Stop the Global Corporate Coup!
Sign the petition to President Obama to release the text.
For more on the TPP read TransPacific Partnership Will Undermine Democracy, Empower Transnational Corporations
New book on Fast track available for free! Lori Wallach co-wrote a book called “The Rise and Fall of Fast Track” that is online for free: http://www.fasttrackhistory.
Here is an article by Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers summarizing the TPP and what we need to do to stop it:
TransPacific Partnership Will Undermine Democracy, Empower Transnational Corporations
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is poised to become the largest Corporate Trade Agreement in U.S. history. The massive trade and investment pact is currently being negotiated behind-closed-doors between the United States and countries throughout the Pacific Rim — except for 600 big business advisers who are helping to write the law. TPP countries currently include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam with Mexico and Canada recently joining. The TPP intended to become the trade law for the world as it includes a “docking agreement” that allows all nations will join over time.
Powerful corporate interests want to use the TPP to:
- Offshore good-paying jobs to low-wage nations and undercut working conditions globally and further reducing wages in the United States
- Create new tools for attacking environmental, healh, labor and consumer safety standards
- Expand the deregulation of banks, hedge funds and insurance companies
- Further concentrate global food supplies, displacing family farmers and subjecting consumers to wild price fluctuations
- Institute longer patents that restrict access to affordable, generic medications
Instead of being debated out in the open, the TPP has thus far been negotiated in the shadows. Approximately 600 corporate lobbyists have been given access to the TPP negotiating texts and advise the U.S. trade negotiators as to exact language of the treaty. Meanwhile, the people whose lives will be affected by the TPP have been barred from even reviewing what negotiators have proposed in our names. Some sections have been leaked and they show an agreement written by and for transnational corporations including creating a trade tribunal court system that allows corporations to sue governments for potential lost profits, e.g. if a country passes an environmental law corporations can figure out how it will affect their profits and sue the country for these imagined profits. Making things worse, the judges on these tribunals will be mostly corporate lawyers on leave from their corporate job. They return to their corporation after temporarily serving as a judge.
The plans for the TPP are to complete negotiations in 2012 and have Congress vote up or down on the law. The Obama administration is seeking “fast track” authority from Congress in order to complete the negotiations. This means there will be no committee hearings, expert testimony or amendments. The Obama administration is taking this anti-democratic approach because they know if this treaty was debated it would never become law. The American people will oppose this law which is why secrecy and fast track are being used.
There are alternatives to agreements like the TPP that empower corporations at the expense of people and the planet. See the 21st Century Trade and Market Access Act.
Leesburg, Virginia negotiations
The fourteenth major round of TPP negotiations took place in Leesburg, Virginia from September 6 to 15. We organized protests so this massive trade pact, this global corporate coup, would be pushed out of the shadows.
Occupy the TPP: Civil Disobedience Actions Blockade Entrance to Site of TPP Negotiations in VA
Trade negotiators and corporate lobbyists from the United States and throughout the Pacific Rim met at a fancy resort in Leesburg, Virginia outside of Washington, DC from September 6 to 15 to advance the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement — an transnational corporate power grab that would affect the economy, the environment, public health and democracy itself for decades to come.
U.S. negotiators have granted approximately 600 corporate lobbyists access to the negotiating texts, but have flatly refused to tell the public what they have been proposing in our names. In fact, they don’t intend to tell us what they’ve been working on even after the deal is signed and completed.
More information:
How the TPP Threatens a Free and Open Internet
Ten Reasons Why Food Eaters and Food Justice Activists Should Care About the TPP
TransPacific Partnership Will Undermine Democracy, Empower Transnational Corporations
Trans-Pacific Partnership Draws Attention From K Street
Corporate-Backed Trans-Pacific Partnership Shrouded in Secrecy
Doctors Group TPP Must Make Medicine Available, Affordable
Experts advocate Japan joining TPP without knowing what’s in the secret agreement
Japan-China-South Korea Trade Deal Higher Priority to Countries Involved Than TPP
The TPP a Job Creator? Don’t Buy It!
