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The full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been released

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U

Unknown Soldier

Member
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34742074

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch said on Thursday the final text had revealed details about the deal that were worse than expected.

"Apparently, the TPP's proponents resorted to such extreme secrecy during negotiations because the text shows that the TPP would offshore more American jobs, lower our wages, flood us with unsafe imported food and expose our laws to attack in foreign tribunals," the organisation's director Lori Wallach said.
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For anyone who cares, and I guess no one does because no thread was made until I just made it, here we go.

Recommended listening while reading this thread:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6KXgjLqSTg

edit: A summary of free trade expansion and the TPP in comic form: http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/
(thanks to Tye the Czar for this link!)

What is The Phantom Pain the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a controversial proposed trade agreement among twelve Pacific Rim countries concerning a variety of matters of economic policy, about which agreement was reached on 5 October 2015 after 7 years of negotiations. The agreement's goal had been to "promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; enhance innovation, productivity and competitiveness; raise living standards; reduce poverty in our countries; and promote transparency, good governance, and enhanced labor and environmental protections." Among other things, the TPP Agreement contains measures to lower trade barriers such as tariffs, and establish an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (but states can opt out from tobacco related measures).
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Why does anybody care about a free trade agreement?

The final text of the TPP comes out to a massive 30 chapters spanning 6,000+ pages.

You don't need 6,000+ pages to declare there is now free trade among the 12 nations of the Pacific Rim who are potentially signatories to this agreement.

What do you need 6,000+ pages for? Well...mainly for making free trade less free than advertised.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/trade-tpp-exceptions-215582

As the Obama administration extols the benefits of a massive Asia-Pacific trade deal unveiled Thursday, it is unlikely to mention how Peru can continue to limit performances by foreign circuses or that Chile can still ban foreigners as security guards.

The exceptions, laid out in multiple annexes and embedded in various chapters of the 1,000-plus page Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, range from these obscure provisions to controversial measures that could make it harder for U.S. businesses to compete overseas — and not incidentally, cost congressional votes where there might be no margin for error for passage.

The agreement allows Malaysia, for example, to maintain preferential treatment for ethnic Malays in government projects, making it harder for U.S. construction companies to win bids for those contracts.

Mexico won language to prevent foreign companies from filing disputes challenging certain Mexican laws that cover everything from oil extraction to railways. That could anger some U.S. companies that feel wronged by Mexican policies.

“The text that I’ve read so far includes annexes and exclusions up the wazoo,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.), a member on the House Ways and Means committee. “You think you’ve seen it all? You have not. Exclusions to rules by each country. Bilateral deals with Japan, and more than 50 two-way side letters.”
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What else sucks about the TPP?

There are a number of other things within the TPP which are regarded as alarming and well beyond what people would expect from a trade agreement.

Intellectual Property and Enforcement

You guys thought SOPA was bad? Well you ain't seen nothing yet. TPP is basically the MPAA and RIAA's wet dreams. Among other things, it expands the American copyright regime across all 12 signatory nations, including lifetime copyright + 70 years and imposes the worst parts of the infamous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) across it's free trade area.

http://www.ibtimes.com/tpp-unlockin...jail-under-treaty-rules-critics-claim-2171644

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) final negotiation text was released Thursday by the Obama administration, and it has privacy and digital rights advocates up in arms. They fear the TPP could greatly restrict the way consumers around the world use technology, while providing little recourse for appeals and overriding decisions by national legislatures and regulatory bodies.

For example, the Obama administration last year made it legal to unlock your phone for use on any carrier. The TPP could reverse that, said Evan Greer, campaign director of nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future. He cited article 18.68 of the TPP as having the potential to override that bill. These measures, Greer said, concern themselves with digital rights management (DRM), which is used to protect copyrighted work. Unlocking your phone could fall under a circumvention of the DRM that governs the software on your device. "The TPP appears to criminalize those types of practices," Greer told International Business Times.

Critics say the TPP, under negotiation by 12 Pacific Rim countries, including the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Vietnam and New Zealand, would take some of the more onerous parts of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and extend them globally.

Unlocking phones is not the only practice at risk. A statement from Fight for the Future points to Section J as one that would force the U.S. notice-and-takedown request system onto the rest of the world. Under the DMCA, courts can order websites to remove content that they deem to be infringing on copyrights. However, the TPP doesn't contain any counterclaim provisions that would let people fight against what they considered wrongful takedowns.

This means uploaded videos using copyrighted works would be subject to a takedown even if the user complied with rules surrounding fair use. A work of political criticism would face a takedown notice with no way for the creator to dispute this request, stifling free speech. Disputes arising under the TPP would be settled not by local courts but through an international mechanism known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS).

