As production is moved to ever more distant locales, with ever lower labor and environmental standards, the corporations behind these moves want all barriers to the movement of raw materials and finished products removed. Thus the era of so-called “free trade” agreements. These agreements, which are written to elevate corporations to the level of national governments (and in practice, actually above governments), have become so unpopular thanks to the efforts of grassroots activists to expose them to public scrutiny that governments have become cautious about embracing new ones.
How to get around this impasse? The U.S. government has evidently believed it has found a solution: Claim a “free trade” agreement is not a “free trade” agreement. Not only as an attempt to avoid public scrutiny but to totally bypass Congress.
This latest offensive on behalf of multi-national corporations is the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Haven’t heard of it? That’s because the Biden administration, which has cooked up this scheme, would much prefer you didn’t. So far, the 13 other governments that have entered negotiations, including Australia, India, Japan and New Zealand, aren’t eager for their own citizens to know about it, either, and have agreed, whether explicitly or tacitly, to keeping quiet.
The countries negotiating the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (graphic by JohnEditor132)
Make no mistake, however. The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) is a straightforward initiative to deepen U.S. domination in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean regions. Activists across those regions have taken notice and have already spoken out against the IPEF. Interestingly, some of the governments of those countries, in particular Australia and New Zealand, are quite open in acknowledging the IPEF is a U.S. initiative designed to keep them firmly under the U.S. umbrella and away from China — and are supporting this in their limited public statements. So those social-movement groups sounding alarms are on firm ground, to which we will return below.
So what is this “free trade” deal that is allegedly not a “free trade” deal? A White House “fact sheet” issued by the Biden administration in May 2022, upon the announcement of the IPEF at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue meeting in Tokyo, declared that the “IPEF will enable the United States and our allies to decide on rules of the road that ensure American workers, small businesses, and ranchers can compete in the Indo-Pacific.” And how might this stated goal be achieved? Negotiations are to focus on “four key pillars to establish high-standard commitments that will deepen our economic engagement in the region.”
Those four pillars announced by the Biden administration are a “connected economy” that will harmonize standards on cross-border data flows and data localization; a “resilient economy” that seeks to “better anticipate and prevent disruptions in supply chains … [and] guard against price spikes that increase costs for American families”; a “clean economy” that “will seek first-of-their-kind commitments on clean energy, decarbonization, and infrastructure that promote good-paying jobs”; and a “fair economy” under which “tax, anti-money laundering, and anti-bribery” standards are used “to promote a fair economy. “
The same lies packaged for new consumption
Does this list sound familiar? Perhaps it does, as these are the sort of goals repeatedly promised in “free trade” agreements of the past, goals that never materialize because the draconian rules designed to unilaterally overturn health, safety, labor and environmental regulations always have words like “must” and “shall” attached to them in trade agreement texts, but any language purporting to safeguard such standards use words like “may” and “can.” And as disputes are settled in secret tribunals in which the lawyers who represent corporations against governments in these tribunals on one day switch hats and sit as judges on another day, the interpretation of what appears to be dry, technical, neutral-sounding language almost invariably is adjudicated in favor of the complaining corporation, without any appeal being possible.
Attempting to sidestep this history, the U.S. government is trying to claim the IPEF is not a trade deal at all, and thus can be approved by the White House unilaterally with no input by Congress. The Biden administration asserts that IPEF talks do not cover tariff liberalization or provisions that would require changes to key U.S. laws that Congress would have to approve and therefore has no intention of submitting the agreement for approval. Senators disagree, with 21 members of the Senate’s Finance Committee, including its Democratic (Ron Wyden of Oregon) and Republican (Mike Crapo of Idaho) leaders, sending the White House a letter telling the administration it must submit IPEF to Congress for approval.
Discussions during Indo-Pacific Economic Framework negotiations (photo via Prime Minister’s Office of Japan)
Washington is far from the only seat of government slapping happy faces on this subterfuge. Let’s start our survey with Australia and New Zealand, where the governments seem quite pleased at this opportunity to be sidekicks to U.S. imperial designs. And perhaps believe a sub-imperialist slice of the action could come their way given there are several developing countries taking part in negotiations. The full list of countries taking part in IPEF talks are Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam, although India is taking part in only some of the “pillars.”
The Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade claims that the IPEF “Supports the promotion of clean energy technologies and renewables to help address climate change impacts and the region’s energy transition” and will “accelerate growth in the digital economy, unlock green trade and investment opportunities, and improve labour and environment standards across the region.” The department also said the IPEF “Improves regional trade and investment conditions.” Unfortunately, Canberra does not specify how the IPEF will miraculously bring about those results, and any text circulating or positions taken in negotiations are unknown because the entire process is being kept secret from the public and legislators.
That the IPEF is a back-door attempt to resurrect the Trans-Pacific Partnership was broadly hinted in December 2022, when Foreign Minister Penny Wong “praised Washington’s commitment to Indo-Pacific security but said its departure from a regional trade pact was still being felt and that enhanced U.S. economic engagement with the region should be a priority,” according to a Reuters report.
Corporate interests already lining up in support
A clue to who will benefit comes courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, which claims to be an “independent, non-partisan think tank” despite being established by the government, receiving some of its funding from the Australian military and says it reflects the opinions of Australian government officials and industry leaders. A report the Institute published is, like corporate interests in general, favorable toward the proposed pact. “The IPEF is viewed as a potentially innovative way to boost regional investment rather than as a mechanism to strengthen the usual substance of trade agreements, such as market access into the US,” the report said. This corporate vision appears to be to position Australia as a regional assistant to U.S. corporations. The report’s first recommendation: “The US, as the convener of the IPEF, should lean into Australia’s capacity-building expertise in the region” because “Australia has a long history of organising capacity building and training exercises in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.” In other words, Australia should position itself firmer as a junior imperialist country.
Canberra has been a good pupil, if you want to look at it that way, as symbolized in its decision earlier this year to spend up to $368 billion to buy nuclear submarines from the United States after the U.S. strong-armed the Australian government to cancel a previous cheaper deal to buy conventional submarines from France. The deal also will have U.S. and British submarines stationed on Australia’s Indian Ocean coast.
Much the same comes from Wellington. The New Zealand Foreign Affairs & Trade Ministry has declared, “The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity is an opportunity to strengthen economic cooperation with the United States and across our wider home region. The IPEF will provide an open and inclusive platform for the US to engage more deeply in the economic architecture of the Indo-Pacific, which we think is valuable for both New Zealand and the wider region.” Considering that when the Trans-Pacific Partnership was being negotiated, a key initiative for the United States was to weaken New Zealand’s health care system, it is reasonable to wonder why again negotiating a surrender to U.S. corporate interests would be a good idea.
The architecture of Melbourne (photo by Diliff)
U.S. government negotiators, on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry and its obscene profits, took direct aim at New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency program that makes thousands of medicines, medical devices and related products available at subsidized costs in Trans-Pacific talks. The agency’s cutting down the industry’s exorbitant profit-gouging was openly called by the U.S. corporate lobby group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America an “egregious example” to be eliminated because of its “focus on driving down costs.” Can New Zealand expect anything better this time?
Other participating governments have issued similar statements, with South Korea Trade Minister Ahn Duk-geun stating that “creating practical outcomes in areas like supply chain and clean energy is imperative.” Malaysian Trade Minister Mohamed Azmin Ali, discussing the supply chain talks, said “Malaysia believes that it is crucial to outline the tangible benefits of this trade and multilateral economic framework.”
With eyes open, grassroots opposition has already begun
Activist groups across the region and around the Pacific Ocean have already begun organizing opposition. This is a drill, after all, that groups organizing in opposition to always one-sided “free trade” agreements have had to repeatedly conduct.
A strong voice of opposition is that of Jane Kelsey, the University of Auckland law professor who long sounded the alarm on the Trans-Pacific Partnership from New Zealand.
Once again taking up the challenge, Professor Kelsey, in a May 2022 article in The Conversation, wrote, “[D]espite the high-profile launch, the IPEF remains an enigma, a high-level idea in search of substance.” She questions why the Australia and New Zealand governments are in these talks at all. “Realistically, the IPEF is a ‘pig in a poke’. Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia need to take a deep breath and realistically assess the opportunities and threats from such an arrangement. … Then they must weigh up the options: stand aside from the negotiations, pursue alternative arrangements, or establish a clear, public negotiating mandate that would truly maximise the nations’ interests for the century ahead.”
