[CTC] Three more op-eds in NYT...

Wed Oct 7 07:31:05 PDT 2015

From Sierra Club, GWU dean and Public Citizen, following up on CWA’s op-ed…

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/06/the-future-of-trans-pacific-trade/congress-should-oppose-tpp-on-environmental-grounds

Congress Should Oppose TPP on Environmental Grounds

Michael Brune <http://www.sierraclub.org/about/executive-team> is the executive director of the Sierra Club.

UPDATED OCTOBER 7, 2015, 7:58 AM

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would be an environmental disaster. The pact’s environment chapter outlining conservation rules, praised by the U.S. Trade Representative, cannot make up for the deal’s threats to our air, water and climate. That's why dozens of environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club, continue to wave red flags.

The Trans-Pacific deal would harm our environment, jeopardize the health of our families, and set us back instead of tackling the climate crisis head on.
Among our many concerns is the investor-state dispute settlement system included in the pact which would empower some of the world’s biggest polluters to challenge environmental protections in private trade tribunals. Similar rules in existing pacts have enabled corporations like ExxonMobil and Chevron to bring more than 600 investor-state cases <http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/webdiaepcb2015d1_en.pdf> against more than 100 governments. The TPP would expand this system of corporate privilege to thousands of corporations, including major polluters like BHP Billiton <http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jun/06/bhp-20th-global-carbon-polluting-stakes>. The TPP would also require the Department of Energy to automatically approve all exports of natural gas to countries in the agreement, including Japan, the world’s biggest natural gas importer. Expediting those exports could open the floodgates to more fracking and dangerous climate emissions.

There’s little reason to believe that the rules in the environment chapter that deal with challenges such as illegal timber and wildlife trade would lead to meaningful changes on the ground. The U.S. is not known for holding other countries accountable in failing to live up to environmental commitments made in trade pacts. The U.S. has a pact with Peru, for instance, aimed at stopping illegal timber trade between the two countries. Yet illegal logging and associated trade are still rampant <http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2015/08/peru-rotten-wood-150812105020949.html>, and no one has been held accountable for violating the deal. That’s not the model of trade we want to replicate.

The TPP would harm our environment, jeopardize the health of our families and set us back instead of tackling the climate crisis head on. Congress should oppose this toxic deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/06/the-future-of-trans-pacific-trade/pacific-trade-pact-would-unconstitutionally-surrender-judicial-oversight
Pacific Trade Pact Would Unconstitutionally Surrender Judicial Oversight

Alan B. Morrison <http://www.law.gwu.edu/Faculty/profile.aspx?id=16070> is the Lerner family associate dean for public interest and public service at the George Washington University law school.

UPDATED OCTOBER 7, 2015, 9:37 AM

Although the final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is not yet public, it will almost certainly contain provisions allowing foreign investors to bypass the local courts and bring their claims for money damages in private arbitrations. These provisions are troubling on two levels.

The federal government can't allow independent entities to review and effectively overturn U.S. laws, as well as state and local laws. 
First, the arbitrators are not government officials of any nation, but are private individuals, mainly lawyers, who are experts in international investment. They are paid for their services, but they also earn money by advising or representing investors in matters other than the one being arbitrated. In addition, their decisions are not subject to review by a court, unless the losing nation were to refuse to pay a damage award. Even then, judicial review would be so minimal in most cases it would be little better than no review at all.  

A recent proposal made by the European Union, in connection with a trade agreement that it is discussing with the United States, would be a big improvement over the Trans-Pacific process. Under it, the judges would be selected by member nations, and they would be forbidden from representing investors in arbitration proceedings. If a nation is going to allow its laws to be judged under the TPP, which may require it to pay very substantial money damages, it should at least have the protection of judges who cannot handle investment related cases during their tenure as judges. 

Second, Article III of the Constitution gives all judicial power to the Supreme Court and such other courts that Congress creates. The judges are appointed for life, with protections against reductions of their salaries, accompanied by a ban on taking on private clients while in office. The Supreme Court has closely guarded Article III. The court has never ruled on whether arbitrations of the kind allowed under the TPP are constitutional, but there is a serious question about their validity. The problem is compounded because of federalism concerns: The rules in the TPP apply not simply to federal laws, but to those of states and localities, who had no say in TPP.  

