The Movement Against the Trans-Pacific Partnership
An Interview
Notoriously missing from the presidential debates, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretive ‘free-trade’ agreement between the U.S., Australia, Chile, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and now Mexico and Canada. It would impose restrictive intellectual property laws, decrease access to medicine, flood the U.S. with unsafe food and products, empower corporations to attack environmental and health safeguards across the globe, and usurp federal and state laws and authority.
Free Press Houston interviewed Melinda St. Louis, the International Campaigns Director of Global Trade Watch, about this agreement and the movement against it.
What have been some past victories against similar agreements?
Civil society organizations can claim a great many victories against corporate power-grabs dressed up as ‘free-trade’ agreements. We have successfully stopped expansion of the World Trade Organization from 1999 until today—the ‘Doha Round’ of negotiations have been completely derailed. The attempt to expand NAFTA to 34 countries in a ‘Free Trade Area of the Americas’ was derailed in 2003, after a massive hemisphere-wide public education and advocacy effort. The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was similarly derailed in the late 1990s, and several bilateral and regional deals were never completed, such as U.S. trade agreements with Malaysia, Thailand, and the Asia Free Trade Agreement.
Can you describe some of the allies you have in the other potential signatory nations to the agreement?
We coordinate closely with allies from nearly all the negotiating countries, the trade union movement, public health advocates, Internet freedom activists, environmentalists, faith communities, academia, and much more.
What are the best prospects for defeating TPP?
The ‘Dracula Strategy’ would be to drag the deal into the sunlight, and it would wither. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk basically admitted this when he explained why he did not support releasing the draft text of the negotiations as was done at this point in the process of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He said they wouldn’t be able to complete a deal if the negotiations were public. Shouldn’t that tell them something?
There are also many controversial issues at the negotiating tables, which civil society in the different countries are highlighting. An example is the extreme intellectual property provisions that were tabled by the United States (we know because they were leaked), which would extend drug monopolies on life-saving medicine. The same dynamic is at play with the very controversial investor–state dispute resolution, where foreign corporations can sue governments in ad-hoc foreign tribunals to receive taxpayer compensation for policies they argue hurt their ‘lost profits.’ Australia has refused to accept to be bound by investor-state dispute resolution in the TPP, and the U.S. has demanded that all parties agree to be bound by it.
And other countries including China could also join?
Japan has expressed interest in joining, and the agreement would be made to be a ‘docking’ agreement where any country in the Pacific Rim could join. Ron Kirk has said he “would love nothing more” than for China to eventually join.
How do you appeal to people on the political right and left?
Polling has shown time and again that opposition to NAFTA-style ‘trade’ deals is one of the only issues that unites Democratic, Republican, and Independent voters. The loss of one in four manufacturing jobs in the NAFTA/WTO era is a reality that hits people across the political spectrum.
Conservatives particularly worry about the lack of respect for states’ rights in that many are bound by aspects of these agreements that they have no voice or power in negotiating, as well as the ceding of U.S. sovereignty to foreign tribunals at the World Bank and United Nations.
Those on the left worry about environmental, public health, and financial regulations to protect the public. [They also worry] about [the extension of] the monopoly power of big pharma to increase the price of life-saving medicines for the poor in developing countries, and encouraging a race to the bottom in terms of wages, working conditions, and labor standards.
What is it like to try to organize during an election? Can you contrast it to other campaigns in the past when one of the candidates was at least giving the appearance of support to your positions?
We are appalled that, despite the hard evidence to the contrary, both President Obama and Governor Romney tout these trade deals as ‘job creating.’ This is an unfortunate consequence of the domination of corporate money in U.S. politics.
To learn more, please check out: citizen.org/TPP