That commentary was written at the time of the IPEF’s creation. More recently, in December 2022, Professor Kelsey wrote more forcefully on the imperial nature of this trade deal, intended to reinforce U.S. dominance. Note that, in the U.S. government’s “fact sheet” quoted above that the purpose is to “ensure American workers, small businesses, and ranchers can compete in the Indo-Pacific.” Not even a pretense that working people in the other 13 negotiating countries might benefit. Writing in Bilaterals.org, Professor Kelsey said:
Lupin field, New Zealand (photo by Michael Button)
“It is extraordinary how quickly states across ‘the region’ (whatever we name it) have fallen into line. Old imperial powers have embraced the US’s re-assertion of its regional presence: Australia, with its increasingly strident anti-China stance; Canada, welcoming a new hybridised North-South version of the old Western hegemony; France, wary of its remaining colonies being seduced by China. … Predictably, New Zealand has also fallen into line.”
What we have here is a replay of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the TPP agenda of dismantling national protections against the depredations of U.S. multi-national capital. Professor Kelsey wrote:
“Barack Obama famously and unsuccessfully tried to sell the TPPA to the American people, and the US Congress, as the vehicle for America to write the rules and call the shots in the 21st century, not China. Those power politics remain the same. As with the TPPA, the US initiated the negotiation and will set the agenda, dictate the script and approve the outcome, with other states attempting to influence at margins. Even when Trump withdrew the US from the TPPA, many of the US-driven texts were retained by the remaining eleven countries. We also expect parts of the TPPA to form the starting point for US demands. …
‘The prosperity’ promised by IPEF is principally for the US on terms it can manage politically. The Biden administration is determined to bypass the messy problem of securing approval in the Congress. An ‘executive agreement’ that does not contain market access commitments and does not require the US to change any of its laws avoids that problem. So, unlike the TPPA, IPEF will not include negotiations for other parties to access the US market, removing the most obvious means for other countries to point to any commercial gains. The pro-corporate regulatory settings will reflect the status quo in the US. Add to that the penchant for the US to invoke ‘national security’ exceptions to justify breaching its trade obligations, which makes a mockery of an ‘open rules-based system’ and any pretence that IPEF will be a reciprocal exchange of benefits by all the participating countries.”
Opposing a policy of total subservience
Such goals have not gone unnoticed in Australia. Writing in Green Left Weekly, William Briggs noted how fast the new Labor government of Anthony Albanese fell in line. “The first action of a new government is always steeped in symbolism,” he wrote. “The Anthony Albanese Labor government’s reaffirmation of Australia’s unswerving loyalty to the United States at the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting was just so. … The new Labor government is facing almost impossible tasks. No capitalist economy can hope to overcome global crises. Any reform, any tinkering at the edges, is to be supported and welcomed, but a policy of total subservience to the interests of the US is hardly the way forward.”
The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework will be detrimental to the developing countries as well. The president of the Malaysian civil society organization Consumers’ Association of Penang, Mohideen Abdul Kader, said:
“US multinational companies are openly pushing for provisions that would prevent the Malaysian government from preferentially purchasing from our local companies. This undermines domestic manufacturing especially in current times. It also adversely affects the need for small and medium sized firms to recover from the effects of Covid-19. The US industry is also demanding stronger intellectual property protection that would, among others, make medicines, textbooks, agricultural and manufacturing inputs and climate change technology more expensive. The digital economy provisions sought by US big tech companies would undermine Malaysia’s privacy, consumer protection, health, environmental, financial, tax and other crucial regulations, while the privately held global food company Cargill wants provisions that allow foreign investors to sue the government in international tribunals.”
Tokyo at night (photo by Basile Morin)
And from the Philippines, Joms Salvador of Gabriela Philippines, in a statement issued through the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, a network of feminist organizations, sees through the attempt to promote the IPEF as benefiting women:
“The IPEF is not, and never will be, just about economic trade, but a link in the chain of US hegemonic dominance in Asia-Pacific, where it has maintained strategic military presence and client relations with its neocolonies in the region, often to the detriment of national sovereignty and the human rights of Asian women and peoples. Women must resist the IPEF and stand our ground in the face of intensifying US-China rivalry and its encroachment on our lives as sovereign peoples.”
Helping women? No, women have seen this movie before
Filipino women are far from alone in rejecting an attempt at whitewashing the corporate-oriented nature of the IPEF. In a statement titled “Statement Rejecting Pinkwashing in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” more than 60 women’s rights organizations, labor unions and civil society organizations firmly rejected an “upskilling” program that is promoted as a way for young women to gain employment in technical fields but it seen as another initiative actually designed to deepen the dominance of U.S.-based Big Tech companies. The coalition of groups, in their statement, said:
“The Upskilling Initiative for Women and Girls promises training by fourteen US Big Tech companies to women in IPEF countries. However, it appears that much of the promise is simply re-packaged training that is already available, and primarily designed as a tool to increase market presence and profits. The initiative is designed to encourage developing countries to agree to ‘high-standard commitments’ on the ‘promotion of cross-border data flows’ which translates to the adoption of rules that have been included in other trade agreements at the behest of Big Tech. Rules that a) restrict governments being able to effectively regulate Big Tech, b) inhibit governments from implementing rights-enhancing data policies for political sovereignty and economic self-determination, c) enable algorithms to be kept secret, d) constrain governments from requiring tech companies to have a local presence, and e) stop governments from pro-actively developing digital industrial policies, including autonomous digital public infrastructure. All of these can be extremely harmful to women’s human rights.
The initiative involves companies that have undermined labour rights, refused to recognise workers as employees, have used tax havens to avoid making tax contributions to public services essential for gender equality. Previous trade agreements have included commitments to gender equality, but those agreements have instead harmed women’s human rights by liberalising services, promoting the privatisation of public services essential in addressing discrimination and exclusion, deregulating the labour market, and promoting a race to the bottom in wages and conditions, and denying governments the policy space required for people to progressively realise their economic rights.”
Opposition also arises in the imperial center
Opposition has begun to be organized across the Pacific, in the United States itself. A letter initiated by Citizens Trade Campaign, a national coalition including unions, community groups and other organizations, released on March 2023 a petition signed by more than 400 labor, environmental, community and religious groups calling for the Biden administration to include strong labor rights based on International Labour Organization standards, binding commitments to combat global warming and digital standards to protect consumer rights and privacy while reining in Big Tech abuses. The letter also asks for transparency during IPEF negotiations: “A more transparent and participatory negotiating process for IPEF would allow for a wider set of interests to provide informed input and ensure equitable treatment of communities which are not part of the official U.S. trade advisor system most representing corporations who now have access to U.S. proposals and other confidential IPEF texts.”
A separate U.S. effort, by a group of consumer advocates, calls on the Biden administration to eliminate IPEF language that they say could undermine efforts to hold Big Tech accountable for their privacy practices. The consumer advocates have not seen any IPEF text because it remains secret from the public, but in their letter they said they “understand from policymakers and others who have reviewed the draft” that its digital trade section could help let U.S. tech companies off the hook when it comes to privacy safeguards, The Washington Post reports. The letter adds that the IPEF contains “problematic terms” giving “Big Tech firms control of our personal data” while limiting other countries from applying regulations.
A third negotiating round is scheduled for May in Singapore. The first round of talks, in Brisbane in December 2022, ended without a status report by participants but reportedly negotiators set aside more challenging issues. The second round, in Bali, Indonesia, ended with a commitment “to an aggressive negotiating schedule throughout 2023,” with nothing of substance revealed.
Activists on both sides of the Pacific had to organize a years-long campaign to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an effort that can only be said, at best, to be partially successful because most of the countries involved did eventually sign it, albeit with somewhat less draconian rules because the most hard-line government, that of the United States, dropped out due to intense domestic pressure. As with the TPP, and the many other “free trade” agreements that have been implemented, the purported benefits for working people are illusions. Fanaticism and fantasy have long driven government propaganda in promoting these deals. Once the TPP text was released, it could readily be seen why it had been secret throughout the negotiations.
“Free trade” agreements — even when falsely advertised as something else — have very little to do with trade and much to do with imposing corporate wish lists, including sweeping away health, safety, labor and environmental standards that can’t be eliminated through democratic means. As with all “free trade” agreements, the fault lines are along class, not national, interests. Industrialists and financiers around the world understand their class interests and are united to promote their interests. Working people uniting across borders, in a broad movement, is the only path toward reversing corporate agendas that accelerate races to the bottom.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is being called a new model of trade agreements. Such paeans appear to be premature, and we might better hold off on uncorking the champagne.
It is best to remember that so-called “free trade” agreements are products of neoliberal assaults on any and all efforts to protect people and the environment from the rapacious effort of corporations to profit to the maximum extent and without regard to external cost. “Free trade” agreements are not the cause of neoliberalism; they are a product of neoliberalism.
It is true that the RCEP is less draconian than recent trade deals, and less one-sided in advancing corporate profiteering above all other human concerns than the Trans-Pacific Partnership was when the United States was involved and pushing for the harshest rules. But is that the standard we wish to uphold? “It’s not as bad as the worst agreements out there” really shouldn’t be a cause for celebration.
