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President Obama Gives Up On The Trans-Pacific Partnership (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes The Guardian:
White House officials conceded on Friday that the president's hard-fought-for Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal would not pass Congress, as lawmakers there prepared for the anti-global trade policies of President-elect Donald Trump. Earlier this week, congressional leaders in both parties said they would not bring the trade deal forward during a lame-duck session of Congress, before the formal transition of power on January 20.
One Canadian law professor had argued the case against the TPP included its unbalanced intellectual property rules and risks to privacy, while the EFF believed it locked in the worst parts of U.S. copyright law and also exported them to other countries.
One Canadian law professor had argued the case against the TPP included its unbalanced intellectual property rules and risks to privacy, while the EFF believed it locked in the worst parts of U.S. copyright law and also exported them to other countries.
From what I've read, the law was written by the MPAA/RIAA cartel, along with considerable input from Big Pharma. The law was designed more for the protection of those conglomerates, and less for any benefit of consumers. There's a reason why the creation of the law was so secretive.
Free trade is great, but the TPP was mostly not about trade. It was about copyright.
Seems like they are trying to make it sound like the TPP was a good thing, and Donald is ruining it for everyone. Except the TPP was definitely a bad thing for anyone who isn't the head of a huge corporation. Maybe this Trump thing could be a good thing.
Trans-Pacific Partnership was going to be bad for workers rights. With the non us courts that could gut stuff like min wage, over time, safety and more.
I would love to live in a world where journalists and news media would report facts, not their clever spin. Trump is NOT anti-trade. He is anti UNFAIR trade. It is deplorable that people in many countries essentially slave, in bad and dangerous environs, for pennies. But allowing their cheap often copy "goods" to undersell US made goods has only helped, in the short-term: consumers. But some of the consumers are also producers, so when they lose their jobs due to the cheap imports, they have less (or no) money to spend. Slowly but surely you devolve into a "society" of ultra-wealthy importers, and a growing poorer and poorer working class. To fix this a thing called "tariff" was invented. But politicians found trade agreements, which means reducing or eliminating tariffs, to be an effective power play tool in dealing with other countries. Like so many things, it got so bad with TPP that the public, and Congress, could not ignore it. Trump has seen this happening, and has talked about it, but the liberal media likes to harp on other things. I'm just sad that so many "sheeple" can't see more clearly the big picture. I hate to pick on Walmart, but their growth, and the proliferation of "dollar" stores, and the shrinking of higher-end retailers, are a strong but sad, barometer of our sad economy.
Good job you aren't racist then.
All that hard work by megacorps to secretly create a system which enables half the world to effortlessly move capital and chase cheap labor all the while imposing US's draconian over the top IP schemes including MMPA and suing governments for pursuit of public policy that makes megacorps lose money.. poof...gone .. up in smoke.
In other news, Obama has persuaded Trump that insurance companies should still be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. This is what happens when someone doesn't have a sound foundation in either philosophy or economics.
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....too bad TPP had very little to do substantially with free trade, and everything to do with IP and expanding the US's rather ridiculous copyright bullshit to Asia.
-Styopa
And giving corporations power over governments ...
It was a corporations over governments bills like nothing we've seen before. It actually required government surveillance too.
So many things that have no business being in a trade deal.
It was Disney wet dream bill --- like SOPA and other horrific bills focused on giving copyright holders extreme power --- even powers in the criminal, not civil, domain.
The public was excluded from every phase of the process, despite the fact that it would have force of law over all of us. For a long time all we knew about it was from leaks, and the government completely ignored our protests.
I am glad to see this go. Bummed about the surveillance mentioned in a previous article, though.
Regardless of which laws pass and who the president is, the primary takeaway here is obvious: the president doesn't give a shit about you.
Let's see how he's going to offset that.
he just like to make it public. At one point in time he's taken both an affirmative and a negative position on just about anything. He's Schrodinger's president. In a quantum state of being both left and right wing. But sooner or later you're gonna have to open the box and the waveform's gonna collapse...
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I have to say that's the first good thing to happen with the election of Trump.