ISDS, consistently cited by activists as a notably objectionable element of the proposed partnership, would leave people with little power to challenge takedowns. Companies would have the power to sue governments to combat perceived standards violations. "It creates a system outside of a nation's ability to set its own laws," Greer said.
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A more detailed analysis of the various IP-related provisions in the TPP is provided by the EFF.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/...e-years-secrecy-confirms-threats-users-rights

Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) (the "Corporate Tribunals")

This one is, as Obama put it, cray.

http://www.citizen.org/investorcases

Among the most dangerous but least known parts of today's "trade" agreements are extraordinary new rights and privileges granted to foreign corporations and investors that formally prioritize corporate rights over the right of governments to regulate and the sovereign right of nations to govern their own affairs. These terms empower individual foreign corporations to skirt domestic courts and directly challenge any policy or action of a sovereign government before World Bank and UN tribunals.

Comprised of three private attorneys, the extrajudicial tribunals are authorized to order unlimited sums of taxpayer compensation for health, environmental, financial and other public interest policies seen as frustrating the corporations' expectations. The amount is based on the "expected future profits" the tribunal surmises that the corporation would have earned in the absence of the public policy it is attacking. There is no outside appeal. Many of these attorneys rotate between acting as tribunal "judges" and as the lawyers launching cases against the government on behalf of the corporations. Under this system, foreign corporations are provided greater rights than domestic firms.

This extreme "investor-state" system already has been included in a series of U.S. "trade" deals, forcing taxpayers to hand more than $440 million to corporations for toxics bans, land-use rules, regulatory permits, water and timber policies and more. Under a similar pact, a tribunal recently ordered payment of more than $2 billion to a multinational oil firm. Just under U.S. deals, more than $34 billion remains pending in corporate claims against medicine patent policies, pollution cleanup requirements, climate and energy laws, and other public interest policies.
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Environmental Policy

http://www.ibtimes.com/trans-pacifi...t-addressed-trade-deal-confirms-worst-2170853

Environmental advocates in Australia said the final language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal confirmed their “worst nightmares.” The full text of the deal was released Thursday morning and included just one chapter addressing the environment.

The chapter did not include any mention of the term “climate change” and fails to address environmental concerns on several other levels, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a sweeping trade agreement between 12 Pacific nations.

“The agreement has poor coverage of environmental issues, and weak enforcement mechanisms. There is only limited coverage of biodiversity, conservation, marine capture fisheries, and trade in environmental services,” said Matthew Rimmer, a professor specializing in intellectual property and innovation law at the Queensland University of Technology. "The final text of the chapter does not even mention 'climate change' – the most pressing global environmental issue in the world. ”
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Medication Patents and Pricing

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.or...ext-trans-pacific-partnership-trade-agreement

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) remains extremely concerned about the inclusion of dangerous provisions that would dismantle public health safeguards enshrined in international law and restrict access to price-lowering generic medicines for millions of people.

MSF statement by Judit Rius Sanjuan, U.S. manager and legal policy advisor for MSF’s Access Campaign:

"MSF remains gravely concerned about the effects that the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal will have on access to affordable medicines for millions of people, if it is enacted. Today’s official release of the agreed TPP text confirms that the deal will further delay price-lowering generic competition by extending and strengthening monopoly market protections for pharmaceutical companies.

The TPP is a bad deal for medicine: it’s bad for humanitarian medical treatment providers such as MSF, and it’s bad for people who need access to affordable medicines around the world, including in the United States.
At a time when the high price of life-saving medicines and vaccines is increasingly recognized as a barrier to effective medical care, it is very concerning to see that the U.S. government and pharmaceutical companies have succeeded in locking in rules that will keep medicine prices high for longer and limit the tools that governments and civil society have to try to increase generic competition.

For example, if enacted, the TPP will not allow national regulatory authorities to use existing data that demonstrates a biological product’s safety and efficacy to authorize the sale of competitor products, even in the absence of patents. The TPP would also force governments to extend existing patent monopolies beyond current 20-year terms at the request of pharmaceutical companies, and to redefine what type of medicine deserves a patent, including mandating the granting of new patents for modifications of existing medicines.
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This trade agreement sounds awful. Who even supports this thing?

Well...the MPAA loves it.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/mpaa-praises-tpp/145610

“We welcome the release of the TPP agreement," said Motion Picture Association of America President Chris Dodd. "Enacting a high-standard TPP with strong copyright protections is an economic priority for the American motion picture and television industry, which registered nearly $16 billion in exports in 2013 and supports nearly two million jobs throughout all 50 states. The TPP reaffirms what we have long understood -- that strengthening copyright is integral to America’s creative community and to facilitating legitimate international commerce..."
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Um, yeah. So who opposes it?