Much of the same language commonly found in “free trade” agreements is in the RCEP, and what appears to be the most promising development, the lack of the usual “investor-state dispute settlement” process that uses corporate-dominated tribunals that consistently overturn health, safety and environmental regulations, is much less than it appears once we look into the details. And there are no labor or environmental provisions. What we have here is more capitalism as usual, including a dispute process still weighted toward corporate interests.
Tokyo at night (photo by Basile Morin)
For readers not familiar with the RCEP, it is a trade deal reached by 15 countries across East Asia and Oceania. Although some commentators believe that China has been the impetus behind the RCEP, in fact it is the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that were the driving force. Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea join China and the ASEAN countries — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — in a deal that encompasses nearly one-third of the world’s economy. India was originally a negotiating country, but dropped out, expressing concerns that the RCEP would be dominated by China.
As would be expected, mainstream economists, who as a group act as cheerleaders for capitalism rather than seriously analyze capitalist economies, are cheering the agreement. The Financial Times, for example, breathlessly reported that the RCEP “could add almost $200bn annually to the global economy by 2030,” a number repeated by signatory governments. That despite the fact that Australia, China, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea each already has a trade agreement in place with ASEAN.
Signatory countries were also enthusiastic. China’s prime minister, Li Keqiang, said the agreement is “a victory of multilateralism and free trade.” The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said, “The agreement will help ensure New Zealand is in the best possible position to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and seize new opportunities for exports and investment.” The Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said, “Australian farmers and businesses are set to benefit from better export opportunities.”
Unions fear working people face a race to the bottom
Once we turn our attention to those not highly placed, a rather different picture emerges. A bloc of seven trade union federations strongly condemned the RCEP after its signing. Those federations, covering workers in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, services and education, said, “Instead of furthering a free trade project, countries should be collaborating on reviving their economies and expanding public goods. … RCEP and other trade agreements that protect intellectual property rights threaten the ability to secure a globally accessible [Covid-19] vaccine. … [W]hile [corporate executives] traveling for business will benefit from facilitation of procedures for entry and temporary stay, workers face deteriorating working conditions in a race to the bottom under heightened competition in which migrant workers are facing the worse consequences. Regional cooperation based on a collective intent to promote decent work, quality public services and sustainable and inclusive development are a better solution.”
The seven trade union federations also pointed out that RCEP was shrouded in secrecy throughout its eight years of negotiations, with the text released to the public only after the agreement was signed. (All 15 countries must still formally ratify it.) The intellectual property chapter was leaked in 2015, prompting the Electronic Frontier Foundation to characterize the IP text as “a carbon copy” of the Trans-Pacific Partnership then also in negotiation. “South Korea is channeling the [U.S. trade representative] at its worst here,” the Foundation said in its commentary, speculating that Seoul was pushing draconian IP rules because accepting unfavorable rules in its bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. would put it at a disadvantage otherwise. We’ll return to the intellectual property text, always a key chapter in any trade pact, below.
There are also fears that trade deficits for less developed countries will increase and pressures for privatizations will increase.
The skyline of Bangkok (photo by kallerna)
A senior economist with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Rashmi Banga, expects that, assuming tariffs are removed on all products trading among RCEP countries, most ASEAN countries will see their imports rise faster than their exports, believing that those countries won’t be able to compete with China.
Kate Lappin, the Asia Pacific regional secretary of Public Services International, a federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries, said “free trade” deals such as RCEP “also increase the pressure on governments to privatise, as public services need to be traded and compete on the market. This will have negative impacts on equality, including corrosive impacts on gender equality.” Noting that some measures governments are taking to combat the Covid-19 pandemic would be in violation of the RCEP or other trade agreements, Ms. Lappin said “RCEP will bind the hands of governments in taking measures in the public interest in crises to come, be it health or environmental.”
There could also be problems for manufacturers in small countries because “rules of origin” rules mandate that parts from any signatory country must be treated the same as domestic production.
Bad news for farmers, good news for agricultural multi-nationals
The ability of farmers to maintain control of their seeds is in peril, according to GRAIN, which describes itself as an “international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.” GRAIN, in analyzing a separate leak of RCEP chapters, said the agreement was in danger of requiring all signatory governments to adopt a seed law designed to provide private property rights over new crop varieties, giving corporations like Monsanto or Syngenta a legal monopoly over seeds, including farm-saved seeds, for at least 20 years; require adherence to the Budapest Treaty, which enforces patents on microorganisms; and make violations of these corporate-friendly rules criminal violations. Australia, Japan and South Korea were described as the “hard-line camp” on these issues.
Those fears remain in place. Article 11.9 of the final text indeed mandates that RCEP governments not already signed onto the Budapest Treaty do so. Adherence to several other international treaties are also mandated. Language concerning adoption of the seed law described in the preceding paragraph (the Act of International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, amended in Geneva in 1991) is at Article 11.9, but the language is ambiguous, encouraging governments to sign the Convention and “cooperate” with other signatory governments “to support its ratification.” Also worrisome is Article 11.36, which mandates patents on plants: “[E]ach Party shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof.”
There is also concern about the availability of medicines. A key goal of the United States when it was negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership was to undermine government procurement of medicines that reduced the cost of health care and to extend patents and data exclusivity periods for brand-name drugs, impede trade in generic medicines, and place new limits on how drug prices are set or regulated, all in the service of pharmaceutical company profits.
Canberra at night (photo by Ryan Wick)
Croakey Health Media, an Australian “not-for-profit public interest journalism organisation,” in a commentary on the RCEP’s potential impact on medicines, feared some of those goals could find their way into the final text. “Early in the negotiations, leaked texts indicated that Japan and South Korea had proposed rules for the RCEP intellectual property chapter that would extend and expand monopolies on new medicines in countries like Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand,” Croakey said. “These types of rules can delay the availability of generic medicines.”
It appears there is at least some backing off of the worst provisions that had been under discussion. Article 11.8 of the final RCEP text says “The Parties reaffirm the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health” adopted in 2001. The Doha Declaration is an ambiguous document that “affirms” intellectual property rights but also “should not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health.” How the text will be interpreted will likely determine how far it will be possible to go in attacking government health care systems.
It should be stressed that grassroots organizations had no chance to affect any aspect of the RCEP text as the negotiations were secret throughout.
Lots of language customarily found in trade agreements
The text of “free trade” agreements is always dry and technical, even neutral-sounding. It is in the interpretation, and what certain phrases actually mean, that determine their outcome. So let’s take a very brief look at some of the text, and what it might mean.
Chapter 10, covering investments, is crucial to understanding the similarities to existing deals. Article 10.1 on “covered investments” contains the standard list of what is covered typically found in “free trade” agreements, including “claims to money or to any contractual performance related to a business and having financial value” and “intellectual property rights and goodwill.” There is an important exception, however — the chapter does not apply to government procurement, “subsidies or grants provided by a Party” or “services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority.” What that means is that the RCEP theoretically reduces the ability to attack or force privatization of government-owned enterprises, a consistent goal of U.S. trade negotiators in agreements the U.S. is involved in, and a goal generally shared by multi-national corporations seeking new markets. But this clause could potentially be negated by the heavier market pressures that could lead to privatizations, as discussed above, and once a government enterprise is privatized, the clause is no longer relevant.
The investment chapter contains the standard clause that “Each Party shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to investors of any other Party or non-Party.” Article 10.5 follows up with language that is also typical: “Each Party shall accord to covered investments fair and equitable treatment and full protection and security, in accordance with the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens.” Although these passages are bland, neutral-sounding phrases, this language has often been used as key points of attack for multi-national corporations seeking to eliminate government health, safety, labor or environmental regulations. As always, “customary international law” has been established by a series of rulings by the corporate-dominated secret tribunals that hand down unappealable decisions, decisions that are used as precedent for further such decisions. The expectation of profits by a corporation as a “right” superseding health and environmental regulations has been repeatedly handed down.
The skyline of Beijing (photo by Picrazy2)
Further language routinely found in “free trade” agreements stipulate that capital controls are prohibited, and, in Article 10.13 of the RCEP, “No Party shall expropriate or nationalise a covered investment either directly or through measures equivalent to expropriation or nationalisation.” What will constitute an illegal “expropriation”? How this clause will be interpreted is crucial. In existing “free trade” agreements, government regulations protecting health or the environment are frequently overturned because complying with such regulations would reduce profits, and thus constitute “expropriation” because corporate profits are presumed to be an entitlement by the tribunals sitting in judgment. Will the repeated examples of such rulings in, inter alia, the North American Free Trade Agreement, be replicated here?
In Chapter 11, covering intellectual property rights, there is no mandatory schedule for when those rights expire; this constitutes a small victory. The chapter also states that signatory governments “may establish appropriate measures to protect genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and folklore,” a right not ordinarily granted in “free trade” agreements.
