United States Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wants President Obama to declassify details of an upcoming “free trade agreement,” the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Obama’s response incorporates two mutually exclusive claims: first, that the deal isn’t secret and that Warren’s just tub-thumping to rouse her progressive base; second, that OK, yes, parts of it are secret, but the secrecy is necessary.
Setting aside Obama’s poke at her motivations, Warren is right. The TPP is a bad deal. The secrecy surrounding some of its components is there for a reason — most of us won’t like what’s in it.
That’s also why Obama is pushing the U.S. Senate to give him “fast track” authority, giving him a straight up-or-down vote as soon as he unveils the treaty instead of having to justify its details and face the possibility of ?amendment demands.
The first and most important thing to understand about the Trans-Pacific Partnership is that, no, it’s not a ?“free trade” agreement.
Even if we knew none of the details of TPP (we do know some of them), we could reach that conclusion by noticing how lengthy, complex and detailed the negotiations are.
Free trade is simple. All it requires is for the involved governments to forswear restrictions on commerce ?between their nations.
Heck, it could even be done unilaterally. The U.S. could simply announce it’s lifting all tariffs, quotas and limits from imports and exports and invite other nations to do likewise. If worry-warts want a poison pill provision for “balance,” that’s easy, too. Just mandate that if any nation imposes restrictions on American goods, the worst of those restrictions will be mirrored for all goods originating in the ?offending country.
TPP isn’t “free” trade. It’s “managed” trade. Its managers are industry lobbyists and their pet politicians. They don’t care a fig for freedom. Their priorities are easy profits and ?political advantage.
We already know that in at least one sector — so-called “intellectual property” — TPP is the opposite of free trade, or for that matter, freedom of any kind. We know this because whistleblower group Wikileaks procured and released a copy of the treaty’s draft chapter on IP.
That chapter would impose the worst parts of America’s draconian Digital Millennium Copyright Act, patent system and other anti-freedom, anti-innovation laws on all parties, globally damaging the ability to copy, to improve, to innovate — and bringing de facto Internet censorship into force — all so Disney can wring a few more bucks out of its 88-year-old mascot mouse and Big Pharma can hold the world’s patients hostage to high drug prices for a little bit longer.
TPP is a bad deal for producers and consumers worldwide. Let’s demand REAL free trade instead.
Thomas L. Knapp
media@thegarrisoncenter.org
