Obama: Elizabeth Warren Is Simply Wrong On TPP

[JonLP24]

107. TPPA makes Malaysia liable for foreign firms’ losses, new leak show

KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 — A new leak of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement's (TPPA) investment chapter confirms fears that the trade deal will make signatory nations including Malaysia vulnerable to legal action by companies from partner countries.

In the latest release by whistle-blower organisation WikiLeaks, the TPPA would infuse private corporations of partner countries with special rights and standing to sue other governments for unlimited damages if laws detrimental to their profits are passed.

Additionally, the leaked chapter dated January 20 retained the controversial investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that would allow companies to haul governments before a supranational tribunal for any losses — both present and future — suffered as a result of a country's legislation or legal decisions.

"The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty.

“Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies,” WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange said in a statement accompanying the release.

Such disputes would be arbitrated similarly to the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which previously awarded US$1.8 billion (RM6.6 bilion) to Occidental Petroleum from the government Ecuador despite acknowledging that the firm violated the terms of agreement.

Previous leaks of the TPPA showed that a key stumbling block was the refusal of the US to yield on the contentious ISDS clause of the agreement, which critics contend would open signatory states to legal action by private corporations if any law is deemed harmful to a firm’s commercial interests.
- See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/tppa-makes-malaysia-liable-for-foreign-firms-losses-new-leak-show#sthash.GuX6KRN4.dpuf

Malaysia has a thriving manufacturing sector, there have been many protests in the country against TPP as well as many of the other nations on the list. Its a bad deal for all of us except the corporations. Think. Apply some common sense, do I have to mention the "giant sucking sound"?

TPP makes no economic sense

Essentially, it’s a US-Japan bilateral trade treaty that might complement the US-Japan security treaty.

KUALA LUMPUR: The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) appears essentially to be coming down to a US-Japan bilateral trade treaty that might complement the US-Japan security treaty, according to Forbes in a comment piece.

<snip>

“There’s very little in terms of synergies and very few prospects of finding them in the foreseeable future. The needs of developing countries would be much better served by concluding the WTO Doha Development Round.”

Furthermore, it added, the architects of the post-World War II trade régime sought to de-geo-politicise trade. “It is probably impossible to do so completely. TPP, however, is highly geopolitical and highly geopolitically divisive.”

<snip>

The conventional view that TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is about Europe, TPP is about Asia was also wrong.

TPP was a really strange mélange of 12 members including five from the Americas (Canada, Chile, Mexico, Peru and the US), five from Asia (Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam), along with Australia and New Zealand.

Missing are large Asian economies, notably South Korea, India and Indonesia, all three members of the G20.

Also missing of course is China; but that would seem to be deliberate, the economic arsenal of Washington’s (supposedly) strategic pivot to Asia, the fundamental aim of which is to contain China. “Thus TPP is above all a geopolitical ploy with trade as a decoy,” said Forbes.

This was the subject addressed in a publication by the Malay Economic Action Council (MTEM) entitled, “TPP – Malaysia is not for sale”. It includes a foreword by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad who does not mince his words when he states that “the strongest campaigner of TPP is America … [which seeks] … to contain China and to safeguard its own economic interests [by] exploiting all resources from small but growing independent nations such as Malaysia”.

He adds that “TPP is not a fair or free trade partnership, but an agreement to tie down nations with rules and regulations that would only benefit American conglomerates”. Furthermore, Mahathir pointed out, the negotiations are occurring entirely in secret, thereby adding to the suspicion that it is a conspiracy.

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/04/10/tpp-makes-no-economic-sense/

So many posts "prove its wrong" or the onus is on Elizabeth Warren. Pay attention and read her damn statements, the only arguments I say in favor of it are political arguments -- not economic arguments.

UAW, Dems rally against TPP trade agreement

Toledo — Cori Lortz’s father, an American union worker, opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s. Now, more than 20 years later, she finds herself fighting against another trade policy: the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“I saw how NAFTA destroyed my dad’s livelihood and I don’t want it to happen to me,” she said Monday at UAW Local 12 in Toledo. Lortz said her father, Larry Middlebrooks, lost his job at a packaging company after operations moved to Mexico as a result of NAFTA.

<snip>

At the UAW’s 2015 Special Bargaining Convention in Detroit last week President Dennis Williams said foreign governments that manipulate currency and put up barriers to imports in their own countries present new challenges to the economy.

“No one can afford to get this one wrong,” he said. “Our government cannot negotiate another bad trade agreement.”

Ford Motor Co. also has spoken out against TPP because it does not take a hard enough stance on currency manipulation and other issues.

Currency manipulation, also known as exchange rate intervention, is when a country uses its own currency and buys up foreign reserves like the U.S. dollar, weakening its own currency. A weak currency cheapens the price of a country’s exports, making them more attractive to international buyers by undercutting competitors.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2015/03/30/uaw-trade-policy-american-workers/70693748/


Essentially the TPP is lassez-faire, trickle-down, top-down, supply side, "shock therapy", whatever you want to call it. People who argue its good for the American worker or any worker in those countries is lying or ill-informed. Look at each individually countries economies & you begin to realize why the corporations are salivating.