But in the Financial Services Annex of Chapter 8, language similar to that found in other trade pacts requires that foreign financial services firms be given free reign to operate, even to take over a country’s banking system. Specifically, “Each host Party shall endeavour to permit financial institutions of another Party established in the territory of the host Party to supply a new financial service in the territory of the host Party that the host Party would permit its own financial institutions, in like circumstances.” Again, what seems neutral-sounding on the surface has specific meanings when interpreted by a tribunal in the context of “customary international law.”
Corporations will continue to be elevated above governments
And that brings us to Chapter 19, covering dispute settlement. Article 19.4 leaves us little doubt, reiterating that “This Agreement shall be interpreted in accordance with the customary rules of interpretation of public international law” and that adjudicators “shall also consider relevant interpretations in reports of WTO [World Trade Organization] panels and the WTO Appellate Body, adopted by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body.” No specific tribunal for the settlement of disputes is mandated, and the intent appears to be to have ad hoc panels rather than panels seated by one of the tribunals ordinarily used in trade disputes in existing trade agreements. Nonetheless, Article 19.5 gives right of forum selection to the complaining party — i.e., the corporations that will be suing governments — so the use of the tribunals can’t necessarily be ruled out. When seating an ad hoc panel, the complaining corporation and the respondent government are supposed to mutually agree on the three members of a panel but if they can’t agree, the WTO director-general will complete the panel — given the role of the WTO in imposing draconian pro-corporate rules, this clause can hardly be considered neutral.
And so who will sit on the panel and adjudicate the case? Article 19.11 designates those who “have expertise or experience in law, international trade, other matters covered by this Agreement, or the resolution of disputes arising under international trade agreements.” In other words, the same corporate lawyers who sit as judges on the tribunals that adjudicate cases brought under existing “free trade” agreements. If the WTO director-general seats panelists, those must not only meet the requirements stated above but additionally “be a well-qualified governmental or non-governmental individual including an individual who has served on a WTO panel or the WTO Appellate Body or in the WTO Secretariat, taught or published on international trade law or policy, or served as a senior trade policy official of a WTO Member.”
Under most existing “free trade” agreements, one of three tribunals is used, most commonly the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an arm of the World Bank. ICSID is the forum that was used in NAFTA and is used to adjudicate disputes under dozens of bilateral trade agreements, and is responsible for a long list of outrages declaring environmental and health regulations illegal. Conflicts of interest are blatant in these tribunals — corporate lawyers who specialize in defending multinational corporations in trade disputes alternate between appearing as counsel for corporations and as judges handing down the decisions.
“In effect, ISDS creates a parallel business-friendly judicial system exclusively for transnational corporations. The power rests upon for-profit arbitrators who come from the corporate sector and face unverifiable conflicts of interest. They have no sovereign legitimacy and are not accountable to the public. The decisions they make can be inconsistent between one another and cannot be appealed. Plus, the arbitrators effectively serve as judge and party, because the same appointed arbitrators who plead the case for the parties make the decision. Imagine a football match where the referee plays for one of the teams! With ISDS, this becomes a possible scenario. So much for justice.”
RCEP rules not mandating ICSID or one of the other tribunals is a cosmetic change. Governments continue to tie themselves to rules and precedents that elevate multi-national corporations above national governments, and thus elevate corporate profiteering above all other human considerations. There will still be panels seated to adjudicate disputes, but instead of using ICSID or another permanent forum, there will be ad hoc panels, which will, as noted above, have the exact same criteria for seating judges. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union pioneered this cosmetic change, intended to make the one-sidedness of ISDS appear somewhat less blatant, and will also be used in some disputes covered by NAFTA 2, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement.
Thus the “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) process is very much in place in the RCEP. That should not come as a surprise. “Free trade” agreements arise because multi-national corporations scour the globe searching for the places with the lowest wages and least regulations in order to maximize their profits over all other considerations. As capitalist competition intensifies, corporations must match the moves their competitors make in order to remain in business, and adopt still more harsh policies to stay ahead. Once production is moved overseas, and supply chains are spread into ever more locales, tariffs and rules protecting domestic production are barriers to be removed. Trade deals at first mainly dealt with technical issues or tariffs, but as the relentless grasping for profits becomes ever more intense, regulations safeguarding health, labor, the environment or safety are seen as barriers to profit-making, and corporations seek to sweep them away, too.
Later trade agreements had much more to do with erasing regulations than with actual trade rules, which was reflected in the draconian rules the U.S., often assisted by Japan, sought to impose in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That the RCEP has less draconian rules is not a cause for celebration — the rules are still plenty tilted in favor of multi-national capital and will inevitably be wielded as a cudgel by those beneficiaries. A rational trading system requires a rational, democratic economic system, not the dictatorship of capital.
The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership can now be viewed by the public, thanks to the New Zealand government, and it is every bit as bad as activists have been warning.
The TPP, if enacted, promises a race to the bottom: An acceleration of jobs to the countries with the lowest wages, the right of multi-national corporations to veto any law or regulation their executives do not like, the end of your right to know what is in your food, higher prices for medicines, and the subordination of Internet privacy to corporate interests. There is a reason it has been negotiated in secret, with only corporate executives and industry lobbyists consulted and allowed to see the text as it took shape.
The threat from the TPP extends beyond the 12 negotiating countries, however — the TPP is intended to be a “docking” agreement whereby other countries can join at any time, provided they accept the text as it has been previously negotiated. Moreover, the TPP is a model for two other deals: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, and the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA), an even more secret “free trade” deal being negotiated among 50 countries that would eliminate any controls on the financial industry.
Activists celebrate after the New York City Council declares the city a “TPP-free zone.”
The elimination of protections is precisely what U.S. multi-national corporations intend for Europe by replicating the terms of the TPP in the TTIP, a process made easier by the anti-democratic nature of the European Commission, which is negotiating for European governments. Already, higher Canadian standards in health, the environment and consumer protections are under sustained assault under the North American Free Trade Agreement. The TPP is an unprecedented corporate giveaway, going well beyond even NAFTA, which has hurt working people and farmers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
More than 300,000 manufacturing jobs in the U.S. alone may be eliminated by the passage of the TPP. The Wall Street Journal, in an article celebrating victory for multi-national capital, nonetheless estimates that losses in manufacturing and automobiles would add an estimated US$56 billion to the national trade deficit. The international president of United Steelworkers, Leo Gerard, using a U.S. Department of Commerce estimate that 6,000 jobs are lost for every $1 billion of added trade deficit, calculates that would lead to the loss of 330,000 manufacturing jobs.*
Bad news on both sides of the Pacific
The Canadian union Unifor estimates that 20,000 Canadian jobs in auto manufacturing alone are at risk from TPP. Canada will also be forced to open its dairy and poultry industries. There is fear that Canadian dairy farming may collapse and the outgoing Harper régime promised $4.3 billion to compensate farmers from expected losses.
The Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, while acknowledging that community pressure forced governments to resist some of the most extreme measures, worries that the U.S. concession to Australia that the extension of monopolies on biological medications will be five years rather than eight will prove ephemeral. The group reports that the text “refers to eight years and to ‘other measures’ which would ‘deliver a comparable market outcome,’ and to a future review. It is not clear how this will be applied in Australia.” The U.S. will retain its 12-year exclusivity period, while other countries can choose five or eight years, so there will likely be continued pressure from pharmaceutical companies for all to adopt a longer period.
A product would not have to be produced locally to qualify as a locally made product. As much as two-thirds of an automobile’s components could be manufactured in China, for example, and it would still qualify for preferential treatment if one-third is made in any TPP signatory country. But “buy local” rules would become illegal, including for government procurement.
There are no enforceable provisions for environmental, health, safety or labor protection. Public Citizen, in its analysis of the TPP text, reports:
“The language touted as an ‘exception’ to defend countries’ health, environmental and other public-interest safeguards from TPP challenges is nothing more than a carbon copy of past U.S. free trade language that ‘reads in’ to the TPP several World Trade Organization (WTO) provisions that have already been proven ineffective in more than 97 percent of its attempted uses in the past 20 years to defend policies challenged at the WTO. In two decades of WTO rulings, [the articles purporting to protect laws necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health] have only been successfully employed to actually defend a challenged measure in one of 44 attempts.”
The ratio under TPP is likely to be even lower as the TPP promises the most extreme rules in favor of corporations of any “free trade” deal. Even the extremely weak “exception” does not apply to the entire investment chapter of the TPP. Precedent here is bad — as the secret tribunals that decide cases brought by corporations against governments hand down their one-sided agreements, these decisions become a floor for the next decision, pushing the interpretation further in favor of corporate domination.
