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Emails Show How Industry Lobbyists Basically Wrote The Trans-Pacific Partnership
An anonymous reader writes: This Techdirt story shows how industry lobbyists influenced the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, to the point that one even openly celebrates that the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) version copied his own text word for word. The email exchange between Jim DeLisi, from Fanwood Chemical, to Barbara Weisel, a USTR official reads: "Hi Barbara – John sent through a link to the P4 agreement. I have taken a quick look at the rules of origin. Someone owes USTR a royalty payment – these are our rules. They will need some tweaking but will likely not need major surgery. This is a very pleasant surprise. I will study more closely over the weekend."
This has become standard practice for the US.
The industry groups write the treaty, and then tell the government what they want.
Then the US government dutifully becomes lackeys to industry, and advances a position which gives industry ridiculous things which could never be negotiated in public.
During this, they insist on secrecy so that the citizens of none of the countries can know that they're being heavily undermined to advance the interests of US businesses.
Lather, rise, repeat.
The US government isn't just advancing the interests of multinational corporations, they're advancing them to the detriment of the citizens -- which means nobody benefits from these fucking things other than corporations.
Welcome to the global fucking oligarchy. Make no mistake about it, the US government are nothing more than industry shills.
Fuck you, America.
This is mainly a way for tax money to flow into the pockets of people who are already very rich.
Foreign companies are treated very well, governments want the extra jobs.
Why do foreign companies need more/better rights than nationals?
Defenders will say this is false, but it's what TTIP will lead to, like what other similar trade agreements have lead to.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
This has been SOP for years.
The US government is now acting as a foreign policy arm for multinational corporations, and doing secret negotiations so nobody knows just how badly we're being fucked over for our corporate overlords.
This is the worst form of capitalism, one in which all consideration is for corporations who have the government on the payroll, and in which the citizens of the countries get fucked over.
America has been allowing corporations to write the trade treaties for a long time. Because America is essentially a corrupt shell beholden to corporations.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, for the .1%, anyway. They write the laws, they write the trade agreements, they socialise risk and privatise the rewards. Wake me up when the revolution starts, I want to Tivo it.
to know how this thing will operate. Whether there needs to be an agreement, and what needs to be in it, must be decided by some folks who have some decent idea of how these relationships operate.
The unfortunate part is that no one involved is doing anything to establish their credibility with regard to my interests. The people involved are plenty smart, but most of their words and actions seem to indicate that they have little to no consideration of my interests.
Are my interests more important than yours? Of course not. Neither are yours more important than mine. And most importantly, neither are the authors' more important than ours, collectively.
It would be nice to see some attention paid to that fact.
Both are ways, for large corporations, to "externalize risks to policitcs, and internalize profits". The wording is not mine. Karl Marx already observed this practice.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
I think it's common knowledge by now that industry can buy legislation. The new low is that the actual text of the bill is being kept under lock and key.
I simply cannot see how it is constitutional to permit this to happen. While I understand that rules are being leveraged to limit its exposure (including the fast-track vote process), the spirit of the Constitution has always advocated for transparency and public ownership of government operations.
I suppose what upsets me the most is that I cannot determine which I am more upset with: what's being done with the TPP or the fact that we don't have enough congressmen speaking out against it. As a representative of the people, any legislative process that seeks to erode the spirit of the Constitution is a threat to their constituents and should not be passed. I don't care if the text of the bill would buy every American a new house; the fact that it's being kept secret should be plenty of reason alone to vote it down.
One small consolation is now some in the USA feel what it was like to be a poor South American or South Asian or African whose government was totally controlled by foreign companies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Oh thank God we can make this a partisan issue, for a moment I thought I wouldn't have a scapegoat.
Well, which is it? If you don't like what the executive branch of the government is doing during this negotiating process, do you hold the current administration responsible for what you dislike, or not? Yes or no? You seem willing to stipulate there's an "issue," but you're disinclined to lay that at the feet of the one entity that has sole responsibility for the nature of the issue. The administration is highly partisan in all of its activities, which is no surprise. This activity is entirely in their lap. They are conducting it with politics alwyas in mind. Of course it's a partisan issue. Complaining about that is like complaining about the fact that different people have different ideas about labor unions, or taxes, or the relationship between the citizens and the government. Is that your real complaint - that some people have come to different conclusions than you have? Those different opinions tend to gather in groups and act in concert, and we call those political parties. Wishing away partisanship and complaints about it is wishing for a completely non-adversarial governing process - which would be truly frightening.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Right. Because liberals are so famously pro-free-trade-agreements and conservatives so famously opposed to them?
Meanwhile in Bizarro World, the Democratic Party has introduced a "Kill the Gays" bill while the Republican Party has introduced a bill requiring all power plant CO2 emissions to be sequestered inside the shafts of government-subsidized wind turbines.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Sorry, but you seem to be confusing a corrupt oligarchy for a nanny state.
And that's pretty much bullshit.
This is governments becoming beholden to corporations, and selling the farm for some magic beans.
This isn't a nanny state, this is a wholesale co-opting of government for corporate interests.
This has NOTHING at all to do with socialism, and everything to do with corporate welfare and stacking the deck for them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And then the US complains that FIFA officials are corrupt.
There is one 2016 candidate who opposes the secrecy of the TPP:
http://thehill.com/policy/fina...
> As for the secrecy, unfortunately, this is generally how complex international treaties are negotiated [...]
No.
In a democracy, *I want my representative to know what's in the negotiations*, *I want to read about the content in the newspapers*.
I don't need to take part in said negotiations, but I want to have an informed opinion on what is being negotiated on my behalf. *I want my representative to have an informed opinion* when it comes to the up/down vote.
Everything else is anti-democratic.
This is how most bills are written. That is not a cynical but rather purely factual statement. The shock and surprise on TPP just makes you look ignorant.
A law so secret that you can't even view it unless you're a congressperson, and even then you have to go to a locked room without recording equipment.
But how could that be suspicious at all?
And now we find out it's written and conceived by multinational corporations.
And we all know how benevolent and caring *they* are.
More seriously, anyone who votes for this has been bribed or blackmailed. It's an obvious takeover of nation-states by a globe spanning elite corporate-state.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You laugh at libertarians ok
At least they can figure out that BIG BUSINESS controlling GIGANTIC GOVERNMENT is worse than just Big Business.
BTW when you find your incorruptible supermen to run your giant government let the religious folk know about them. They call them angels and would likely want to meet them.
Right. Because liberals are so famously pro-free-trade-agreements and conservatives so famously opposed to them?
Meanwhile in Bizzaro world this treaty was negotiated by Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.
It is what destroys societies: Short-term interests taking over the long-term making of policy. You can look as far back as Rome to find documentation of the destructive effects.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.