New Zealand Alliance says TPPA Would Lock in a Corporate Power Grab
Student Doctors Concerned about TPPA’s Patient Implications
Nurses: Secret Trade Deal will Affect the Cost of Health Care in NZ
At New Zealand TPP Negotiation Plea for Government to Prove Commitment to Democracy and Transparency
Unions ask the tough questions about the TPP in New Zealand
US Embassy “extremely happy” with Policing of TPP Protest in New Zealand – tape
Anti-TPP Protesters Complain About Police Actions During TPP Negotiations in New Zealand
Two-Thirds Wary of TPP That Allows Foreign Investors to Sue
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: What “Free Trade” Actually Means
Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Corporate Coup
Occupy the TPP: Civil Disobedience Actions Blockade Entrance to Site of TPP Negotiations in VA
Obama Says One Thing In the Spotlight; Does Another Behind Closed Doors
The Barf Brigade: The TPP Makes Me Sick (Video and Story)
Pocahontas Star Arrested at Secret Trade Agreement Negotiatons
Margaret Flowers Explains Why She Blocked the TPP
What You Need to Know About a Worldwide Corporate Power Grab of Enormous Proportions
If You Like NAFTA, You’ll Love TPP
Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Negotiations are a Fire Sale to Foreign Corporations
Leaked Trade Document Shows that Obama is Worse than We Thought
Occupy DC Mic Check at the TPP
Video Protest Rally Against the TPP
Comedian Lee Camp explains the TPP:
Hello Margaret Flowers,
Who can I help on a really powerful press release for this action, with list of endorsements etc, for the Washington DC Metro Area/Baltimore Metro Area media of all types?
This is indeed a critically important issue.
Let’s try to stop it in its tracks right here in the Nation’s Capitol Area.
Thanks for all your and your colleagues great work.
Fred.
[...] more information, contact info@october2011.org and see http://itsoureconomy.us/occupy-the-tpp-stop-the-global-corporate-coup/ Share → (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if [...]
I signed up as a stakeholder and could enter the hotel and even provide a ten minute presentation, but I cannot make 9/9/12 for a lot of reasons. So I sent the USTR a letter. The letter said . . .
Ron Kirk
United States Trade Representative
600 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20508
Fax # 202-395-4549
Dear Mr. Kirk:
I am writing you regarding the 14th session of negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement that begins in Leesbug, Virginia this week. My understanding is that this agreement has been negotiated without the fast track authority of the Trade Act of 2002, which authority expired July 1, 2007, and that it will require the approval of Congress absent another grant of such authority.
Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s) are substitutes for multilateral agreement under the WTO or ILO. FTA’s are sometimes referred to pejoratively as “preferential trade agreements” though there is hope that these FTA’s will move countries gradually toward multilateral free trade through a process called “competitive liberalization.” FTA’s are a second-best choice.
From a labor perspective, FTA’s must not undermine ILO principles. FTA provisions must prevent a race to the bottom regarding workers’ wages and labor standards in order to prevent the complete erosion of the American middle class and also must raise living standards for foreign workers. In his 2008 campaign, President Obama committed to having a labor chapter in each FTA. Such a worthy goal means little if the labor chapter contains undesirable language.
The measure of labor chapters in FTA’s is whether or not they provide an effective means of protecting labor rights. Our FTA’s contain aspirational language regarding the ILO standards, but commit the individual country merely to enforce its own labor laws. I agree with those who say the big mistake has been to limit dispute resolution mechanisms to the question whether the nation is complying with its domestic labor laws. The aspirational language should also be enforceable. All provisions of the FTA should be subject to dispute resolution. Now, if a party has poor labor standards, the FTA locks those standards in place. Three studies found that parties to CAFTA had inadequate resources and will to enforce their own labor laws.
There should be agreement that the parties to FTA’s will identify and alter serious flaws in their domestic labor laws. The language of prior agreements, that parties will “strive to ensure” or “strive to improve,” should be thrown out in favor of language that commits the parties to taking demonstrable steps toward achievement of ILO standards.