Democracy canceled by corporate power
Under the TPP, corporations are elevated to the level of national governments and, in practice, could be said to be elevated above governments. The TPP text mandates that “customary international law” be applied for the benefit of an “investor” — that law is not found in any statutes, but rather has been established by previous decisions of secret tribunals interpreting NAFTA and other “free trade” deals. Worse, the TPP places essentially no limits on who qualifies as an “investor” eligible to be compensated for potential profits that may not materialize due to a regulation or safety rule.
Although the rules codifying benefits for multi-national capital are written in firm language, there is no such language for protections. The Sierra Club reports that the TPP mandates that only one of the seven environmental agreements found in previous “free trade” deals be fulfilled, an alarming development as previous environmental requirements have been routinely ignored. Among the many deficiencies in the TPP, the Sierra Club said:
“Rather than prohibiting trade in illegally taken timber and wildlife — major issues in TPP countries like Peru and Vietnam — the TPP only asks countries ‘to combat’ such trade. To comply, the text only requires weak measures, such as ‘exchanging information and experiences,’ while stronger measures like sanctions are listed as options. … Rather than obligating countries to abide by [rules to] prevent illegally caught fish from entering international trade, the TPP merely calls on countries to ‘endeavor not to undermine’ [fisheries-management protocols] — a non-binding provision.”
The TPP fails to even mention the words “climate change”! More than 9,000 corporations would be newly empowered to sue governments because a law or regulation hurt their profits. Worse, the TPP would mandate that the U.S. Department of Energy automatically approve all exports of liquified natural gas to all TPP countries. This would guarantee more fracking; already under NAFTA the province of Québec has been sued in an effort to overturn its fracking moratorium. That may only be the beginning, according to 350.org:
“The agreement would give fossil fuel companies the extraordinary ability to sue local governments that try and keep fossil fuels in the ground. If a province puts a moratorium on fracking, corporations can sue; if a community tries to stop a coal mine, corporations can overrule them. In short, these rules undermine countries’ ability to do what scientists say is the single most important thing we can do to combat the climate crisis: keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
You’ll have no right know what you eat
Food safety would fare no better. The TPP’s race to the bottom would require that the lowest inspection standards of any country be applied, forcing a lowering of other countries’ standards, and end protections against untested genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in your food. Food & Water Watch reports:
“The TPP includes a new provision designed to second-guess the government inspectors who monitor food imports. … The food and agribusiness industry demanded — and received — stronger [rules] that make it harder to defend domestic food safety standards from international trade disputes. … Agribusiness and biotech seed companies can now more easily use trade rules to challenge countries that ban GMO imports, test for GMO contamination, do not promptly approve new GMO crops or even require GMO labeling. The TPP gives the food industry a powerful new weapon to wield against the nationwide movement to label GMO foods. The language in the TPP is more powerful and expansive than other trade deals that have already been used to weaken or eliminate dolphin safe tuna and country of origin labels.”
Health care will also come under direct assault, forcing other countries more toward the U.S. system, under which health care is a privilege for those who can afford it rather than a human right. Government programs to hold down the cost of medications are targeted for elimination in the TPP. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, which has been sounding the alarm for years, said:
“TPP countries have agreed to United States government and multinational drug company demands that will raise the price of medicines for millions by unnecessarily extending monopolies and further delaying price-lowering generic competition. … [T]he TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries, which will be forced to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies. For example, the additional monopoly protection provided for biologic drugs will be a new regime for all TPP developing countries. These countries will pay a heavy price in the decades to come that will be measured in the impact it has on patients.”
The text of the TPP is subject to approval by legislative bodies in various countries, and while time is limited and the approval process is streamlined to facilitate approval in several of them, the Trans-Pacific Partnership can be defeated. This is not a national issue. Working people will be hurt everywhere, with jobs disappearing in developed countries and sweatshop misery for other countries — this is why multi-national capital, where ever it is based, is pushing for the TPP. If it is to be stopped, it will be through the combined activity of activists on both sides of the Pacific. We have no time to lose.
* This paragraph has been revised to better reflect the source of the job-loss estimate.
The task may be difficult but it is not impossible — there is still time to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Activists on both sides of the Pacific Ocean forced a couple of concessions in the final TPP text, agreed to earlier this week after years of negotiation, so we are not without hope.
More hard work by activists is the only power that can stop the TPP from becoming law in 12 countries. If we fail to stop it, the TPP promises to tighten further the dominance of the world’s biggest multi-national corporations with the implementation of nearly unlimited rights of corporations to overturn health, safety, labor and environmental laws through secret tribunals that bypass and override national legal systems.
Although the Obama administration, which had consistently pushed for the most draconian rules, yielded some ground on pharmaceutical-industry profiteering, the TPP is a thoroughly anti-democratic deal. Just how awful won’t be fully known until the text is published on the Internet in coming weeks. In the United States, there is a 60-day period after the text is published before President Barack Obama can send it to Congress for approval. Congress must act within 90 days, voting either yes or no with no amendments allowed (not even a comma can be changed) and limited debate. And even this “fast-track” process, voted into being by Congress earlier this year, represents concessions to persistent public opposition to the TPP — the text has been held as a state secret, hidden for years from members of Congress until public outcries embarrassed the Obama administration into letting elected representatives have a peak.
Parliamentarians in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere have also not been allowed to see the text. The Canadian Parliament can’t take up the TPP until after the October 19 elections. The Harper régime is intent on passing the TPP, but if the Liberals or New Democrats unseat the Conservatives, there would be uncertainty. Neither opposition party, however, has openly opposed it, instead reserving judgment before seeing the final text.
In Australia, the Parliament doesn’t get to vote on the TPP, only on legislation necessary to implement its provisions once agreed to by the cabinet ministers. A committee of senators from parties in government and in opposition issued a report in June strongly condemning the TPP and the secrecy of it, but it remains to be seen what, if anything, opponents can do to block it. One glimmer of hope is that two small parties, Palmer United and the Greens, hold the balance of power in the Australian Senate, and the Greens are opposed to the TPP.
New Zealand parliamentary debate will be limited and no text may be changed; the Parliament would have to change national laws to conform with the TPP if passed.
The biggest compromise concerned biologic medications. This had been one of the main areas of contention, with the U.S. wanting to impose a 12-year period of exclusivity to pharmaceutical companies that originate biologics before other manufacturers could introduce generic versions (“biosimilars”) of the drugs. Other countries, including Australia, wanted that period cut to five years.
It is still not clear what agreement was reached, but reports indicate that the period will remain 12 years for the U.S., and either five or eight years for other countries. The longer period is seen as a means to guarantee pharmaceutical companies, especially those in the U.S., super-profits for a longer period of time and thus driving up the costs of medicines for public health systems in other counties, including Australia and New Zealand.
Activist work forces concessions but still a bad deal
Sustained public opposition to the longer period pushed the Australian and New Zealand governments to hold out against intense U.S. pressure on this issue, so activists can take credit for whatever better terms were attained. But that does not mean the TPP is a good deal for health care. Far from it.
Peter Maybarduk, the director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines Program, had this to say:
“The deal … fell short of Big Pharma’s most extreme demands but will contribute to preventable suffering and death. … [T]he deal includes mechanisms that would help the [U.S. trade representative] browbeat countries, now and in the future, to get what Big Pharma wants, and pull countries toward longer monopoly periods.”
“TPP countries have agreed to United States government and multinational drug company demands that will raise the price of medicines for millions by unnecessarily extending monopolies and further delaying price-lowering generic competition. The big losers in the TPP are patients and treatment providers in developing countries. Although the text has improved over the initial demands, the TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries, which will be forced to change their laws to incorporate abusive intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical companies.”
New Zealand’s Pharmaceutical Management Agency, which provides thousands of medicines, medical devices and related products available at subsidized costs, is a particular target of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry because it is an example that drug companies do not wish to be emulated elsewhere. The agency says it has saved about NZ$5 billion in the past 10 years.
Don’t buy the snake oil proponents are selling
Although the U.S. trade representative is trumpeting the TPP as the “most progressive trade deal ever,” don’t buy that snake oil. To provide one example, the U.S. trade representative claims that “A Party may elect to deny the benefits of Investor-State dispute settlement with respect to a claim challenging a tobacco control measure of the Party.” This is a claim that corporations can no longer challenge government regulations on tobacco, as has happened to Australia, Uruguay and other countries. (“Party” means a government in the TPP text.)
Another snake oil salesperson, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, who has been perhaps the senator most responsible for the advancement of the TPP in the Senate and a consistent liar on “free trade” agreements, packed quite a lot of misinformation into one paragraph this week:
“I’m pleased to hear reports that the deal reached today includes, for the first time, an agreement to curb currency manipulation and new and enforceable obligations on countries like Vietnam and Malaysia to uphold labor rights, including in the case of Malaysia enforceable commitments to address human trafficking. I also understand that the agreement will include commitments to stop trade in illegal wildlife and first-ever commitments on conservation. Importantly, I understand that this deal will ensure that countries that are part of it can regulate tobacco without fearing intimidation and litigation by Big Tobacco.”