Thank you for pushing back against the MPAA/RIAA cartel
if they'd enforce the provisions that punish countries for lax environmental standards (and not the save the whales kind but the poison air/water kind ) and non-existent worker protection.
I could live with NAFTA if it actually leveled the playing field. But our trade deals have been promising to hold 2nd world countries accountable for abusing their citizens since the 70s and haven't done it even once.
Still, this is why progressives keep getting behind these deals. If progressives could stay in power long enough to actually enforce things maybe it'd work. But you're dealing with an electorate that will literally vote the other guy in because "Sure, the economy hasn't collapse in 8 years but, well, it's time for a change"....
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TPP would have greatly benefitted USA corporation at the expense of other countries.
Since I'm not from the USA, this is excellent news.
Thank you mr, Trump!
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Very progressive of you.
I, on the other hand, would you like to have a dialog with him, where we discover our mutual points of agreement, and build a positive and meaningful relationship that can help change his mind for the betterment of all.
But then again I'm not a liberal cucked faggot rapist like you, so we might agree to disagree on some of the finer points of rational discourse.
It's nice to see that there is one good thing to come out of this last election. And I guess I'd better cherish it, because there aren't many.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
and have them enforced for real this time. Environmental protections too (and not the nebulous "climate change" ones but things like clean air and water). It was an extension of the progressive agenda.
The left has been putting stuff like this in trade agreements since the 70s and the right has been ignoring it for just as long. Sooner or later the guard changes and it's easy for these kind of rules to just not get enforced. But I guess the left decided that _this_ time it'll be different.
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they're just not enforced/ignored. Stop voting in folks who won't enforce your trade agreements and they'll work. It's like buying an engine and skipping the oil. It's gonna break.
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He's bound to take a steaming shit on something once he's President.
But as we learned in his campaign, diarrhea rolls off Trump like water off a duck's back.
So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
The Democrats were in favor of it because of the liberal Hollywood money.
You say that as if "Democrats" were a single unit, and all Democrats all want the same thing.
From the very beginning, some Democrats were for TPP, and some were against it. This was a subject on which Democrats were split.
Which is somewhat understandable: the Trans Pacific Partnership is a very long and very complicated agreement (30 provisions plus 4 "annexes"). Whether you're for it or against it depends in large extent on which parts of it you're looking at.
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text
Remember when the TPP was 'the gold standard' of trade agreements and HRC was 'so proud of all her hard work on it' until Bernie Sanders came out against it, then she suddenly had no idea what TPP was? This administration has a really bad habit of satisfying itself with 'any agreement' instead of holding out for 'good agreements'...
>> So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?
> Mostly, that is not true. Most congressional Republicans support trade agreements, and most congressional Democrats oppose them.
"It", the Trans-Pacific Partnership, isn't "them", most trade agreements. TPP is a secret deal written by the RIAA and MPAA (who coincidentally gave tons of money to the politicians proposing the agreement).
Yes, in general Republicans support the idea that if a guy in Canada wants to buy a widget from me, and I want to buy a foo from someone in the UK, that's great unless there's some specific reason to prevent or discourage it. TPP isn't that principle, it's a specific treaty with specific (bad) legal requirements for US citizens.
Racism doesn't exist, what are you talking about!
that's the trouble I have with him. I don't trust him. He changes on a moments notice. He was practically a socialist at one point in time. Now he's turning the gov't over to Mike Pence & Paul Ryan, who're as right wing as they come.
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I went to buy tuna the other day. The old cans state country of origin. The new cans don't. I believe that's because the US was sued under I think WTO.
No really.
Both Democrats and Republicans wanted it. Donald Trump is for all intents and purposes that "independent" candidate people said they always wanted. He just had to run as a Republican because people are too dumb to elect a real independent or a libertarian. Get this: some of the top Republican brass (including former Republican presidents, governors, etc) voted for Hillary instead.
What's with this obsession with confrontation with Russia? There was never a single country that fought against Russia and did not regret it profoundly afterwards. Can't we just get along and be partners? Do we really have to put nuclear weapons at their borders? What good can this do for us here?
