The TPP - a casino where the house always wins

The best part of International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland signing the U.S. corporate rights agreement TPP - the Trans-Pacific Partnership - in Aukland NZ yesterday was that it was done here in this gambling casino, and a casino is where the house always wins.

In her 2012 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else, Freeland explains :

"Trying to slant the rules of the game in your favour isn't an aberration, it is what all businesses seek to do. The difference isn't between having virtuous and villainous business people, it is about whether your society has the right rules and policing able to enforce them."

Of course this 'enforcement' would first entail our government not ditching those 'right rules' or 'policing' just because transnational corporations and their revolving-door crony capitalists within government find them inconvenient.

Justin Trudeau on the campaign trail, October 5 2015 :

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership stands to remove trade barriers, widely expand free trade for Canada, and increase opportunities for our middle class and those working hard to join it.... The government has an obligation to be open and honest about the negotiation process ..."

Then in mid-January Freeland told us :

“The negotiations are finished and for Canadians it’s important to understand that it’s a decision of yes or no..." 

All countries have two years to ratify it, but the treaty comes into force if the United States, Japan and four other countries give their approval.  

“It’s important for us to understand that we don’t have a veto.”

Yesterday she said : "There is a big difference between signing and ratifying", promising negotiations and parliamentary committees and round tables etc, all of which are very nice but none of which are legally binding on the Liberal caucus. 
Now that we've signed off on it however, we are all supposed to pin our hopes on those.


Flashback to the Liberal Convention of 2014 two years ago... 
Guest speaker and TPP advocate, former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers is interviewed on stage by Freeland, who introduces him as "a dear friend, teacher, and probably the smartest person I know". Summers, she explains, is there to give the Libs "some great ideas about how to transform Canada and in so doing transform the world." 

Now most of us probably remember Larry Summers as the US bank deregulator - a prominent architect alongside Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin in reversing the 1933 US Glass-Steagall Act, that Depression-era legislation which prevented US banks from turning into the high-risk hedge-fund casinos making wild bets against their own depositors' money they became in the late 2000's. Or we remember him as the $5M hedge fund advisor who made millions in speaking fees from the hedge funds he later helped regulate while advocating tax cuts and no ceiling on CEO pay for stimulus recipients. Or as a Bilderberg Group Steering Committee member.

Whatev.

What I wish is that rather than continue to parrot all that "all middle-class liberals together" shmooze that Summers was selling the Libs two years ago, including airily blowing off the casino bank crisis he helped precipitate, better the Liberals should instead try out what Summers, still a strident TPP advocate, is saying now : 

"First, the era of agreements that achieve freer trade in the classic sense is essentially over. The world’s remaining tariff and quota barriers are small and, where present, less reflections of the triumph of protectionist interests and more a result of deep cultural values. 

What we call trade agreements are in fact agreements on the protection of investments and the achievement of regulatory harmonization...

Concerns that trade agreements may be a means to circumvent traditional procedures for taking up issues ranging from immigration to financial regulation must be taken seriously.

Being pressed down everywhere are middle classes who lack the wherewithal to take advantage of new global markets and do not want to compete with low-cost foreign labor. Our challenge now is less to increase globalization than to make the globalization we have work for our citizens."

Try to keep up with your own hero's rhetoric here, Libs. 



Economix Comix : The TransPacific Partnership and "Free Trade"

Robert Reich takes on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2 minutes 26 seconds

Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz heaps scorn on TPP and TTIP

Paul Krugman on the TPP

Michael Geist : The Trouble with the TPP, Day 1: U.S. Blocks Balancing Objectives   Start here but Geist is up to Day 25 now ....

Press Progress : Bernie Sanders: 
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a "disastrous" deal for the middle-class.

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Day pushes for new free-trade talks with U.S.

When I replaced my ancient stove with something slightly less antiquated, I phoned Dave our local garbage contractor to pick up the old one. Dave, you see, knows who best to pass it on to - whether that be a scrap metal joint, a dangerous appliance refurbishing business, or just someone looking to build stovehenge in their backyard.

Dave knows this valuable info because he lives here. Somehow I suspect that the International Waste Management Consortium in Houston Texas is not as up on the day-to-day requirements of the local stove-stacking crowd, so it's a good thing that our local municipality gets to Buy Local and give the contract to Dave instead.
In fact the Foreign Affairs page on "Assessing Government Procurement Under Canada's Trade Agreements" explicitly states that WTO, GATs, and NAFTA do not apply.

Day pushes for new free-trade talks with U.S.
... in which the same government that formerly freaked at the idea of revisiting a single page of NAFTA to prevent bulk Canadian water exports is now hoping for a whole "new chapter of free trade" to "ease the tendency by states, provinces and municipalities to favour local companies". Provinces and municipalities would allow US companies to bid on local contracts and in return Canadian businesses get to bid on theirs.
Notwithstanding that the US Fed has already misplaced its ability to account for trillions of their bailout money, why would US taxpayers go for this?
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One North American economic security perimeter : it's not a new idea and "a feared rise of protectionist Buy American measures" is just the latest justification for giving it another push.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to call up Dave. The more I think about that stovehenge idea...
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