Don’t be fooled. The Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health issued this correction:
“The precise effects of this ambiguously worded compromise are unclear. … Tobacco companies could still file charges [in secret tribunals] if they assert the regulation is ‘discriminatory’ to the trade interests of a particular country. For example, when the U.S. banned clove cigarettes, which are important in hooking kids, Indonesia filed a successful trade charge, as the main producer of clove cigarettes.”
Senator Wyden’s words are hollow, coming after the Obama administration cynically removed Malaysia from the State Department’s list of worst countries for human trafficking to keep the developing country eligible. People without hope of work at home or who are refugees are recruited to work in Malaysia, where they are subject to forced labor and sex trafficking. Jamie Kemmerer, regional organizer for MoveOn NYC, said:
“The TPP is a terrible deal for workers, but is even worse for those who are subject to forced labor and human trafficking. Granting favorable trade access to nations engaging in these barbaric practices would be a huge step back for humanity in the name of commerce.”
Language in the TPP that purports to provide protection for environmental and health laws are meaningless boilerplate without effect, just as such language has been in existing “free trade” deals. The real-world effect is that any corporate entity can move to overturn any government action, simply on the basis that its “right” to the maximum possible profit, regardless of cost to a community, has been “breached.” The TPP places no limits on who or what corporate entity or individual is eligible to sue for the “loss” of “expected profits,” and only corporations can sue, not governments.
In effect, corporations are raised to the level of national governments, and it might be more properly argued that corporations are raised above national governments. This is the future that awaits all of us, and only the united actions of activists in countries on both sides of the Pacific can stop it. And, once we do, we need to go on the offensive and begin to roll back existing deals. Democracy or corporate dictatorship: The choice we now face is that stark.
A frequent criticism of “free trade” agreements is that corporations are elevated to the level of a country. It might be more accurate to say that corporations are elevated above countries.
The muscle in trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement or the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is the mandatory use of “investor-state dispute mechanisms.” That bland-sounding bureaucratic phrase is anything but bland in its application — these “mechanisms” are the tools used to turn corporate wish lists into undemocratic reality.
Labor, environmental, social-justice and other groups rally on the steps of New York City Hall during a January 14 snowstorm to demand Congress vote against fast-track legislation. (Photo courtesy of New York State AFL-CIO)
The concrete form of these “mechanisms” are corporate-dominated secret tribunals that hand down one-sided decisions with no oversight, no public notice and no appeals. This is so is because governments that sign trade agreements legally bind themselves to mandatory arbitration in these secret tribunals despite (or because of) their one-sided nature. It is a virtually certainty that, should be they passed into law, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will contain some of the most draconian language yet in this area.
Activists in the TPP countries, as well as those in the European Union, should pay particular attention to the experience of Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Canada has been the principal target within NAFTA because of its superior environmental laws in comparison to the United States and Mexico, with U.S.-based multi-national corporations the primary suers. Environmental, safety, labor and “buy local” laws around the Pacific and in Europe will be targets should the TPP and TTIP be implemented.
The rules of NAFTA allow multi-national corporations to sue national governments because rules safeguarding the environment, for example, are interpreted to “unfairly” reduce profits. Decisions handed down in the secret tribunals — in which corporate lawyers who specialize in representing corporations in these kinds of cases sit as judges — further stretch the bases on which corporations can successfully sue governments. NAFTA, and tribunal judgements stretching it, constitutes the starting point from which the U.S. government, sometimes assisted by other governments, seeks to impose still more draconian rules.
Corporations can change laws to suit themselves
Decisions made under NAFTA rules are noteworthy because of their outrageousness, but also merit attention because they provide a preview of what is in store for other countries under the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Here are some “highlights”:
Eli Lilly and Company is suing Canada for $500 million because Canada would not grant it two patents, rulings upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. Eli Lilly claims the denial is an illegal confiscation of profits — it is using NAFTA as a tool to dismantle Canada’s well-developed patent system. No tribunal ruling yet.
Ethyl Corporation sued Canada for $250 million because of a ban on a gasoline additive known as MMT, a chemical long believed to be dangerous to health. Ethyl claimed the Canadian ban was an “expropriation” of its “investment” and a violation of the principal of “equal treatment” even though, had a Canadian producer of MMT existed, it would have had the same standard applied. Canada settled to avoid a total defeat, paying Ethyl a smaller amount and reversing its ban.
A U.S. company, Metalclad, sued Mexico because a city government refused to grant it a permit for a waste dump (similarly denied to a Mexican company that previously wanted to use the site). Mexico lost, and had to grant the permit despite environmental concerns and pay $15.6 million to Metalclad.
Another U.S. company, S.D. Myers, sued Canada because of a ban on the transportation of PCBs that conformed with both a Canada-United States and a multi-lateral environmental treaty. A tribunal ordered Canada to pay $5.6 million and reverse the ban, negating the two environmental treaties and ignoring the fact that PCBs are known carcinogens banned since 1979 in the U.S. The tribunal ruled that, when formulating an environmental rule, a government “is obliged to adopt the alternative that is most consistent with open trade.” So much for democracy!
The above is merely the tip of the iceberg. How do such extraordinarily one-sided decisions get handed down? Because the corporations dominate the tribunals and play a heavy role in writing the trade agreements to begin with. There are 605 corporate lobbyists who have access to the Trans-Pacific Partnership text — officially known as “trade advisers” — but no members of any legislative body are allowed to see it, and the public is completely shut out. The “advisers” are eagerly working to make the TPP a repository for their wish lists.
The key to making corporate dreams come true is the “investor-state dispute mechanism.” Under these mechanisms, governments legally bind themselves to settle “disputes” with “investors” in the secret tribunals. By far the most used of these tribunals is the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID) — an arbitration board that is an arm of the World Bank. Cases that go before one of the Centre’s tribunals are decided by a panel of three judges that are selected from a roster. The judges are appointed by the national governments that have signed on to ICSID, which include most of the world’s countries.
Working to overturn Australian laws, but he’s ‘neutral’
These judges are not disinterested arbiters. For example, one of the judges appointed to the ICSID by New Zealand is David A.R. Williams, who is currently representing Philip Morris in its suit seeking to force Australia to overturn its tobacco regulations. Australia’s rules limiting tobacco advertising and packaging, enacted in the interests of public health, were found to be legal by Australia’s supreme court, the High Court.
Not willing to accept the Australian constitution, Philip Morris moved some of its assets to Hong Kong, so it could declare itself a Hong Kong company eligible to sue Australia under the Australia-Hong Kong bilateral investment treaty, which, unlike some Australian trade pacts, allows corporations to sue one or the other government. (This case is still pending.)
The ultimate arbiter of a constitution, or writer of laws, are not domestic bodies subject to democratic checks, but unaccountable corporate representatives acting in secret. Who are these mercenaries? As an example, each of the eight ICSID judges appointed by the United States has a long career dedicated to serving large corporations. Six are currently partners in some of the world’s most formidable corporate law firms, one is an academic who formerly was a corporate lawyer and one is a lobbyist for a business group that seeks to codify pro-corporate trade rules under law.
That is a common pattern. One of Australia’s appointees is Doug Jones, a lawyer with one of Australia’s largest corporate law firms, and one of Chile’s is Carlos Eugenio Jorquiera, a corporate lawyer and president of the country’s National Chamber of Commerce.
Further titling the scales are that only corporations, not governments nor public-interest groups, can sue under these treaties. Governments must pay expenses that can total tens of millions of dollars, regardless of outcome, with no provisions to block frivolous claims. The judges are paid by the hour, with no defined limits on costs, giving them an incentive to drag out proceedings, which in turn favors deep-pocketed “investors.”
In fact, the TPP would place no limits on who qualifies as an “investor”: Anyone who applies for a permit or license, or who “channels” resources or capital to set up a business, without placing any limits on what qualifies for such a status, would be eligible to sue.
‘Customary law’ is what a corporation says it is
Leaked article 12.7 of the TPP, for instance, provides a long list of prohibitions against government actions. Under it, laws imposing capital controls (even to ameliorate a crisis), rules governing domestic content of products or any protections of any domestic industry would be illegal. It then provides a generic exception allowing environmental or other measures “that are not inconsistent with the Agreement; necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health; or related to the conservation of living or non-living exhaustible natural resources.”