> Sorry, that's all b.s.. The TPP is a payoff to the rich for their support of Government elected minions. The only way to fix this is get money out of politics.
For all of his faults (and he has plenty), Trump will be the first president in our lifetime who isn't dependent on big donors. This may get interesting, it will be different.
Clinton has been building up to this election over the last 30 years, and had Bubba as her advisor, a charismatic dude who won two presidential elections, and, if you watch his older videos, used to know how to connect to the "common man".
Trump has picked up politics as a hobby 1.5 years ago, and first defeated 17 other Republican candidates in record time, and then defeated Hillary by a landslide with half the money and half the staff (but 10x the rally attendance). That's pretty badass no matter how you slice it. So I think he's smarter than people give him credit for.
The TPP will be renegotiated and all the things we hated will be on there. The only difference is there will be one or two items that pretend to cater to the White working class and a lot of propaganda pushing it.
The problem isnt the "number." Its the manner in which they were executed, and the inarguable expansion of executive power over the last 16 years.
Pay attention and try to keep up kids.
I am a Chinese.
Finally.. good news about the stupid thing.
This "one Canadian law professor" is Dr. Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, a syndicated on technology law issues in major newspapers and a member of many boards, including the CANARIE Board of Directors, the CanLII Board of Directors, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's Expert Advisory Board, the EFF Advisory Board, as well as the founder of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
If you are a Canadian /. reader, I strongly recommend following his blog.
January 20, 2017 - The End of an Error.
Literally all of the R members of my family just follow the party wherever it goes, even off a cliff. Most will insult the exact same behavior from a D in political office as they praise an R doing the same. Sadly the Dems have been acting the same way this election, without even at least arguing the issues that made their candidate a better (in their view) choice.
Given the popular vote closing numbers vs the Electoral college numbers I would also say the claim that either candidate won is strenuous at best. Neither of them got more than 50 percent of the vote and the last numbers I saw were close enough to qualify under 'margin of error' excluding that Electoral college is the only thing that counts. What it should really give americans pause to consider is if tyranny of the barely majority should EVER be allowed, or if it is time to enact runoff voting with a supermajority required or a fresh runoff election with new candidates be held (like when Gray Davis was ousted from governorship of California a few years back.) The benefit being that fresh faces would get a chance run and expenses for campaigns would be curtailed without assurance that either the R or D candidate would win the position.
Right now the country is split between two pretty rabid ideologies with a small group of sheepish swing votes who don't really subscribe to either, but have concerns that one party or the other will prey on, while in the end doing corporate bidding at the expense of the numerically superior but undereducated american masses.
Already it seems like the swamp is a little drier. And that crazy, beautiful bastard hasn't even been sworn in!
Trump 2020!
He also had more whistleblower prosecutions than all previous presidents COMBINED, all during "the most transparent administration in history".
pretty sure that isn't the topic at hand.
Actually when you combine Executive Orders and Executive Memorandum, which have the same force of law as Executive Orders, it is predicted that at the end of his 8 years Obama will have issued more than any other president. He already leads when it come to issuing Memorandums.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
That may be true, but ObamaCare is costing my family $500/month MORE!
We simply can't afford that to continue. Definitely couldn't afford to vote for those people again.
I'm good with social programs that help real people in need, but not for (12 x $500 =) $6K more per year out of my kid's pockets, mouths, savings, etc. Plus our family deductible was raised from $1500/yr to $7500/yr under the new plans. We're paying 3x more and have huge out of pocket expenses. Thanks to Pres. Obama.
And our provider has dropped our state for 2017. I'm shopping for a new provider now ... and expect the costs to go up another $100/month this time around.
Can't afford democratic plans anymore.
Is on the way. The great depression will look like a walk in the park.
You know all those guns you bought you are going to need them.
What about the Altantic counterpart TTIP (a.k.a. TAFTA)? It should be dropped for the same reasons.
Everyone knows there was no racism before Obama.
At times like this, I'd like to remember Google for having sold us out on the TPP:
https://blog.google/topics/pub...