In rare example of Donkeys and Elephants agreeing with each other, Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both oppose it, in addition to Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Yeah, this is something that The Donald agrees with Mecha-Hillary and that one guy Mecha-Hillary squashed about.

The various positions of the candidates on the TPP can be seen here:
http://ballotpedia.org/2016_presidential_candidates_on_the_Trans-Pacific_Partnership_trade_deal

I want to read the entire 6,000+ page agreement because reasons.

Okay, have at it.
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

What can I do to oppose this trade agreement?

As of today, the day the full text of the agreement was released, President Obama has notified the Congress he intends to sign this agreement, the crowning legacy of his Presidency. He now has 90 days to convince the Congress to vote for ratification of the agreement.

This means we, and by we in this case I mean the people of the United States, the largest and most important signatory nation, have 90 days to make it quite clear to the Congress how we feel about this trade agreement.

Expect a rather broad coalition of strange corporate bedfellows to oppose this agreement, from car manufacturers (Ford Motor Company has already criticized it) to tobacco companies, who have a specific provision cutting them out of the ISDS corporate tribunals.

Environmental groups are uniformly in opposition, all the way from the radicals at Greenpeace to The Sierra Club.

Obama faces stiff opposition from his own party on this and finds himself in bed with Republicans to try and push this trade deal through Congress.

Everyone who has anything to do with health care who isn't a big pharmaceutical company opposes it. You already saw how Doctors Without Borders feels about it, the American Medical Association isn't happy about it either.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2430590

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, as seen above, of course opposes this thing which is basically SOPA for the world.

I'm not an American. How can I oppose this in my country?

Um, I can't really help you there. Contact whoever represents you in your government I guess.

For the Canadians out there, you just got a new Prime Minister who is likely to be much more skeptical of this trade agreement than the previous one. This is your time to shine.

To the people of Singapore, Brunei , New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Australia, and Japan -- you guys are on the chopping block. If you want to oppose this trade agreement, you better get busy in your respective nations.

Additional message for the people of Colombia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Indonesia -- your governments have expressed interest in or intent to join the TPP if it is ratified by the original 12 signatories. You might want to have a few words about that with your governments.
 
D

DirtyManos

Member
I just can't see this piece of shit being passed as is, which ofc could've been the plan all along (make it so bad you can compromise on what you wanted really).

The blowback being heard from so many corners is something I haven't seen in a while.

Why does the Obama administration want this so bad??

Kojima come back ;_;
 
E

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
Absolutely ridiculous that they (government and cooperations) have been drafting this thing in secret. Fuck democratic involvement, I guess.
 
F

Fuzzy

I would bang a hot farmer!
There's only one answer.

cg5yZXs.png
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Skinpop said:
so what benefits does it bring?
Click to expand...

More corporate freedom and special interest wang sucking yay!!!

Oh wait..your talking about pro consumer benefits for the citizen...and actual trade policy between nations like tariffs and stuff like that...well....yeah i can't really see much.
 
K

Kemal86

Member
So do all 12 nations have to ratify it for it to take effect? Say Canada does not ratify. Is it valid for the other 11 nations, or dead?
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
chaosblade said:
Even narrower than that it seems, since some corporations even oppose it.
Click to expand...

The real problem, cause even some corps know that it squeezes them out of actual competition by giving quite a few other, bigger corporate industries far more power.
 
S

Steel

Banned
And holy shit at that corporate rights bullshit.

Fuck, I actually thought Clinton turning around and trashing this agreement was stupid, but this shouldn't fly.
 
Y

yanipheonu

Member
The fact this was agreed on without even being revealed to basically anyone might be one of the most un democratic things I've ever heard.

Thank god Trudeau's been pretty anti-TPP during the election. Gotta drop this damned thing.
 
R

RexNovis

Banned
Among the most dangerous but least known parts of today's "trade" agreements are extraordinary new rights and privileges granted to foreign corporations and investors that formally prioritize corporate rights over the right of governments to regulate and the sovereign right of nations to govern their own affairs. These terms empower individual foreign corporations to skirt domestic courts and directly challenge any policy or action of a sovereign government before World Bank and UN tribunals.

Comprised of three private attorneys, the extrajudicial tribunals are authorized to order unlimited sums of taxpayer compensation for health, environmental, financial and other public interest policies seen as frustrating the corporations' expectations. The amount is based on the "expected future profits" the tribunal surmises that the corporation would have earned in the absence of the public policy it is attacking. There is no outside appeal. Many of these attorneys rotate between acting as tribunal "judges" and as the lawyers launching cases against the government on behalf of the corporations. Under this system, foreign corporations are provided greater rights than domestic firms.