Congress still has the opportunity to insist that the TPP be amended to provide for independent international judges, instead of privately retained arbitrators. It should do so, both as a matter of fundamental fairness and to avoid U.S. constitutional problems.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/10/06/the-future-of-trans-pacific-trade/the-trans-pacific-pact-would-kill-jobs-and-consumer-protection

The Trans-Pacific Pact Would Kill Jobs and Consumer Protection

Lori M. Wallach <http://www.citizen.org/trade/article_redirect.cfm?ID=17010> is the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch.

UPDATED OCTOBER 6, 2015, 10:38 PM

The TPP has been negotiated behind closed doors for seven years with notorious human rights violators like Vietnam and Malaysia and hundreds <http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trade-deals-a-closely-held-secret-shared-by-more-than-500-advisers/2014/02/28/7daa65ec-9d99-11e3-a050-dc3322a94fa7_story.html> of official U.S. trade advisers mainly representing corporate interests. The administration had kept the text secret, even after announcing a final deal, and is now making absurd claims about its glories. But thanks to leaks and negotiator admissions, it’s clear this is a bad deal for most Americans. 

It would offshore jobs, increase our trade deficit, raise drug prices, gut some consumer assurance measures and let companies break our laws.
The TPP includes investor protections also found in NAFTA that incentivize American job offshoring by eliminating risks otherwise associated with producing in low-wage countries. It would drive down our wages by putting Americans in competition with Vietnamese workers who make less than 65 cents per hour. And it would also result in larger trade deficits, killing more jobs. Our experience with similar free trade agreements has shown what happens. The United States had 20 percent higher <http://www.citizen.org/documents/FTA-V-No-FTA-Factsheet.pdf> export growth over the last decade to nations that are not free trade agreement partners than to nations with which we have such agreements. The Obama administration’s 2012 U.S.-Korea free trade agreement served as the TPP’s template, but the U.S. goods-trade deficit with Korea more than doubled <http://www.epi.org/blog/u-s-korea-trade-deal-resulted-in-growing-trade-deficits-and-more-than-75000-lost-u-s-jobs/>, undermining tens of thousands of American jobs. 

Meanwhile, the administration dismissed Congress’s demand that the TPP include enforceable disciplines against countries lowering their currency values to gain unfair trade advantages after Japan, Vietnam and Malaysia threatened to leave the negotiations. 

But only six of the TPP’s 30 chapters even cover actual trade issues. The rest are a trade pact Trojan horse of regulatory relaxation and new corporate rights to which signatories agree they will conform their own laws. 

These include new monopoly protections for pharmaceutical firms that would extend patent terms, shut out generic competition and raise medicine prices. Another chapter would require us to import seafood, meat and poultry that does not comply with U.S. safety standards. Vietnam and Malaysia have major shrimp farms whose products are often rejected in the United States because of the antibiotics and other substances, like feces, that are poured into the shrimp ponds. But enforcing our standards could be considered an illegal trade barrier under the TPP. Another TPP chapter would ban “Buy American” and “Buy Local” policies, giving all firms operating in any signatory country equal access to U.S. procurement contracts. 

And the TPP would expand the "investor-state" dispute settlement system that allows foreign firms operating here to drag the U.S. government before extrajudicial tribunals staffed by private corporate lawyers to demand unlimited taxpayer compensation if they think our environmental, health or other laws violate their TPP rights and limit their “expected future profits.” Tribunals have ordered governments to pay $3.6 billion <http://citizen.org/documents/tpp-investment-leak-2015.pdf> to corporations for toxics, energy, water and other policies under past U.S. agreements. These involved developing nations with few U.S. investors here, so we avoided greater liability. But with 9,000 corporations from TPP nations established here, the TPP would double U.S. exposure to these attacks. That alone would provide 9,000 reasons to oppose TPP.
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