In this election year, much attention has been paid to free trade agreements of the sort that were popularized with the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
That landmark agreement, which at the time was hailed as a godsend for American exporters and industry, has since proven to be a disaster of epic proportions for American industry, with nearly a third of the country’s manufacturing jobs lost to overseas firms since the pact took effect.
The problem with “free trade agreements,” is that they are not about “free trade” in the sense of opening up foreign markets to smaller businesses that are looking to export their goods for the first time or to sell their products in greater quantities; instead, they’re about reducing barriers and tariffs for larger firms looking to “freely” dominate markets and overwhelm small and local businesses.
And they’re not “agreements” in the sense of being agreed to by many businesses in a country or being desired by consumers; instead, most of these pacts are made by a few of the big industry players who then pay lobbyists to ram the legislation through the government so they can reap giant monetary benefits as well as apply draconian limitations to consumer choice, working conditions and privacy.
Who suffers when this happens?
Workers suffer because they will likely be paid less in trading countries due to higher product volumes, increased competition and sales of foreign-made goods at prices that are cheaper than those for domestically made goods.
And consumers suffer also because free trade agreements lower quality and safety standards for goods so that greater quantities of them can be imported at cheaper prices. Free trade agreements enable a “race to the bottom” that only a few select investors and executive managers will profit from, at the expense of workers and consumers.
It’s not surprising that free trade agreements benefit large companies the most because they’re usually the entities that help draft them in the first place. NAFTA was most definitely not dreamed up by Bill Clinton.
Rather his powerful lobbyist friends who benefited when he and his wife Hillary pushed the agreement long and hard enough for it to be ratified in Congress so Bill could sign it as one of his administration’s signature pieces of legislation.
Many people objected to NAFTA when it was first drafted, but because awareness was not high enough about what NAFTA was supposed to do or the impact it would have on American industry, voters were swayed by the Clintons’ and others’ cheap promises about exports and American job creation — promises that turned out to be virtually all lies.
Now, all of those promises appear to be reversed in the wake of thousands of U.S. plant closures, layoffs and outsourcing that sent the manufacturing of huge numbers of American goods to the same countries who were counter-signatories of NAFTA.
The prediction by 1992 third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot that voters would hear a “giant sucking sound” of jobs being transferred from the United States to Mexico and other places basically came true. Guess which countries rewarded the Clintons later, with giant speaking fees, favors and donations to their Clinton Foundation?
Fast forward to 2013, and three new free trade agreements appeared on the horizon: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).
In the wake of NAFTA’s “success” and benefits for the Clintons, a few elite politicians in government and their corporate friends, many of the same players have prepared for a repeat of the same sales process used for NAFTA to be used again for these three new agreements.
Fortunately for voters, the disadvantages of these new agreements in the wake of NAFTA are now becoming clear — in reality, there are scant benefits for workers and consumers, and the only real supporters of the new agreements are essentially multinational corporations.
The writers of these new agreements must have seen something like this coming, because unlike NAFTA (and indeed, unlike almost any other trade legislation), the terms of these agreements were not made freely available.
Small portions of TPP, TTIP and TISA have been leaked on the Internet, but most of the agreements have not been seen by the public or even in many cases by the legislators who will ultimately vote on them.
In some cases, the agreements have been kept in locked rooms outside the Capitol building that members of Congress have only been allowed to visit without recording devices or materials to take notes.
It’s been said that TPP, TTIP and TISA are like NAFTA on steroids — the amount of trade affected by the agreements is equivalent to two-thirds of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).
The powers in these agreements give corporations huge new abilities that the writers of NAFTA could only dream about. Some of these powers allow foreign corporations to sue governments if those same governments pass laws that adversely affect their profits in any way.
Even worse, the suits would not take place in normal government courts, but in special trade courts that would be staffed only by corporate attorneys and judges; American taxpayers would be on the hook for negative settlements all the same.
As an example, let’s say that the TPP allows Vietnam to import shrimp that is particularly unhealthy or unsafe to eat by lowering U.S. food standards for seafood. Consumers lose because some number of them will become ill and suffer from maladies resulting from the substandard food.