FTA’s should provide an avenue of arbitration for the victims of violations of labor standards just as they do for violation of the rights of private investors. Under existing language in many FTA’s, only a nation’s sustained failure to enforce its domestic labor law is subject to binding dispute resolution, fines and sanctions. The dispute resolution is strictly country-country and does not contain a private right of action for victims.
Sincerely,
Robert Boyle
[...] to protest the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement, which I had never heard about before. It’s Our Economy tells us why we are unlikely to hear about it from official sources: Trade negotiators and [...]
[...] itsoureconomy.us – Today, 5:21 PM Rescoop [...]
It takes two to tango. In a smooth flowing tango both parties are making it happen and the results are a spell binding dance to the joy of both partners including the viewers! But when one party keeps stepping on the other party’s toes, and the other party not only does not complain but actually keeps quite taking in all the abuse, then this party has some hideous, hidden, agenda to the point of being masochistic not far from being suicidal.
It may be OK to let this kind of behavior pass on an individual basis but when it comes to the fate of the whole nation then the nation itself is suicidal. It needs to snap out of the trance and wake up before the self destruct mechanism does its job.
We talk about trade imbalance between China and many of its importing partners including the USA but it took American buyers to buy cheap China products to sell to the American Citizens and also around the world. It is such buyers and their lobbyist who are putting the pressure and keeping the TPP’s proceedings happening behind closed doors. They seem to be more powerful than our government and “our” representatives participating in the negotiations. Perhaps they are not ours, only disguised as such.
[...] of people outside of the Lansdowne Resort. We chanted, “The TPP stinks! Flush the TPP.” Visit FlushtheTPP.org for more information and sign the [...]
HUMANS ARE IMPORTANT; NOT CORPORATIONS!!!!
[...] more information visit:Flush the TPPCitizens Trade CampaignGlobal Trade [...]
[...] Flush the TPPCitizens Trade CampaignGlobal Trade Watch [...]
[...] • Flush the TPP [...]
[...] more information visit: Flush the TPP Citizens Trade Campaign Global Trade [...]
[...] more information visit: Flush the TPP Citizens Trade Campaign Global Trade Watch Socialize FacebookTwitterMyspaceGoogle [...]
[...] Stop the TPP trade treaty [...]
Who wants extended copyright? Not me!
Who wants more penalties for DVD “theft”? Not me!
Who wants Internet censorship? [CENSORED] (Translation: Not me!)
Who wants the TPP? Not me!
Note: “Cute Zekrom” is a pseudonym…
This comment is in the public domain. Steal it for your own uses!
[...] Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Bad for Jobs, the Environment, Labor and Consumers | It's Our Ec… Transatlantic Policy Network [...]
If everyone who takes the time to comment here instead tweets the link maybe more people will hear of it. Then again i did and apparently twitter thinks i’m a spammer, hmmm…
[...] recommends, send a letter to your senators, sign a petition to President Obama asking him to release the text, send a petition to key government leaders and trade representatives to “oppose any provisions in [...]
[...] Flush the TPP [...]
[...] It’s Our Economy seeks to educate, organize and mobilize Americans to shift the power from concentrated capital to the people. http://itsoureconomy.us/occupy-the-tpp-stop-the-global-corporate-coup/ [...]
[...] http://itsoureconomy.us/occupy-the-tpp-stop-the-global-corporate-coup/ [...]
[...] FLUSH THE TPP [...]
[...] Its Our Economy [...]
[...] Its Our Economy [...]
[...] the TPP shenanigans and provide two websites that I highly recommend for further exposition – http://itsoureconomy.us/occupy-the-tpp-stop-the-global-corporate-coup/ and [...]
[...] to put into effect through the normal democratic process. This is why the TPP is being called a global corporate coup that makes corporations more powerful than [...]
TTP is more than loss of democracy
it is the end of the Nation state
the Corporate state now rules completely
Corporate sovereignty
no nation sovereignty