Enough! Can we stop the divisive anti-TPP @#$%-stirring?

[JDPriestly]

273. I'm quite knowledgeable about the NAFTA court. I expect the TPP will have a similar court.

I base that in part on the speech that Sander Levin, ranking member of the House Committee on Ways and Means gave.

Please listen to his speech. He supports international trade but has grave misgivings about the TPP for the reasons that he explains.

Snader Levin attended the meetings about the TPP that took place recently in Australia. His staff cannot read the documents about the TPP that they need to read to assist him in carrying out his duties to his constituents. Yet I think it is about 600 corporations that have been given access to information about how the negotiations on the TPP are proceeding.

From the summary of the speech in the OP of the thread about it:

First, Levin emphasized that the Obama administration must respect the 10 May 2007 agreement on trade agreements negotiated between the US Congress and the Bush administration. This deal sought to protect workers’ rights, environmental protections, access to medicines, and human rights. The US Congressional Democrats have been aggrieved that Obama and his trade representatives have not honoured this deal: ‘That agreement is — and must remain — a bedrock principle within trade agreements.’

Second, Levin called for reciprocity in the TPP. He observed: ‘The TPP presents an enormously important opportunity to transform the trading relationship between the United States and those partners from something that in some cases looks like a one-way street to a fully reciprocal one with healthy flows that go both ways and create opportunities for everyone — the way trade is supposed to.’ Levin highlighted concerns about market access for agriculture, automobiles, currency manipulation, and state-owned enterprises.

Third, Levin stressed that there was a need to protect national sovereignty in the TPP, and the right to regulate. He commented: ‘Reaching for a high bar to increase standards of living, improve worker rights and strengthen environmental protections, and ensure that trade opportunities are reciprocal does not mean the United States gives up its right to regulate in all of the vitally important areas that affect our interests’. Levin was particularly interested in defending food safety rules, and tobacco control measures. He was also alarmed by the abuse of investor-state dispute settlement: ‘Investor-state disputes have proliferated in recent years and involve increasingly novel and costly challenges to public welfare and environmental regulations.’

Levin commented: ‘While the text must reflect these principles, the devil will be in the details of the text, in the annexes and the ‘non-conforming measures,’ and in the implementation of the obligations’. He stressed that ‘That is true in critical areas, including the environment, state-owned enterprises, labor rights, and a broad range of market access issues.’ Levin observed that, while ‘the quantity of increased trade is important’, ‘in this new era of globalization, the most important test is its quality, its potential impact on the lives of people’. Echoing the concerns of the economist Joseph Stiglitz about the TPP benefitting corporate elites — the 1% — he stressed: ‘The goal must be to ensure that the potential benefits of trade are spread broadly to the many, not just the few.’

htttp://www.democraticunderground.com/10026040549

The NAFTA court is not a good thing. We are a sovereign nation and should not give up our sovereignty to such a court. Without our national sovereignty our Constitution is meaningless and we do not have the right to govern ourselves. These international courts rob us of the right to self-determination with regard to, for example, environmental issues and, as Levin points out, food safety and other safety issues. And those are only a couple of the areas in which we give up sovereignty to some kangaroo court with these trade agreements.