Raj Patel: Treaty Like It’s 1999: Connecting the Dots on Trade

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



Treaty Like It’s 1999: Connecting the Dots on Trade
From Japan, Raj Patel on the expansion of the Trans-Pacific trade agreement and the homegrown battle to stop it.

by Raj Patel
posted May 25, 2012


Although it seems they fell out of fashion after the 1999 WTO protests, trade agreements are still being drafted. Every few months, urged by chambers of commerce and under cover of darkness, legislators ink up new pacts to make it easier for goods to flow and workers to be shed.

Last year, the US Korea Free Trade Agreement was passed. This year, making the Korea deal look piddly, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is expanding. The TPP began in 2006 as a hardcore trade agreement between the most trade-dependent countries around the Pacific: Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Brunei joined the negotiations near their conclusion, rounding out the "Pacific 4." Their zeal to reduce tariffs, harmonize standards, and prevent subsidies goes far beyond the ambitions of the World Trade Organization. And now six other countries want in: the U.S., Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Vietnam.

In part, the reason that news about trade agreements doesn’t hit front pages is because, er, it’s news about trade agreements. Not the stuff of which editors’ dreams are made. But just because the agreements don’t make the front pages doesn’t mean that people haven’t heard the news. There have been protests against the TPP across the Asia-Pacific region. And at the protests, people are connecting the dots. Like here in Okinawa, Japan.

This month, I visited a rally commemorating the 40th anniversary of this small Pacific island being transferred from the U.S. to Japan. Although Japan runs the prefecture, there’s a rather large U.S. base still here. And there were plenty of people ready to make the connection between an oppressive base and an oppressive trade agreement. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/treaty-like-its-1999