Tag: TPP

TPP Will Not Go Quietly

2016 the promise was to pull out of the TPP because it was NO GOOD for the country and NAFTA would be re-negotiated….promises by then candidate Donny Trump…..

So far NAFTA remains in its original form and the US has pulled out of the TPP in 2017…..but wait there is more news on the TPP front…….

President Donald Trump has asked trade officials to explore the possibility of the United States rejoining negotiations on the Pacific Rim agreement after he pulled out last year as part of his “America first” agenda, the AP reports. Farm-state lawmakers said Thursday after a White House meeting with Trump that he had given that assignment to his trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, and his new chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. The Trans-Pacific Partnership would open more overseas markets for American farmers. “I’m sure there are lots of particulars that they’d want to negotiate, but the president multiple times reaffirmed in general to all of us and looked right at Larry Kudlow and said, ‘Larry, go get it done,'” said Sen. Ben Sasse. Eleven countries signed the agreement last month.

Trump’s rejection of the deal has rattled allies and raised questions at home about whether protectionism will impede US economic growth. Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, said he was “very impressed” that Trump had assigned Kudlow and Lighthizer “the task to see if we couldn’t take another look at TPP. And that certainly would be good news all throughout farm country.” The discussions came during a meeting in which Trump told farm-state governors and lawmakers that he was pressing China to treat the American agriculture industry fairly. Midwest farmers fear becoming caught up in a trade war as Beijing threatens to impose tariffs on soybeans and other US crops, a big blow to Midwestern farmers, many of whom are strong Trump supporters.

Is the possibility of re-joining TPP a by-product of the new tariffs that the president thinks will make America Great Again?

Don’t Bury TPP Just Yet

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Trump was vocal on his opposition to NAFTA and TPP….so vocal that he probably got him some votes from labor…..he promised to re-negotiate NAFTA and end the TPP….(and the peasants danced)…..

Most Americans are all in favor of free trade…..but are they?

Free trade is the economic policy of not discriminating against imports from and exports to foreign jurisdictions. Buyers and sellers from separate economies may voluntarily trade without the domestic government applying tariffs, quotas, subsidies or prohibitions on their goods and services. Free trade is the opposite of trade protectionism or economic isolationism.

Politically, a free trade policy may just be the absence of any other trade policies; the government need not positively do anything to promote free trade. This is one reason it is sometimes referred to as “laissez-faire trade” or “trade liberalization.” Governments with free trade agreements (FTAs) do not necessarily abandon all control of taxation of imports and exports. In modern international trade, very few so-called FTAs actually fit the textbook definition of free trade.

Now that we have talked about “free trade”….shall we talk about the future of TPP?
There was a sigh of relief when Trump was elected….for now the TPP is dead and soon buried.
Think again!

One can hear the cry ringing through the boardrooms of capital: “Free trade is dead! Long live free trade!”

Think the ideas behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the so-called “free trade” regime are buried? Sadly, no. Definitely, no. Some of the countries involved in negotiating the TPP seeking to find ways to resurrect it in some new form — but that isn’t the most distressing news. What’s worse is the TPP remains alive in a new form with even worse rules. Meet the Trade In Services Agreement, even more secret than the Trans-Pacific Partnership. And more dangerous.

Source: TPP is Not Dead: It’s Now Called the Trade In Services Agreement

Take a closer look at TiSA…..

Here is where things gets scary. Team TiSA – a consortium of multinational financial, logistics, and big data corporations – are looking to set severe limits on how governments can regulate economies domestically while providing strict investor rights provisions. Deborah James outlined ten aspects of TiSA that have been accepted by all parties or are under negotiations that could have significant consequences:

  1. Companies are expanding the category of “services” in order to make it all-encompassing so that the agreement could apply as broadly within the economy as possible.
  2. Offshoring and outsourcing of jobs and downward pressure on wages could greatly accelerate as TiSA would lock in labor, tax, and regulatory arbitrage.
  3. Not only would TiSA promote offshoring of jobs, but it would also greatly expand domestic “inshoring.” Foreign contractors (say from Japan) would be able to bring in workers (say from Philippines) to conduct work inside a consumer country (say the United States) on terms well below the minimum local pay and standards.
  4. The TiSA does not include a labor chapter, and in fact the draft texts only mention labor rights once.
  5. Preventing governments at the national, state, and even municipal levels from supporting local business and local employment.
  6. The principle of “technological neutrality which TiSA negotiators take as a given would have immeasurable job impacts particularly with regard to the “gig” economy. So if a country opened its market to passenger transport services, it could not apply new and different rules to Uber than to traditional taxicabs.
  7. Job loss as a result of privatization would increase as publicly owned utilities would have to compete under the same rules as private companies, reducing the benefits of public ownership, resulting in the elimination of jobs that inevitably follows privatization.
  8. The financial services text of the TiSA is the closest thing imaginable to a guarantee of another job-killing financial crisis. If the draft texts were accepted, the TiSA would constrain governments from implementing most of the regulations that are recognized, both domestically and internationally, as essential to prevent another global financial crisis.
  9. Workers would have to shoulder even more of the tax burden as corporate tax evasions would accelerate.
  10. The TiSA could potentially be used as the basis of a foreign company’s claim against the United States

Where are all the yells and cheers now?  I am waiting!

Is The TPP Finally Dead?

From the beginning I was opposed to this TPP that Obama and so many others championed….I recall what damage Clinton’s NAFTA did to the American economy….

There were a few issues in the Trump agenda that I could embrace….but I liked his rhetoric on international interventionism and especially his rhetoric on trade….both NAFTA and TPP……

Mercifully it appears that the TPP is finally dead…..

In spite of the hopes of many elite types for a last-minute resurrection, it appears that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is finally dead.  This is good news, but it took a long time to kill the deal, and the country is likely to pay a huge price for the execution.

The basic point that everyone should know by now is that the TPP had little to do with trade. The United States already had trade deals with six of the 11 other countries in the pact. The trade barriers with the other five countries were already very low in most cases, so there was little room left for further trade liberalization in the TPP.

Instead, the main purpose of the TPP was to lock in place a business-friendly structure of regulation. The deal was negotiated by a series of working groups that were dominated by representatives of major corporations. The regulatory structure was to be enforced by investor-state dispute settlement tribunals. This is an extrajudicial system that would be able to override US laws with secret rulings that were not bound by precedent or subject to appeal.

Source: The Slow, Painful Death of the TPP

We will have to wait and see if Trump will be true to his word……my optimism is at a low ebb right now.

Is There Anything Positive?

Is there anything positive about President-elect Trump?

Trump has started pulling back from some of his more iconic pledges during the campaign….but that matters not to his supporters because he was elected and they will justify each and every lie told to them….

I have a friend that he knew that I had a positive reaction to some of Trump’s foreign policy statements but he wanted to know if there was anything else I could say was a positive note….at this early stage of him being the president….

Well yes there is.

He has stated that TPP would was terrible deal for the American people and that he would work to see that it was not implemented…..

With the election of Donald Trump this week, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is effectively dead, Reuters reports. The 12-country trade agreement was signed last year after more than five years of negotiations. Championed by President Obama, it was supposed to be part of his legacy. Then the tide turned. Republicans, who had largely supported the TPP, nominated Trump, who called it a “disaster” and “rape of our country.” Even Hillary Clinton, who had supported the TPP while secretary of state, disowned it during the campaign, according to NPR. The Wall Street Journal reports the Obama administration had hoped to get it approved by Congress with the help of a Democratic Senate and incoming President Clinton. Neither of those things happened, dealing Obama a “bitter defeat.”

Leaders of both parties in Congress now say they won’t bring the TPP forward for a vote before Obama leaves office. It will be up to Trump to decide what to do with it, and the president elect has already stated his preference for renegotiating NAFTA and limiting imports. The TPP was set to be the biggest trade agreement in more than a decade. It got rid of many tariffs, set standards for intellectual property rights, and more. By excluding China, it was supposed to balance that country’s growing power in the region. China is likely to now pursue its own trade agreements in the region, possibly to the detriment of US influence.

I was opposed of this thing from the beginning and if he holds true to the rhetoric then that will be a positive thing……

He has also said that he wanted to re-instate Glass-Steagall…..I am waiting for word of this before I comment…..

Another country has decided to bow out of this horrible deal…….Vietnam

Vietnam has decided not to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the trade deal’s future uncertain under incoming US President Donald Trump.- “The United States has announced it is suspending the submission of TPP to the parliament so there are not sufficient conditions for Vietnam to submit its proposal for ratification,” Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told the National Assembly, according to Reuters.

from RT: 

Is this a dead issue?

Study: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Cost US a Half Million Jobs

One of Obama’s signature policies will be the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  A piece of CRAP!

There are some that think this deal which was conceived and passed in secret will not be the end all for the economic problems of the US.  To me it smells like just another NAFTA which cost millions of jobs and our manufacturing base, but Clintonites still cling to this failed policy as if it were the second coming.

The TPP has promised to revitalize our economy with jobs and trade…..but is it the benefit that the admin boyz are selling?

One study says that its is NOT the benefit that is being promised.

A group of economists studying the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) have concluded that the sweeping trade agreement will have a net negative impact on the US economy.

Economic researchers with Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute said Monday that widely cited projections claiming the TPP will boost economic activity in the US are “based on unrealistic assumptions.”

Instead, the economists noted, the 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal will likely lead to the loss of 448,000 jobs from the US workforce, while lowering GDP by more than a half-percentage point over the next decade.

Source: Study: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Cost US a Half Million Jobs, Drag Down GDP – Linkis.com

Good deal for those people with more money than principles….not so much for the working stiff……

Yet another nail in the coffin of the middle class.

I am so proud!

Let’s All Cheer For The TPP

Yet another trade agreement…..all this sad events was began with Hillary’s hubby and his disastrous NAFTA…..it has done more to crap on the American worker than just about anything the GOP could have done…..and Obama not to be outdone by Bubba has his own piece crap trade agreement……The Trans-Pacific Trade agreement (TPP)…….

From the beginning of the process I said it was a horrible piece of trash…..but few listened or opposed and now the rest of the story has been told…..thanx to Tufts University…..

Source: Tufts Univ. Report: TPP Means Inequality, Lost Jobs, Lower Wages | PopularResistance.Org

This is what we get when these types of things are done in secret……once again it is about the cash not the jobs……and that is what American “democracy” is always about…..the profit and the profit……period!

As an added bonus….NAFTA did a lot to kill the family farm and make big agri-business the way we produce food…….I read a piece recently about the small farm and would like everyone’s opinion…….

“In Canada, I have the frustrating habit of criticizing government support to the agricultural sector especially entry-barriers in the form of production quotas. Most of those policies are regressive in the sense that they reallocate income from the poorest to the richest. In fact, their entire aim is to artificially increase the income of farmers (especially dairy and poultry farmers) at the expense of the rest of the population. However, when lobbyists for these subsidies come out in public, they do so under different disguises. Their favorite? Farms are dying.” (01/14/16)

http://notesonliberty.com/2016/01/14/why-farms-die-and-should-die/

If you are still not sure if the TPP is bad or not then look NO further than the GOP…..they have very little opposition to the deal….pretty much shows me who will benefit from the agreement….and guess what?  It ain’t YOU!

Nothing good has come out of any trade agreement since NAFTA……Americans are NO better off for their implementation…..so you tell me…..who are those that enact these failures really work for….I would like your opinions…..

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TPP: The Secret Trade Deal

Remember when Congress was about to vote on this deal……they were kept in the dark….the contents of the deal were a secret and we/they were not allowed to read it before the deal was struck……can you recall that?

Now that the deal is a go……it is time for us to see what we were not allowed to see before the vote on the deal……

You can read the full text of the TPP : https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/TPP-Final-Text-Annex-III-Financial-Services-United-States.pdf

Check it out…that is if you are interested…..my guess is that many will care enough to see just how we are being SCREWED…..that is until they have something to bitch about and then they will not shut the f*ck up.

In case you are still not aware of it….Clinton’s brain child, NAFTA was a disaster for the American worker…..and now we have another disaster in the making….

Try to keep up!