American shrimp farmers will also lose because the Vietnamese imports will be even cheaper than they were before, making it even more unprofitable to raise shrimp domestically where it might have been marginally viable before.
If the U.S. passes food standards laws that adversely affect the companies selling the shrimp, those companies could sue the U.S. government in the special courts. The only people who stand to benefit are the executive management of a few giant Vietnamese seafood trading companies and the politicians they’re lobbying. Can you guess who those politicians are?
TPP, TTIP and TISA are some of the first pieces of legislation that Congress has not been allowed to examine far in advance of votes on their ratification. The way the agreements are designed, “fast track” authority bills would allow corporate negotiators to finalize the details of the agreements in secret.
This means that even members of Congress can’t read the agreements while they’re under negotiation — preventing oversight from trade groups and consumer protection organizations that they would normally require.
Only when fast-track authority has been granted and negotiation has been finalized — as it has been for TPP — can Congress then be allowed to examine the details of an agreement and either vote “yes” or “no” on it as-is, with no ability to make amendments or changes.
President Obama wants Congress to vote on TPP after November elections have taken place, so even those members of Congress who have been defeated in their districts could boost its chances of passage.
It’s clear from the way they’re designed, that these so-called “agreements” are some of the most extreme pro-corporate pieces of legislation ever devised.
Fortunately, despite fierce efforts by multinationals to limit reaction and press coverage in the media, opposition to the agreements has been growing steadily in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
The word is getting out that there’s effectively next to zero support for them amongst consumers and small business. Politicians have been put on notice that to support them is tantamount to writing a resignation letter. But, of course, that doesn’t apply to Congress members who just lost an election.
It’s telling that both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates Trump and Clinton have expressed their opposition to the agreements, but Hillary Clinton’s lukewarm opposition only came after vigorous hammering on the issue by her rival Bernie Sanders in the primaries.
In the weeks prior to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the Democrats refused to put TPP opposition in a plank of their party’s platform despite enormous public pressure exerted by Sanders.
If we rewind a few years, Hillary Clinton was rumored to have had a hand in actually drafting the TPP personally, and she referred to it as “the gold standard” among trading agreements as late as 2012. Both she and Bill Clinton were fully in support of all three agreements until reversing course in 2015.
President Obama is currently the highest profile booster of the agreements in the U.S., but he’s no longer up for election, so he has nothing to lose by promoting them, which he continues to do tirelessly.
Another politician in favor of TPP is Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. He believes that TPP will allow the U.S. to export more goods, the same promise that Bill Clinton made in the early 1990s.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump knows better, and he’s called Ryan’s bluff on the issue. Trump has denounced all three agreements, starting with the TPP, calling the agreement a “rape of our country.”
He’s gone on record as saying, “The TPP would be the death blow for American manufacturing. It would give up all of our economic leverage to an international commission that would put the interests of foreign countries above our own. It would further open our markets to aggressive currency cheaters. It would make it easier for our trading competitors to ship cheap subsidized goods into U.S. markets — while allowing foreign countries to continue putting barriers in front of our exports.”
China especially would be a huge beneficiary of TPP’s passage. Perhaps this is why in this election year, TPP at least appears to be dead in the water, with both Obama and Ryan realizing that too many voters are watching politicians on the issue and will keep track of their vote.
Ryan recently gave a statement to the press stating as much, saying TPP wouldn’t go through this year because “we don’t have the votes.”
Unfortunately, as was the case with other corporate giveaway legislation like the abolition of so-called “net neutrality” rules for the Internet, large corporations and their lobbying firms are virtually certain to revive these agreements from the dead in the future, either under the same names or new ones.
If Hillary Clinton becomes president, it’s highly likely her “opposition” to the agreements will weaken or perhaps crumble altogether due to the enormous campaign contributions she’s taken from people and entities that would benefit from their passage.
It’s telling that in an interview in the last week of July, longtime Clinton friend and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe said he believed that as president, Hillary Clinton would sign the TPP with some alterations, before later recanting his statement.
Anyone desiring America to be truly “great” again should be extremely wary of all these trade agreements, which benefit very few firms and disadvantage many citizens, weakening the country and strengthening our so-called trading “partners.”
