Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – opinions

The TPP is being sold as a trade agreement between nations, when in fact it is really an agreement between trans-national corporations and their biggest markets.
Nations that agree to it will be relinquishing sovereignty in their own countries.
Why?
The TPP comes prepackaged with its own legal system, one that bestows rights on corporations, while diminishing rights of civil societies. It is a direct attack on the sovereignty of nation-states, and the democratic governments within them.
This private court (ISDS), whose laws are written to compel nation-states to submit to corporate will, does not meet any of the requirements for transparency, consistency or due process, that many of the member states agreeing to it require in their own courts!
Corporations will be able to sue nation-states for loss in profit due to local law restrictions on wages, environmental protection, etc.
And while the TPP gives lip service to citizens and consumer rights, they are actually weakened by the agreement:
“all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding.”
dailydot.com/politics/what-is-tpp-internet-intellectua...-property/?tw=dd
We are giving up local control to an international cabal of corporate interests who would be happy to have a world where we all compete in a race to the bottom.
This agreement will prevent or postpone the availability of generic drugs.
This agreement will make many of our everyday activities on the internet illegal.
This agreement attempts to 'ever-green' patents - increasing corporate profits and raising prices for consumers.
This agreement criminalizes DRM circumvention.
(criminalizing anyone who “circumvents without authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a protected work, performance, or phonogram.”) Like unlocking your phone, or working on your car.
This agreement erodes digital privacy and makes spying on people easier.

As a middle aged person who lived through NAFTA and saw the incredible loss of American manufacturing jobs, as well as the tragic loss of public lands by Mexico's indigenous people, I am in no mood to live through another corporate looting of our country.
We the People need to protect what few rights we have left. Do not be persuaded by the corporate advertising that claims this agreement will benefit the average American. It will not. It is a plan for corporate world domination and the subjugation of democratic states.

trust.org/item/20151112121937-c04sa/?source=leadCarousel
time.com/4065267/trans-pacific-partnership-american-workers/
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/trans-pacifi...lectual-property

The TPP is not a trade agreement, it is only a "partnership" if one defines vastly unequal groups as "partners", and it is not "trans-Pacific" except in the sense that things may be shipped across the Pacific. Every part of the title and the way it has been told is sheer propaganda. In fact, of the thirty parts of the TPP, only six are remotely about trade. And because TPP won't even touch currency manipulation that nations like China have used to control markets, the TPP will barely expand trade whatsoever.

The problem with the TPP, and the vast majority of "free trade" treaties, is that the only people writing them and the only stakeholders being represented are corporations. Though I am anti-corporate as a matter of conviction, that doesn't mean that I think corporations as they presently exist don't deserve to have people advocating for them. As long as institutions exist and represent people as a legal fact, they should get a fair stake. Real people invest in corporations, build them and make them, and no matter my or anyone else's disagreements with them, they deserve to be a stakeholder.

But the TPP and treaties like it are negotiated in secret (itself not always a problem) then rammed through countries' legislatures with no substantive debate or examination by labor, women, ethnic minorities, and every other stakeholder. The TPP affects every American. Yet not every American got to have anything like a say in how the treaty is constructed.

The TPP and treaties like it take away the rights of governments to protect the public health, maintain the safety of products, balance the intellectual property rights needs of producers with the

At the very least, until the majority of Americans are told what the TPP will do by a media that represents all sides, it will be an injustice to implement it. How often do you believe that this occurs? With NAFTA, a group representing labor (the Labor Advisory Committee) was given a single day to look at the text of the treaty to give its report. This ultimately isn't even good for businesses: By tanking the interests of labor, they guarantee less worker retention and more union pushback.

The claims that have been made supporting it have been fraudulent. From the claim that 650,000 new jobs would be created (notice that no one ever bothered stating if those would be good jobs or well-paid jobs) to no real hedge against labor rights violations to the weakening of Dodd-Frank, the TPP is an attack on democracy and workers, period. It even threatens to deregulate public services (which would bring back the good old days of Enron and "rolling blackouts"). And its expansion of patent rights will harm innovation, science and lead to actual deaths.

And each treaty like this iteratively takes away things from workers while giving nothing back. Workers are not getting lower tuition for their children, or job training to fit into a faster-paced and technologically adept world, or real restrictions on sweatshops, or a minimum wage, or anything of the sort. These treaties have failed to increase the purchasing power in real terms of the vast majority of Americans, while cost of living has definitely increased.

I strongly suggest reading Economix Comic's fantastic review.