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President Obama Gives Up On The Trans-Pacific Partnership (theguardian.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the trick-or-treaty dept.

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.

21 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The most contentious passages also had to do with corporate super-sovereignty. It made corporations more powerful than sovereign nations and gave them the right to sue governments when national laws impacted business.

      Good riddance.

    2. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by justthinkit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So why did democrats want it, and republicans not want it?

      If we're not careful, we may have to give republicans the nod on this one.

      --
      I come here for the love
    3. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by Altrag · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was written by a lot of big corporations -- those are just the ones we tend to hear about the most because that's what the Slashdot crowd tend to focus on.

      There's a lot of bad things in there for farmers and manufacturers as well, not to mention that whole investor-state bullshit that effectively lets companies override a country's sovereignty in order to protect their bottom line, weakening of environmental protections around the world and so on.

      Its basically every Christmas and birthday present ever wrapped up and given to multinationals at the cost of local businesses, consumer rights and jobs (at least American jobs. It'd probably be great for creating Malaysian sweatshop jobs as we outsource even more labor to the lowest-wage, lowest-legal-protections country in the TPP roster.)

    4. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...and republicans not want it?...

      Since Inaugural Day 2009, the Republicans were against nearly anything and everything Pres Obama was in favor of. The Party of No, or have you been sleeping for these past eight years?

      .
      The Democrats were in favor of it because of the liberal Hollywood money.

    5. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Informative

      Forgot about the part which would allow businesses to import workers from any country and replace you. For Americans, you guys have already seen the bullshit with H1B's replacing people already working at a job. What you'd start seeing what we have in Canada with TFW's, where people even in skilled trades being replaced. The leaked document that was post a year and change back showed that any type of agreement negotiated in secret needs to be nuked from orbit.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
    6. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by geoskd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow, I think we might be seeing an actual difference. There was never any difference between Democrats and Republicans But there might be some difference between Trump and Democrats/Republicans. Most of it could be bad, but still...

      A very large segment of the population no logner cares if trump is good or bad, they are just sick of getting screwed by the politicians, and if trump ends up screwing them just like every other president in recent history, at least some of the elites are likely to take it in the shorts as well. Its the scorched earth mentality, and it is the logical result of 30+ years of policy that favors the wealthy at everyone elses expense. Anyone who thinks that this is a strictly the republicans doing, needs to take a close look a the Clinton economic policy (both of them) to realize that the democrats were just as complicit. These asshole politicians made their own bed over the last three decades and are either so insulated from their actual constituency, or so corrupt they don't care how bad they are screwing the majority of the people. I for one loathe Both trump and Clinton, but at least with Trump there is a chance that those with the power and the money will get the hint and in 4 years will put some policies on the table that actually benefit society instead of the new feudal lords. Policies like single payer health care, and free education are not just nice sounding ideas, they are all that stands between the trump hordes and open revolution. Trump was just a warning shot, the next round will be played with live ammo.

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      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    7. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, we'll just have to look at Truman's emails to Stalin.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    8. Re:MPAA, RIAA and Big Pharma by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Informative

      They did oppose many of Bush's programs, such as his continuing the Iraq War as long as he did

      No they didn't. They signed off on it every time, then grumbled a bit about it to no effect.

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  2. Good News by blogagog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Free trade is great, but the TPP was mostly not about trade. It was about copyright.

    1. Re:Good News by sdinfoserv · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "Free" trade only works when both trading partners are on equal status. Tariffs were established to balance the equity. The reality is, labor jobs have been shifted to countries with no environmental laws, no labor laws, no intellectual property laws, and government paid health care. When rational people say, "um, wait a minute, that's not fair to American workers", some oligarchy puppet screams "you're against globalism, fair trade, against jobs and a racist!".
      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.

    2. Re:Good News by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I actually read the chapter summaries of the entire treaty, and it most definitely IS about trade. And it is ALSO about intellectual property. AND it is about environmental protection. AND it is about workers' rights. AND it is about currency manipulation. Oh, and by the way it's about cutting China off at the knees, which is a big deal for the Obama administration. Obama's much keener on using economics to shape geopolitics than most people realize, which is why he has been furtively supportive of the Dakota Access Pipeline despite it's wild unpopularity with his base: it'll be like pouring gasoline on the Russian economic fire.

      This is how the world actually works: major changes require a coalition of interests. In an international agreement, it's actually multiple coalitions, one for each country, plus mulitnational entities like corporations. Every interest in each coalition has its own goals, and when they're done hammering out a consensus it HAS to be about about a lot of things.

      It's only through the lens of retail politics that something this big becomes about just one thing.

      The thing is, this sucker is monster huge. It will transform all the member countries in ways that will be nearly impossible to undo without inviting chaos.

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      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:Good News by Loki_1929 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Free trade reduces the inequality between wealthier and poorer nations. Great if you're in the latter. Bad if you're not one of the few elites in the former who can make that benefit you. It's not a win-win for both sides as the two-sides-of-the-same-coin major parties have been preaching in the US. It's absurd to believe otherwise. If the Democrats were actually still the party of the working class, they'd be fighting to retrain younger blue collar union workers for realistic transitions and protect older union workers (for whom retraining isn't realistic) from job exportation.