But that exception is rendered meaningless not only by other, superseding, rules but by the rulings of the corporate-lawyer judges in the secret tribunals. Leaked TPP language specifically requires that excepted rules must be “not inconsistent with the Agreement.” The key sentence opens Article 12.6: “Each Party shall accord to covered investments treatment in accordance with customary international law.” The “Party” here are national governments, and the “customary international law” is that already established by NAFTA and the decisions made by ICSID and similar tribunals concerning disputes under NAFTA and other trade agreements.
Last year’s change of government in Australia has left working peoples in the 12 TPP negotiating countries more vulnerable. Under the previous Labor governments, Australia had refused to agree to the insertion of an investor-state dispute mechanism in the TPP. The new Tony Abbott government, however, has shown worrisome signs of reversal on this critical issue, claiming that such mechanisms would provide “greater market access for Australian exporters.”
The world’s 99 percent can’t afford to lose any bulwark against substituting corporate-dominated secret tribunals for democracy because the Obama administration is pushing hard for the most draconian rules. Knowing that secrecy is the only way for the TPP to gain approval of the U.S. Congress, the White House is pushing for “fast-track authority” — under which, Congress could not change so much as a comma of an agreement, would be severely limited in its ability to debate and would be obligated to vote yes or no in a very short period of time.
An increasingly strong pushback by activists in the U.S. has led to more than 200 members of Congress publicly committing themselves to voting against fast-track, which only Congress can impose on itself. Many of the other 11 national governments negotiating the TPP are nervously watching this development, because if Congress votes against fast-track, it will be far more difficult for TPP to earn congressional approval, leaving those governments less willing to buck their own internal oppositions.
If you believe that democracy is preferable to corporate dictatorship, the time is now to join an international fight against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its spawn, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
The usual boilerplate announcements that “significant progress” was achieved in the just concluded round of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations can’t mask that public opposition is growing and that the United States seems to be having difficulty bullying its negotiating partners.
That does not mean that the TPP is dead — far from it — but the continued insistence of the Obama administration that the text will be complete by the end of 2013 is no more than wishful thinking. That Congress might not play its assigned role of rubber-stamping was strongly signaled last week when 151 Democratic Party members of the House of Representatives and more than two dozen Republicans signed various letters opposing “fast-track” trade authority. Many did so due to sustained grassroots activism.
“Fast-track” is a mechanism whereby Congress waives its right to debate and amend, instead binding itself to a straight up-or-down yes or no vote in a limited time frame. The worst trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, have become U.S. law through this mechanism. The Obama administration is widely expected to introduce such a bill, passage of which would greatly increase the chances of the Trans-Pacific Partnership getting approved by Congress.
Activists have anticipated since early October that a bill for fast-track authority — formally known as trade promotion authority — might be introduced at any moment. That such a bill has been delayed is a sign that mounting opposition to the TPP within the U.S. has introduced an element of caution into the Obama administration’s thinking.
Demonstration against TPP in Salt Lake City (Photo courtesy of Citizens Trade Campaign)
Strong opposition to draconian U.S. proposals by several of the 11 other Pacific Rim countries negotiating the text of the TPP has certainly played a role in slowing down the negotiations. The divergence of the negotiating positions became clear earlier this month when WikiLeaks published the full text of the TPP chapter on intellectual property. Despite being billed as a “free trade” agreement, this chapter, like most of the TPP, has nothing to do with trade. Rather, it — and, in particular, the U.S. negotiating positions — are the dreams of the most powerful multi-national corporations.
The same is true for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, another “free trade” agreement simultaneously being negotiated between the United States and the European Union. The TTIP also just concluded a negotiating round, with similar opaqueness. What the U.S. is attempting to impose on Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and the other TPP countries on behalf of its multi-national corporations is undoubtedly the basis for what it seeks to impose on Europe. Corporate lobbyists have access to the text, but legislators and parliamentarians do not.
Sustained and organized mass opposition is the only thing that will stop these two extraordinary power grabs that will fatally undermine any semblance of democracy. If the TPP were to be implemented, labor safeguards, safety rules, environmental regulations and measures to rein in financial speculation would be struck down because a multi-national corporation’s profits might be affected — corporations would be able to bypass national laws and courts when they are in a dispute with a government, and instead can have their dispute adjudicated by a closed tribunal controlled by their lawyers.
Huge giveaways to pharmaceutical industry
The TPP intellectual property chapter, published by WikiLeaks, is crammed with corporate giveaways in its 96 pages. (This is only one of about two dozen chapters.) Japan is the country, at least in this chapter, most often in alignment with U.S. negotiating position, although frequently the U.S. is opposed by all other countries.
There are several sections that broaden what is patentable subject matter — if implemented, the TPP would make patents:
“Available for any new uses or methods of using a known product.”
Require patents to be granted if the patent “involves an inventive step,” even if there is no new use for it.
Allowable for living organisms, including plants and animals.
What these proposals would mean, if implemented, is that a name-brand pharmaceutical company, for example, would be able to claim a new use for high-priced medicines just before the patent was due to expire, thereby extending the patent and blocking a far less expensive generic equivalent from becoming available.
Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, the U.S. pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly sued Canada for $500 million because the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the invalidation of an Eli Lilly patent. Canada’s ability to enforce its own laws would be undermined by the TPP, according to a Public Citizen analysis:
“Canada’s decisions are based in its ‘promise doctrine,’ a patent rule which requires patents claiming a future usefulness to demonstrate or soundly predict that usefulness at the time of filing. The United States has proposed a rule for the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations that could undermine Canada’s promise doctrine. Whether purposeful or not, this would support Big Pharma’s plans to transform Canadian practice and even, seemingly, some of the goals of Lilly’s outrageous suit.”
Companies like Eli Lilly would be in a stronger position to overturn any law they don’t like. The TPP’s intellectual property chapter would also attack rules such as the Indian Patent Act that protect access to affordable medicines worldwide, and would require extensions of patents on the demand of a corporation if it deems the period of time required to approve its patent “unreasonable.” Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières reports:
“The leak confirms our worst fears—the US is continuing its attempts to impose an unprecedented package of new trade rules that would keep affordable generic medicines out of the hands of millions of people.”
The return of SOPA
The defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) — thinly veiled attempts at Internet censorship stopped by popular pressure — would be reversed under the TPP. A proposal by the U.S. and Australia would require Internet service providers to police their users, with ISPs required to cut off Internet access, block content and actively monitor usage to avoid liability if a copyright holder claims one of its copyrights is being infringed.
“[T]t is a toxic potion that would force the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to police their networks, and turns current law on its head. … Where it concerns the Internet and digital content, much of the TPP intellectual property chapter looks like a cut-and-paste from ACTA. Certainly, it brings in similar secondary liability and criminal measures that were in ACTA. However, there are specific new proposals that give more reasons for concern. … Within the Internet section, is a USA/Australian proposal that contains the core desires of Hollywood and the Motion Picture Association.”
Canada, back by several countries, is seeking less onerous restrictions, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist writes:
“From a Canadian perspective, the U.S. demands would require an overhaul of Canadian copyright law and potential changes to privacy law. For many other TPP countries, the issue is creating a clear divide, with the U.S. conditioning ISP safe harbours on subscriber termination and content blocking, while the Canadian model favours greater flexibility in establishing systems that create incentives to address alleged infringements online.”
Will Canadian negotiators hold firm or capitulate? Given the harsh policies of Prime Minister Stephen Harper — the George W. Bush of the North — much activism will be required to avoid SOPA getting in through the back door.
You won’t be able to know what is in your food
At the behest of corporations like Monsanto, which seeks to control the world’s food supply, labeling of genetically modified organisms would be illegal. Specific Trans-Pacific Partnership language on GMOs and GMO labeling has not yet surfaced, but because the goal of Monsanto and other U.S. manufacturers of GMO foods is to remove European restrictions against GMOs, this is likely to be an area where U.S. negotiators are pushing hard.
The European Union’s chief trade negotiator Ignacio Garcia Bercero, said “We are not in the business of lowering standards” in response to concerns that food safety rules will be lowered if the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership comes to fruition, and European Union justice and rights commissioner Viviane Reding threatened this week that the E.U. would “freeze crucial data-sharing arrangements with the U.S.” if the U.S. refuses to acquiesce to European privacy standards.
But despite huffing and puffing from various European leaders, the latest round of TTIP talks proceeded smoothly. A European Commission press release happily declared, “A good atmosphere and the active involvement of regulators from both sides meant significant progress was made.” But, as usual, no details were forthcoming. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative similarly reported “a very successful and productive set of meetings” about the TTIP and “significant progress” in the just concluded Salt Lake City round of TPP negotiations.
This latest round of TPP talks was even more secret than usual, with negotiators not bothering this time with the pretense of meeting with civil-society groups; thus much caution is advised. A potential turn for the worse is possible with the recent election of the right-wing Tony Abbott government in Australia, which may reverse some of the previous positions Canberra had taken against certain U.S. proposals. For example, previous Australian governments opposed investor-state disputes being adjudicated by secret tribunals controlled by corporate lawyers. It is unknown if the Abbott government will reverse that position.
The Australian television program Lateline reports that Prime Minister Abbott is in favor of “fast-tracking” the TPP and other trade agreements. A worrisome sign, as the U.S. is pushing hard for anti-democratic provisions such as investor-state disputes to be adjudicated in the secret tribunals. These mechanisms are in force in the North America Free Trade Agreement and many bi-lateral trade agreements. NAFTA, for example, uses a tribunal that is an arm of the World Bank in which only two of the more than 200 cases it has heard have been open to the public.
Agreements like TPP and TTIP have little to do with trade and much to do with imposing a corporate dictatorship. There is no time to waste.
The secret Trans-Pacific Partnership is about to become even more secret, perhaps seen as a necessity in light of plans to make it easier for tobacco companies to sue while making health care more difficult to obtain.
The governments negotiating the draconian TPP still don’t want you to know what’s in it. Many of them issued cheery press releases congratulating themselves for the “progress” they made last week in Brunei. But you will search in vain for any information on what TPP negotiators are up to. They will now end their practice of “consultation” — the August 23 to 30 negotiations (the 19th round) are the last scheduled. Instead, negotiators will begin to meet in unannounced meetings.
In other words, not only is the text of the TPP to remain a secret, the negotiations themselves are to now be secret.
Formal negotiating rounds had occurred roughly every three months, but now negotiators henceforth will meet “intersessionally in the coming weeks” before meeting again at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in early October. Although the good news is that, despite the efforts of several governments, most forcefully the Obama administration, it appears virtually certain there will be no deal to sign then.
The bad news is that obtaining details may become more difficult. The new, less formal format can reasonably be interpreted to mean that particularly harsh text is being discussed. Several of the 12 negotiating governments are balking at various proposals, but given that each remains inside the talks and issues content-free press releases, the secrecy shrouding the TPP text remains in place, with a stronger curtain apparently about to shut out any stray sunshine.
Yes to tobacco, no to medicine
The Obama administration has consistently pushed for the most draconian rules. Washington’s latest outrage concerns regulations on tobacco products, universally opposed by tobacco companies. Early drafts of the TPP included “safe harbor” provisions protecting national tobacco-control measures — such as package warnings and advertising and marketing restrictions — from corporate challenges. But the Obama administration has reversed course under tobacco industry and U.S. Chamber of Commerce pressure, intending to severely limit the ability of signatory governments to maintain their laws.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said its counter-proposal would “contain a general exception for matters necessary to protect human life or health” and add a provision that a complaining “party” (that is, a corporation) must first meet with “health authorities … to discuss the measure.”
Note that there is nothing in the proposal that prevents a complaining “party” from suing to overturn a regulation following a discussion. And the “general exception” is meaningless as the arbitration boards that hear investor complaints (controlled by entities such as the World Bank) consistently rule that any environmental or safety rule that reduces a corporation’s profits be overturned. For example, Canada was forced to pay Ethyl Corporation $13 million and issue an apology because it had banned a gasoline additive that causes neurological damage and contributes to air pollution. This additive was already banned in the U.S., where Ethyl is based, but the chemical company claimed Canada’s ban “expropriated” its profits.
U.S. trade negotiators can write with a straight face that their proposals “work together to preserve the right to regulate tobacco products domestically,” but health advocates aren’t laughing. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and four other health care advocacy groups issued a joint statement condemning the cave-in to the tobacco industry:
“[T]his language is far weaker than [the] original proposal, would not cover lawsuits initiated by tobacco companies and would not provide nations that adopt strong tobacco control measures with the protection they need from tobacco industry challenges.”
Trade agreements wielded as battering rams
Already, tobacco companies, which must continually create new smokers to replace those who die, are not shy about using existing trade agreements to knock down regulations. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids statement notes:
“The tobacco industry and its allies in government increasingly use trade and investment agreements to challenge legitimate tobacco control measures, and have done so specifically against laws adopted in the U.S., Australia, Uruguay, Ireland, Norway and Turkey. … Tobacco companies and several countries have filed trade challenges to Australia’s law requiring that cigarettes be sold in plain packaging, while Philip Morris International has used an investment agreement to challenge Uruguay’s tobacco control laws, including its requirement for large, graphic health warnings. These costly challenges are aimed not only at defeating tobacco control measures, but also at discouraging governments from enacting them in the first place.”
Philip Morris is also suing Australia for damages because of tobacco regulations, despite the country’s High Court ruling that it has no right to sue. Philip Morris moved assets to Hong Kong to be able to sue Australia under a bilateral trade agreement, and the TPP would open the floodgates to similar suits.
At the same time, U.S. intellectual-property proposals would make medicines more expensive through rules that would extend patents and data exclusivity periods for brand-name drugs, impeding trade in generic medicines, and putting new limits on how drug prices are set or regulated, according to the Council of Canadians. Already, Eli Lilly and Company, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, is suing Canada for C$500 million because Canada would not grant it two patents. Eli Lilly claims the denial is an illegal confiscation of profits under the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The Global Treatment Access Group, a coalition of Canadian civil society organizations, in a discussion of health issues, writes that the proposed TPP provisions concern public health policy and therefore do not belong in a trade agreement. These provisions would, inter alia:
“regulate countries’ drug pricing programs to the benefit of patented, brand-name pharmaceutical companies, undermining the ability of governments’ public insurance programs to negotiate reduced prices from manufacturers. … Undermining governments’ ability to manage costs of its public insurance schemes by ensuring value-for-money when it comes to pharmaceutical reimbursement is obviously of great concern.”
What you don’t know can hurt you
The more TPP negotiating governments proclaim their transparency, the more opaque the talks. Here’s a sampling of what governments had to say after last week’s Brunei round ended. The U.S. Office of the Trade Representative provided this happy talk:
“Buoyed by the ministerial engagement and their commitment to actively guide the negotiations, negotiators advanced their technical work this round on the texts covering market access, rules of origin, investment, financial services, intellectual property, competition, and environment. They also made progress on the packages providing access to each other’s markets for goods, services, investment, financial services, temporary entry, and government procurement.”
You’ll wait in vain for any details of said work. Apparently wishing to end any pretense of independence, the Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued the same four-paragraph release, word for word. The New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade couldn’t be bothered to issue a report at all, merely publishing the chief negotiators’ joint statement, which was similar pablum.
The Canada Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development did manage its own statement, but, alas, is no more substantive than the others:
“During the 19th round, negotiators built on the progress made to date in several areas, including on goods market access, rules of origin, investment, services, financial services, temporary entry, intellectual property, government procurement and environment.”
Thus far, the only signs of resistance among TPP negotiators comes from Malaysia, which reportedly will not sign anything this year as it conducts a “cost-benefit analysis.” On August 27, Malaysia put forth a proposal to completely “carve out” tobacco regulations from the agreement. It is not known if any other countries have joined Malaysia in seeking to preserve tobacco regulations.
The Vietnamese newspaper Thanh Nien reports that the U.S. is the only TPP negotiating country not a signatory to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which mandates policies to reduce tobacco usage. Passage of the U.S. tobacco proposal would put Vietnam and the other countries in violation of their WHO obligations. So much for the “rule of law.”
In the meantime, legislators around the Pacific Rim continue to demand access to the secret TPP text. Two years ago, in 2011, the New Zealand government denied a hearing on the TPP asked for by 13 organizations and there is no indication that any hearing will be held. A Canadian opposition member of parliament, Don Davies of the New Democratic Party, has asked the government of Stephen Harper “to give Canadian MPs the same information that US Members of Congress have about the ongoing Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations.”
Perhaps Mr. Davies should aim higher, as few members of the U.S. Congress have seen the TPP text, and then only because of loud demands and under condition that they not reveal any of the text in public. They haven’t.
Another development that could delay any agreement is if Barack Obama fails to goad the U.S. Congress into re-approving “fast track” trade authority. If such an authority is granted, Congress can only vote yes or no with no amendments allowed. But if Congress does not vote to give away its authority, the process is significantly slowed down because amendments can be made, which would require the text to go back to the negotiators. Activists believe Congress might vote on fast-track authority the first week of October.
Stopping the TPP will happen in the streets, however, not in legislative bodies. It is impossible to overstate the disaster that would occur from an implemented TPP: Labor and environmental laws would be outlawed as fetters on the right to maximum profits; national sovereignty would be a relic of the past; and smaller countries would have no control over the plunder of their resources by the larger countries’ multi-national corporations. Under the TPP, the task of governments, codified in law, would be to maximize corporate profits.
Such is the dystopia that awaits us unless there is a massive international movement against the TPP, and then to overturn existing “free trade” agreements.
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Systemic Disorder 