Thanks for nothing, sellouts.
Why else would he have waited until now?
Look at that. He hasn't even taken office yet and already we're seeing massively positive changes. First, Obama has been forced to FINALLY stop supporting the Daesh/ISIS in Syria (a reversal of the last six years of policy, aimed at allowing him to attempt to take some credit), and now this evil "trade" agreement will die the death that it deserves.
When you factor in the fact that we also managed to put World War 3 on hold by keeping Hillary "The nuclear option is on the table" Clinton out of the White House, this is starting to feel like one of the most positive weeks in human history.
Is to make them 'age out'. You set the tariffs high with a decrease each following year until they are 0 again (or until the constituents vote to set them to a new value whether temporarily or permanently.) Doing so gives workers in that industry a stay of execution during which they can attempt to become competitive with their overseas adversaries, while also letting them know if they can't do so their industry IS going away in a few years and this is their opportunity to retrain before the jobs are gone.
The real solution to this however would be free government re-education programs BEFORE people were unemployed in at-risk industries. It is a lot cheaper to successfully shift meatspace resources while still utilized rather than waiting for them to become idle, waste resources, then place them in a reeducation program, or have them depressing the economy by being either a drain, or a new crime element in order to survive.
Clinton received four times as much from big donors.
In the primary, Trump paid for his own campaign, while Clinton was funded by Wall Street. In the general, Tump received, in total, about half the donations that Clinton did. Trumpâ(TM)s campaign has directly received 27 percent of its funds from small donations (less than $200) while Clinton received 16 percent of its money in donations of $200 or less.
Further, Trump still has $2 billion of his own money. He's not DEPENDENT on campaign donors. He'll take a donation, but he doesn't need it. He can run his re-election campaign without you, Mr. Special Interest.
Candidates always mark their own contributions to the campaigns as loans rather than donations, though they don't get paid back, because of campaign accounting rules. Also, in Trump's case, it's effectively a way of saying "I'll pay for whatever is needed". Like when your mom handed you a twenty and sent you in the store for bread and milk, expecting you to come back with change. He hands the campaign $50 million of his money, they spend $40 million and when it's over they can give him back the $10 million that wasn't spent. They couldn't so easily give him back the leftover change if it were labeled a donation.
Gee, a candidate wants to hold an event with 1,000 guests, so he needs a hotel with banquet facilities for 1,000 guests. Also signage with the candidate's name, etc. Gee, right there I see a very nice hotel with banquet facilities for 1,000 guests and it already has the candidate's name on top, as a 40 foot long gold-plated sign. Should we use that one, or the Motel 6 down the street? OF COURSE when you need a facility to host an event promoting TRUMP you use the beautiful facility with the TRUMP logo everywhere. To do otherwise would be stupid. A couple months ago from my office window a saw an airliner fly by on it's way to land. From my office I could see very clearly the huge gold letters that said TRUMP. When you're promoting Trump for president, and he already has a 757 with giant gold letters saying TRUMP across the side, OF COURSE you use that flying billboard, renting a plain plane would just be stupid.
The scary black man had people extrajudicially executed with drones.
Wow. I haven't seen overtly racist troll in a long time. It's like seeing a live Dinosaur.
& I cant fathom why foreign libtards want to diss Trump. Its all talk from either side and would stay that way. Trump is taking $0 per year of the $400,000 PA salary hes entitled to. Trump got $0 backing in hedge funds. Hillary got got 4.7 million in hedge fund donations and thats not even including her illegal pay to play slush fund. Retarded people: Stay out of US politics and then I mihht.
Everyone should be singing "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead"!
At least from this Canadian perspective the TPP was a horrible idea from the start, and made worse as time went on. The fact that it is dead should be seen as perhaps an unintentional success of Trump.
I get the general idea of was was essentially a trade pact against China to limit their economic dominance nationally. However because of all the corporate corruption you have to ask at what cost? This thing was basically written by a bunch of the largest most wealthy corporations to further their own interests, not the people in any of the nations involved. Anyway I am glad that it is dead, and I think most people are better off for it.