This extreme "investor-state" system already has been included in a series of U.S. "trade" deals, forcing taxpayers to hand more than $440 million to corporations for toxics bans, land-use rules, regulatory permits, water and timber policies and more. Under a similar pact, a tribunal recently ordered payment of more than $2 billion to a multinational oil firm. Just under U.S. deals, more than $34 billion remains pending in corporate claims against medicine patent policies, pollution cleanup requirements, climate and energy laws, and other public interest policies.
Click to expand...

This is like some sort of monstrous abomination of Orwell and Kafka's worst nightmares. Holy shit. Unbelievable.
 
K

Kevin

Member
This bill offers NOTHING to help Americans or anyone else and instead gives complete controls of countries and laws to the corporations as seen fit. Absolutely disgusting, evil and treasonous.

I hate to say it... but the new world order is real!
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Steel said:
And holy shit at that corporate rights bullshit.

Fuck, I actually thought Clinton turning around and trashing this agreement was stupid, but this shouldn't fly.
Click to expand...

The issue being that Clinton's support of it and crafting of the deal is noted. So her views on it mean everything going into the election. Same with Bernie
 
RpgN

RpgN

Junior Member
What is the status of this? Is it likely that it will be stopped like with SOPA?
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
RpgN said:
What is the status of this? Is it likely that it will be stopped like with SOPA?
Click to expand...

SOPA's copyright crap was folded into this bill...which sucks.

It has the full support of the administration. So...i guess Obama takes us for idiots now. I voted for the guy, so i guess i'm at fault.

But as Bernie says, the system has to fundamentally change so we don't have people trying craft this kind of bullshit under the table at the behest of the special interests that they get favors from and vice versa
 
N

narton

Member
RpgN said:
What is the status of this? Is it likely that it will be stopped like with SOPA?
Click to expand...

The text has been agreed to. All the countries or most of them anyway, have to ratify it. Paul Ryan, the new speaker of the house, and one of the men behind this and TPA, passed a law that gave Obama permission to seek this. When passing TPA, or trade promotion authority, it also meant that

1. It can be debated without amendments and
2. IT CAN PASS WITH A SIMPLE MAJORITY. That means 51-49 in the Senate is enough, no filibustering needed or 60-40 needed.

Democrats hate it, but they're stupid and listened to Ryan's pleas, saying "we aren't actually voting for TPP yet, just the process."

Paul Ryan also seemed to suggest that even if a Canada or New Zealand there dropped out, that the others would still move on.
 
J

Jintor

Member
Australia is so fukt and our fucking government isn't going to do shit about it. Malcolm fucking Turnbull and his shit sandwich smile. Sure you got the medical provisions in but we're still going to get our asses sued off by big pharma cos the market exclusivity provisions are still in.
 
T

texhnolyze

Banned
The (not) Phantom Pain..

"There are 12 countries involved: the US, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru."

I thought Indonesia is also in?

Edit: Not yet, apparently.
 
N

narton

Member
Also, the reason you aren't hearing any backlash from tech companies like with SOPA is because they have immunity in this new legislation.
 
F

Foffy

Banned
If this passes, we've already doomed societies of the 21st century and potentially beyond.

This will absolutely establish oligarchy as status quo, if one can only argue we only have some elements of it. This is a full blown transition to one..
 
S

skelekey

Member
This is the absolute worse news I've read in a long time. How the hell is anyone ok with this? 7 years to put our nation at the mercy of foreign corporations. Who thought this was a good idea? How could Obama support this and completely without the American public? I thought this was a democracy.
 
RpgN

RpgN

Junior Member
Inuhanyou said:
SOPA's copyright crap was folded into this bill...which sucks.

It has the full support of the administration. So...i guess Obama takes us for idiots now. I voted for the guy, so i guess i'm at fault.

But as Bernie says, the system has to fundamentally change so we don't have people trying craft this kind of bullshit under the table at the behest of the special interests that they get favors from and vice versa
Click to expand...

narton said:
The text has been agreed to. All the countries or most of them anyway, have to ratify it. Paul Ryan, the new speaker of the house, and one of the men behind this and TPA, passed a law that gave Obama permission to seek this. When passing TPA, or trade promotion authority, it also meant that

1. It can be debated without amendments and
2. IT CAN PASS WITH A SIMPLE MAJORITY. That means 51-49 in the Senate is enough, no filibustering needed or 60-40 needed.

Democrats hate it, but they're stupid and listened to Ryan's pleas, saying "we aren't actually voting for TPP yet, just the process."

Paul Ryan also seemed to suggest that even if a Canada or New Zealand there dropped out, that the others would still move on.
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound good. So...it's basically too late and can't be combatted?

Since 12 countries are involved in this, what effects will this have on others countries/regions like in EU?
 
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