[CTC] 30 Aussie Unions, community groups roll out Joint Statement TPP

[Citizens Trade Campaign]

Chief Reporter

TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP: NZ JUMPING ONTO A SINKING SHIP

 

Talks started in Melbourne today for the US, Australia, Peru and Vietnam to
join an expanded Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership (TPP,
currently comprising NZ, Chile, Brunei, and Singapore, known as the P4
Agreement), with November 2011, when the US hosts APEC, as the target to
seal the deal. This will be used as the backdoor means to secure a US/NZ
Free Trade Agreement. Already the Americans have said that they see this as
more than a mere free trade deal but as a vehicle for broader Asia/Pacific
economic integration, which has enormous political implications. Alarm bells
should be loudly sounding.

 

A free trade deal with the US would be catastrophic for any remaining
economic sovereignty that New Zealand has. CAFCA says this not because we
are "anti-American". All such FTAs - such as with the existing P4 partners,
or the more recent ones with Malaysia, the Gulf States and Hong Kong - pose
the same threat to a greater or lesser degree. And our opposition to them is
not because of "xenophobia" but for well founded grounds that they simply
enmesh NZ more and more tightly in a cobweb of transnational corporate
control.

 

So it's a recipe for disaster to enter into an FTA with the biggest economy
in the world, headed by a Government that aggressively pushes the interests
of American Big Business (there is a seamless flow between the US Government
and US Big Business, as is evidenced by the trillion dollar bailout of the
mega-greedy financial sector, a textbook example of socialism for the rich).


 

And why would NZ want to jump onto a sinking ship? The US has big, big
problems at the moment, with huge debt, record numbers of people losing
their jobs and/or homes, company crashes, and a preoccupation with having to
do something to fix its ramshackle social infrastructure (President Obama
has postponed his Australian trip, which was to coincide with the start of
these negotiations, to spend more time dealing with his campaign to reform
the laughing stock that is the US health system). World trade dropped 12% in
2009, the biggest plunge since WW2, and globalisation is no longer flavour
of the month - except with blinkered ideologues like Mike Moore, whom the
Government has appointed as Ambassador to the US with an FTA as his
self-proclaimed top priority. We'd be better off getting as far away as
possible from this particular sinking ship.

 

A full blown US FTA will:

 

*	Remove any remaining "restrictions" on foreign investment, as the US
regards NZ's (purely token) oversight regime as "discriminating" against US
transnational corporations, even though the Government has promised to
further "liberalise" the Overseas Investment Act, a law which is in danger
of being liberalised to death.
*	push up the price of medicines by potentially hundreds of millions
of dollars a year by attacking Pharmac; 
*	make access to digital recordings more expensive, and copying more
restricted; 
*	attack our GE controls and food labelling, 
*	weaken our controls on food imports where they might carry diseases.

 

It is always presented as a means of getting NZ agricultural products into
the US market. Ask Australian sugar cane growers how successful they were in
getting their product into the US under the US/Australia FTA (Australia is
one of the countries wishing to join the TPP, so that what they managed to
protect from their FTA with the US is now also up for grabs). The Americans
have a simple policy when it comes to "free trade" - do as they say, not as
they do. In other words, they want the world's markets opened up to their
products, while keeping their own heavily subsidised agribusiness sector
fully or heavily protected from outside competitors.

 

Both National and Labour myopically see a US FTA as being the Holy Grail of
their adherence to the cargo cult of "free trade". It's actually a poisoned
chalice and it will be New Zealand which will be poisoned by it. 

 

This is also presented as NZ's "reward" for being a loyal little satellite
of the US, and taking a bigger role in the American war in Afghanistan.
Older New Zealanders will remember the infamous "guns for butter" phrase of
Sir Keith Holyoake, Prime Minister during our involvement in the Vietnam
War. It means sending our soldiers to fight in US wars in order to,
theoretically, gain trade access. Nothing much seems to have changed in the
ensuing 40 years (except now it is "guns for milk", as the Government's
trade policy is driven by a single minded focus on serving Fonterra's
interests). It is worth noting that the Waihopai spybase is NZ's biggest
contribution to each and any American war, much more so than any deployment
of a few SAS troops to help prop up a horrendously corrupt Government of
warlords and drug barons in Afghanistan.

 

People who kid themselves that "we" stand to gain from a Free Trade
Agreement with the US would be wise to reflect on the rueful words of Sir
Christopher Meyer, Britain's Ambassador to the US in the runup to the 2003
US/UK invasion of Iraq. Speaking to the current public Inquiry into
Britain's part in that invasion and war: "Meyer expressed frustration that
Britain was unable to gain much diplomatic leverage from its position as the
US' chief ally. Britain failed to persuade the US to liberalise
trans-Atlantic air travel and, almost on the day when British commandoes
joined the fighting in Afghanistan, the US imposed tariffs on imports of
specialised British steel" (Press, 28/11/09). If this is the way that the US
treats its "chief ally" when it comes to protecting its own trade and
economic interests, how do you think little old NZ will get on?

 

For full details see the New Zealand Not For Sale Website
<http://www.nznotforsale.org/> www.nznotforsale.org There you will find a
wealth of information about just why this proposed Free Trade Agreement is
such a bad thing. We particularly recommend that you read Bill Rosenberg's
excellent article "Who Wins If We Get A Free Trade Deal With The US?"
<http://www.nznotforsale.org/who-wins-if-we-get-a-free-trade-with-the-us/>
http://www.nznotforsale.org/who-wins-if-we-get-a-free-trade-with-the-us/

 

Murray Horton

Secretary/Organiser

 

CAFCA

Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa

Box 2258, Christchurch, New Zealand

 <mailto:cafca at chch.planet.org.nz> cafca at chch.planet.org.nz

 <http://www.cafca.org.nz> www.cafca.org.nz

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