Corporate America is clear about what they want from Congress: lower taxes, less regulation and weaker unions. Now all three goals have been combined into one piece of legislation – a “free trade” agreement, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – involving the U.S., Malaysia, Vietnam and 10 other Pacific Rim nations.
Lip-service for labor
As with previous “free trade” deals – the NAFTA with Mexico, CAFTA with Central America and CFTA with Colombia – the TPP was drafted in secret by corporate lobbyists. While each agreement includes some token language about protecting labor and environmental concerns, these provisions are weak and often provide little more than lip service. The focus of “free trade” deals remains the creation of new rules that protect big business – at the expense of citizens who are left with fewer tools to hold them accountable.
Expanding corporate rights
The agreements protect and extend corporate rights. For example, under the TPP, corporations are allowed to sue governments if they don’t like labor, environment or social regulations – bypassing state and federal courts in favor of secret arbitration tribunals.
Another example concerns patents for expensive drugs, which the US lengthened to 20 years because of a free trade agreement signed by the Clinton administration in 1994. The additional years of patent protections were eagerly sought by pharmaceutical industry lobbyists in order to secure billions in additional profits – at the expense of consumers who were denied access to low-cost generics. Even the tobacco industry is using free trade deals that lower barriers to cigarette imports into developing nations, causing smoking rates and disease to increase.
Business vs. democracy
Former Congressional staffer Gordon Lafer recalls a sobering experience that he had in 2010 with Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Barbara Weisel, who was responsible for negotiating the TPP. Lafer was the Senior Policy Adviser for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor — the top congressional staffer responsible for upholding labor standards in international trade treaties.
But he was shocked when Weisel told him that the administration “had no position” on excluding non-democratic countries from trade deals. When Lafer asked how the White House planned to deal with undemocratic countries like Vietnam where children as young as 14 are forced to work 12-hour days; where there is no right to free speech, no right to protest, no right to strike, and no freedom to form unions.
“Oh, you can have labor rights without democracy,” Weisel insisted. But when asked to name a single country where that happens, she was unable to provide any example.
Worker rights matter
Lafer says the one thing that nondemocratic regimes can never tolerate is independent workers’ organizations. “That’s why trade unionists were the first ones marched through the gates of Dachau,” he says. “One reason why business invests in Vietnam and China is not simply that wages are low, but that the absence of democratic rights promises to lock in cheap labor for years to come.” He noted that when worker pressure – including thousands of illegal strikes – increased pressure on Chinese officials to revise the nation’s labor law in 2008, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and other members of the U.S.-China Business Council lobbied successfully to limit the expansion of Chinese workers’ rights.
Popular opposition
Polls consistently show that Americans oppose “free trade” agreements, beginning with NAFTA, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost to low-wage maquiladora factories. NAFTA also sparked millions of Mexicans to migrate north in search of work after their rural economies were destroyed by cheap corn imports that put millions of farmers out of work.
Politicians are wobbling
Popular opposition to free trade deals like the TPP have forced politicians in both parties to choose between standing with citizens concerned about free trade – or lining up with corporate lobbyists who control vast sums of campaign cash. Some prominent liberals, like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, voted for NAFTA along with other key Democrats who joined a majority of Republicans to pass the measure in 1993. At that time, Democrats were urged and sometimes threatened by the Clinton administration and corporate sponsors with retaliation if they failed to support free trade. Today, there’s a similar problem with politicians wobbling on free trade, such as Representative Rick Larson in Washington State’s 2nd District, who criticized NAFTA when he ran for office in 2000.
Now, Larson and several other New Democrat Coalition members from Washington State are refusing to sign a letter endorsed by 151 Democratic colleagues who oppose efforts to “fast track” the TPP free trade deal, according to Rich Austin, President of the Pacific Coast Pensioners Association.
Fast Track = Congressional cop-out
“Fast-track authority” is a legislative loophole, pushed by corporations and their friends in Congress who want to avoid the political heat that comes with a vigorous public debate of “free trade” agreements in Congress. If the “fast track” rule is adopted, it would ban Congress from debating or amending the TPP. The same tactic was used 20 years ago by corporations to avoid debating NAFTA in Congress. If “fast track” is approved, it will limit Congress to a simple “yes” or “no” vote on a “take-it-or-leave-it” basis, with no changes allowed.
Obama backflips on free trade
When Obama ran for office in 2008, he campaigned against NAFTA, saying it was “devastating” and calling it a “big mistake.” But after winning office, he became a cheerleader for corporate free trade deals, including the TPP.
“We shouldn’t worry about the morality of politicians – because we’ll always be disappointed – but we should be worried about the growth of corporate power in our society,” says Rich Austin, who’s been educating members and the community about the TPP and corporate free trade on his weekly radio program that airs every Tuesday at 4:30 PM on KSVR 91.7 FM, from Skagit Valley Community College in Washington State. Archived programs can be accessed at www.skagitdemocrats.org/?page_id=246
We need to keep pushing to hold politicians accountable,” says Austin. “And it requires getting more educated and turning up the heat. Corporate America has a plan for the working class in this country, and we’ll keep losing until we challenge their rules.”
More information about supporting the campaign against Fast Track and the TPP, visit www.exposethetpp.org or contact your ILWU District Council.
Editor’s note: Gordon Lafer’s report, referenced in this story, was originally published by Project Syndicate www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/gordon-lafer-calls-attention-to-the-frighteningly-anti-democratic-implications-ofthe-trans-pacific-partnership