      Free trade isn't great for everyone. And as soon as someone came along and admitted that (instead of trying to explain to a 48 year old factory worker who's losing the only job he's had for 30 years to free trade, who has no other skills or education, who has no prospects moving forward, but does have a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, how this is all somehow good for him), all sorts of lifelong Democrats suddenly showed up to vote for that person (who was very much not a Democrat). Let's stop lying about this "rising tide raises all ships" bullshit and start telling the truth: if you're doing something where the skills involved are limited and the labor costs make up a sizable portion of the total costs involved, you're going to fucked first by free trade (because it's cheaper) and second by automation (because it eventually becomes cost-effective). Step one is admitting you have a problem (and this also requires recognizing that these people actually matter). Step two is figuring out what you're going to do for all the third-generation 48 year olds with two kids and a mortgage who are in this situation. And whatever that is, it better be realistic for them and it better pay at least 85% of what they were making before or no amount of belt-tightening is going to keep them going.

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      -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
  3. First Victory! by fox171171 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:First Victory! by RichPowers · · Score: 5, Interesting

      While I didn't vote for Trump nor support his campaign, he's in the black right now as far as I'm concerned:

      -TPP is dead
      -He finished off the remnants of the Bush crime family by humiliating and crushing Jeb! in the primaries. ("Iraq was a disaster," "9/11 happened on his brother's watch" -- pretty amazing he said this in a GOP primary right in their backyard.) Watch the various YouTube videos and Trump sounds like every leftist I knew circa 2006 waiting for the Democratic Party to say as much. Had that corpse of a candidate John Kerry been as animated in 2004, history might have turned out very differently.
      -In an act of bipartisanship, Trump also finished off the remnants of the Clinton crime family by humiliating Hillary and her sycophants with the greatest upset of the modern political era.

      That being said, his administration can easily go into the red in a case of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." But until then, this stuff is more exciting and amusing than Game of Thrones. The more assholes he throws under the bus in his pursuit of petty vengeance and self-aggrandizement, the better.

    2. Re:First Victory! by Mashiki · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Correction: He's smart enough to repeal the worst parts of Obamacare, that's what he also said at the beginning too. Though the entire thing should be tossed out, and re-written to be be sensible. If you guys in the US were smart about the whole "mandated healthcare" bit you would have modeled it after our legislation in Canada. And when they tried passing the existing legislation you would have been protesting in the streets. The federal legislation basically boils down to: Feds have oversight, they toss the provinces money. Each province is responsible for care, costs, where things get built, payment and so on. Minimum levels of care are ensured by an independent 3rd party, feds can only step in if the 3rd party says it's inadequate and feds can only take over at the provincial level until the minimum care level is adequate then it's turned back over to the province.

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      Om, nomnomnom...
  4. Re:Trump is not anti-trade by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The idea that tariffs were invented for "freedom" is absurd. They were invented to protect domestic industries against competition. And the lesson of erecting large tariff walls is that it is the consumer that ends up paying to protect these industries, and the industries themselves become ever less competitive, protected in a nice encirclement of economic privilege. But that cannot be sustained forever, and eventually when the door opens a little bit, the coddled and increasingly indolent domestic industry is crushed.

    Besides, the whole fucking thing is going to be automated in a few decades. Even the wage slaves of Bangladesh and China will be out of a job. And then what? Erect tariffs against foreign robots, or even better, against domestic robots?

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  5. Remember when... by KenHansen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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'...

  6. Re:What's with this obsession with confrontation? by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There was never a single country that *invaded* Russia that didn't regret it profoundly. Russia (and the Russian dominated Soviet Union) has been successfully confronted many times.

    The "obsession" with confrontation is that it's run by an authoritarian who assasinates and jails his political opponents, is killing civilians wholesale in Syria, has subverted his country's electoral process, and has ambitions of creating an empire in Europe. Not opposing people like that is also something people have historically regretted. So the smart thing is to oppose him without invading his country.

    Fortunately for us Putin's run his country's economy into the ground with crony capitalism. It's too bad for the Russians but soon the economic disaster is going to curtail his international ambitions.

    I'm all for being friends with Russia. I said back in '92 George H.W. Bush was making a big mistake by not extending Russia the hand of friendship. But at present there's no way to separate Russia from Putin, and Putin should be contained.

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  7. They want to deny Trump credit for killing it, too by Xenographic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:ObamaCare is too expensive! by silentcoder · · Score: 5, Informative

    >Can't afford democratic plans anymore.

    You don't have one. Obamacare was a republican plan, originally written by the heartland institute and first implemented in law by governor Mitt Romney. Why do you think the left was never happy with it. We only tolerated it as "better than nothing" we never thought it was "good" - it was Obama's 'reach across the aisle' move to do healthcare reform EXACTLY as republicans have always wanted to do it - and then suddenly they hated it.

    America needs truly Universal Healthcare - along with price controls on pharmaceuticals. You want an actual democratic plan ? It means putting all the insurance companies out of business for ever.

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    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *