States Trade Representative
Ambassador Michael Froman told reporters Tuesday that the four days of
talks in Singapore had been “very successful in that the TPP ministers
really accomplished an enormous amount across the various texts of the
TPP agreement by working together in a collaborative way to identify
potential landing zones on the great majority of the outstanding
issues.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Public and Media Affairs<strong> </strong>Nkenge
Harmon told me last year that “[n]othing in our TPP investment proposal
could impair our government’s ability to pursue legitimate,
non-discriminatory public interest regulation.” Global Trade Watch’s
Todd Tucker called that “a misrepresentation” of the issue, saying that
“once public interest laws are passed,” proposed language would leave
them “susceptible to attack by multinational companies, and taxpayers
could be on the hook to pay multinational companies for the privilege of
passing that public interest law.”<br></span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">“There’s
nothing in this for the American people,” Communications Workers of
America President Larry Cohen told reporters. DeLauro charged that her
early efforts to engage then-USTR Ron Kirk on seafood contamination
yielded “no reciprocal effort by the USTR to work together,” and said,
“I don’t see any openness on the administration’s part to change their
tactics in dealing with this agreement.” She also alleged that “on a
whole variety of issues, the U.S. has been strong-arming other
countries.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Documents leaked to the Huffington Post suggest that
such concerns are shared by some of those currently negotiating across
the table from the United States. Reporter Zach Carter <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/tpp-trade-agreement_n_4409211.html">quoted</a>
a memo from another country charging the U.S. had “shown no flexibility
on its proposal” for investor dispute tribunals; Carter reported that
with such language, “companies could challenge an even broader array of
rules” than under NAFTA, the deal he noted companies like Exxon Mobil
and Dow have used to fight Canadian rules on issues from drilling to
drug patents. The same memo said the U.S. “shows zero flexibility” on
its push for restrictions on bank regulation, and had reintroduced a
widely opposed proposal to restrict governments’ negotiations to push
down drug prices. A USTR spokesperson told Carter that “some elements”
in those documents were “outdated, others totally inaccurate,” but did
not specify which.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Congresswoman Slaughter and allies highlighted
an expected administration request for “fast track” authority, which
would make any proposed TPP deal easier to pass and harder to amend, as a
key coming front in their fight. “Fast track,” she charged, “is an
undemocratic seizure of power that usurps our ability to represent the
American people.” DeLauro touted letters signed by a combined 185
members of Congress as a sign that “if the current fast track procedures
are not changed, then there will be opposition,” and pledged to keep
organizing further resistance. “The politicians keep telling us the same
song and dance,” said United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard, “that
never comes out to the truth.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Others have also voiced concern. In
a statement e-mailed Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, warned
that “The lack of meaningful consultation on trade negotiations, and the
perception of secrecy around the TPP, will only make the president’s
request for Fast Track that much more challenging for Congress to
consider.” Brown, the author of the book “Myths of Free Trade,” <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/09/27/most_underrated_liberal_hero_the_sherrod_brown_interview/">told</a>
Salon in September that he believed Obama and Froman understand that
“trade policy’s not worked for us as a nation”; he said that “doesn’t
mean they’re as aggressive and forward-looking as I would like to be,
but we’re always making the battle.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">While Obama has already
signed off on trade deals developed under President Bush and opposed by
organized labor, the key work on the TPP has taken place since Obama was
elected in 2008 – on a Democratic Party platform that <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=78283">pledged,</a>
“We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the
government from protecting the environment food safety, or the health of
its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S.
investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or
prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian
licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Asked in September whether Obama’s pursuit of TPP provisions opposed by labor suggested a weakness in union strategy, Gerard <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/176113/us-labor-secretary-american-workplace-has-evolved">told me</a>
it was “too early to try and blame the labor movement,” as “the fact of
the matter is that we’re going to fight that.” Gerard said the AFL-CIO
had “a good relationship with the administration. Do we always get
things the way we want them? No, but we always get a chance to have our
voice heard, which is different from what we get under Republicans.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br></span></p><p></p></div><br></div>
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