Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Printable Version

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Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Peter Lemkin - 16-11-2013

A simpler way to look at the TPP is a step toward global corporatism and away from all democracies and separate states [i.e. a step toward global fascism, if neo-fascism, fascism still!]. Sometimes one really has to wonder who really won and who really lost WW2...here I'm not talking about states, but principles of how the World should be configured and run. It has always been the elites v. the People, and never has it been more so. It's Ancient Rome [to cite just one past example] all over again.

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Magda Hassan - 09-12-2013

Second release of secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement documents

Monday 9 December 2013, 2:40 GMT

On 13 November 2013 WikiLeaks released the draft text of the crucial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Intellectual Property chapter during the lead-up to a TPP chief negotiators' meeting in Salt Lake City on 19-24 November 2013. Today, 9 December 2013, WikiLeaks has released two more secret TPP documents that show the state of negotiations as the twelve TPP countries began supposedly final negotiations at a trade ministers' meeting in Singapore this week.
One document describes deep divisions between the United States and other nations, and "great pressure" being exerted by the US negotiators to move other nations to their position. The other document lists, country-by-country, the many areas of disagreement remaining. It covers intellectual property and thirteen other chapters of the draft agreement. This suggests that the TPP negotiations can only be concluded if the Asia-Pacific countries back down on key national interest issues, otherwise the treaty will fail altogether.

TPP Salt Lake Extracts

TPP Salt Lake Positions See the first TPP release from WikiLeaks: https://wikileaks.org/tpp/

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Magda Hassan - 17-01-2014

Press release: Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) - Environment Chapter

Today, 15 January 2014, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Environment Chapter and the corresponding Chairs' Report. The TPP transnational legal regime would cover 12 countries initially and encompass 40 per cent of global GDP and one-third of world trade. The Environment Chapter has long been sought by journalists and environmental groups. The released text dates from the Chief Negotiators' summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, on 19-24 November 2013.
The Environment Chapter covers what the Parties propose to be their positions on: environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity and fishing stocks; and trade and investment in 'environmental' goods and services. It also outlines how to resolve enviromental disputes arising out of the treaty's subsequent implementation. The draft Consolidated Text was prepared by the Chairs of the Environment Working Group, at the request of TPP Ministers at the Brunei round of the negotiations.
When compared against other TPP chapters, the Environment Chapter is noteworthy for its absence of mandated clauses or meaningful enforcement measures. The dispute settlement mechanisms it creates are cooperative instead of binding; there are no required penalties and no proposed criminal sanctions. With the exception of fisheries, trade in 'environmental' goods and the disputed inclusion of other multilateral agreements, the Chapter appears to function as a public relations exercise.
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' publisher, stated: "Today's WikiLeaks release shows that the public sweetner in the TPP is just media sugar water. The fabled TPP environmental chapter turns out to be a toothless public relations exercise with no enforcement mechanism."
The Chairs' Report of the Environment Working Group also shows that there are still significant areas of contention in the Working Group. The report claims that the draft Consolidated Text displays much compromise between the Parties already, but more is needed to reach a final text. The main areas of contention listed include the role of this agreement with respect to multilateral environmental agreements and the dispute resolution process.
The documents date from 24 November 2013 â”€ the end of the Salt Lake City round. They were requested by the Ministers of the TPP after the August 2013 Brunei round. The Consolidated Text was designed to be a "landing zone" document to further the negotiations quickly and displays what the Chairs say is a good representation of all Parties' positions at the time. The WikiLeaks Consolidated Text and corresponding Chairs' Report show that there remains a lot of controversy and disagreement within the Working Group. The Consolidated Text published by WikiLeaks is not bracketed, as per the IP Chapter released in November 2013, as it is drafted by the Chairs of the Working Group at their responsibility. Instead, the accompanying Chairs' Report provides commentary on the draft Consolidated Text and is the equivalent of bracketed disagreements for the countries that have not agreed on certain Articles, and provides their positions.
Current TPP negotiation member states are the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei. This is the third in the series of Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) leaks published by WikiLeaks.
Further reading:
TPP Environment Chapter Analysis by Professor Jane Kelsey, New Zealand
Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) Series so far:

http://wikileaks.org/tpp-enviro/pressrelease.html

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Magda Hassan - 18-01-2014

Leaked TPP documents: Administration may give up key environmental protections

The Obama administration appears to be sacrificing the environment in its push to fast-track a deal

Lindsay Abrams Topics: Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama administration, Free Trade Agreement, Environmentalism, Pollution, Sustainability News, News, Politics News
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

In its urgency to reach agreement on an ambitious international trade agreement, the Obama administration may give up on key environmental protections, documents obtained by WikiLeaks reveal. Obama has indicated that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping deal being negotiated between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific Rim nations, is a top priority, and the push to fast-track the negotiations, the leaked documents indicate, appears to be coming at the cost of protections such as legally binding pollution control requirements, logging regulations and a ban on harvesting shark fins.
While the U.S. has been pushing for tough environmental provisions, the other nations working on the deal, which include Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Peru, oppose them. And they currently have the upper hand, the New York Times reports:

As of now, the draft environmental chapter does not require the nations to follow legally binding environmental provisions or other global environmental treaties. The text notes only, for example, that pollution controls could vary depending on a country's "domestic circumstances and capabilities."
In addition, the draft does not contain clear requirements for a ban on shark finning, which is the practice of capturing sharks and cutting off their fins commonly used in shark-fin soup and throwing back the sharks to die. The dish is a delicacy in many of the Asian negotiating countries. At this point the draft says that the countries "may include" bans "as appropriate" on such practices.
â€¦"Bilateral negotiations are a very different thing," said Jennifer Haverkamp, the former head of the United States trade representative's environmental office. "Here, if the U.S. is the only one pushing for this, it's a real uphill battle to get others to agree if they don't like it."

The World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council have released their own analysis of the leaked documents, which they say fail to meet the standard set by Congress back in 2007, when a bipartisan agreement to include an environmental provision in all American free-trade deals was reached.
"The lack of fully-enforceable environmental safeguards means negotiators are allowing a unique opportunity to protect wildlife and support legal sustainable trade of renewable resources to slip through their fingers," Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF, said in a statement. "These nations account for more than a quarter of global trade in fish and wood products and they have a responsibility to address trade's impact on wildlife crime, illegal logging, and overfishing."

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Magda Hassan - 19-02-2014

Posted at 9:00 am by Lee Fang
Officials tapped by the Obama administration to lead the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have received multimillion dollar bonuses from CitiGroup and Bank of America, financial disclosures obtained by Republic Report show.
Stefan Selig, a Bank of America investment banker nominated to become the Under Secretary for International Trade at the Department of Commerce, received more than $9 million in bonus pay as he was nominated to join the administration in November. The bonus pay came in addition to the $5.1 million in incentive pay awarded to Selig last year.
Michael Froman, the current U.S. Trade Representative, received over $4 million as part of multiple exit payments when he left CitiGroup to join the Obama administration. Froman told Senate Finance Committee members last summer that he donated approximately 75 percent of the $2.25 million bonus he received for his work in 2008 to charity. CitiGroup also gave Froman a $2 million payment in connection to his holdings in two investment funds, which was awarded "in recognition of [Froman's] service to Citi in various capacities since 1999."
Many large corporations with a strong incentive to influence public policy award bonuses and other incentive pay to executives if they take jobs within the government. CitiGroup, for instance, provides an executive contract that awards additional retirement pay upon leaving to take a "full time high level position with the U.S. government or regulatory body." Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, the Blackstone Group, Fannie Mae, Northern Trust, and Northrop Grumman are among the other firms that offer financial rewards upon retirement for government service.
Froman joined the administration in 2009. Selig is currently awaiting Senate confirmation before he can take his post, which collaborates with the trade officials to support the TPP.
The controversial TPP trade deal has rankled activists for containing provisions that would newly empower corporations to sue governments in ad hoc arbitration tribunals to demand compensation from governments for laws and regulations they claim undermine their business interests. Leaked TPP negotiation documents show the Obama administration is seeking to prevent foreign governments from issuing a broad variety of financial rules designed to stem another bank crisis.
A leaked text of the TPP's investment chapter shows that the pact would include the controversial investor-state dispute resolution system. A fact-sheet provided by Public Citizen explains how multi-national corporations may use the TPP deal to skirt domestic courts and local laws. The arrangement would allows corporations to go after governments before foreign tribunals to demand compensations for tobacco, prescription drug and environment protections that they claim would undermine their expected future profits. Last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that trade agreements such as the TPP provide "a chance for these banks to get something done quietly out of sight that they could not accomplish in a public place with the cameras rolling and the lights on."
Others have raised similar alarm.
"Not only do US treaties mandate that all forms of finance move across borders freely and without delay, but deals such as the TPP would allow private investors to directly file claims against governments that regulate them, as opposed to a WTO-like system where nation states (ie the regulators) decide whether claims are brought," notes Boston University associate professor Kevin Gallagher.
http://www.republicreport.org/2014/big-banks-tpp

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - David Guyatt - 19-02-2014

Magda Hassan Wrote:Posted at 9:00 am by Lee Fang
Officials tapped by the Obama administration to lead the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have received multimillion dollar bonuses from CitiGroup and Bank of America, financial disclosures obtained by Republic Report show.
Stefan Selig, a Bank of America investment banker nominated to become the Under Secretary for International Trade at the Department of Commerce, received more than $9 million in bonus pay as he was nominated to join the administration in November. The bonus pay came in addition to the $5.1 million in incentive pay awarded to Selig last year.
Michael Froman, the current U.S. Trade Representative, received over $4 million as part of multiple exit payments when he left CitiGroup to join the Obama administration. Froman told Senate Finance Committee members last summer that he donated approximately 75 percent of the $2.25 million bonus he received for his work in 2008 to charity. CitiGroup also gave Froman a $2 million payment in connection to his holdings in two investment funds, which was awarded "in recognition of [Froman's] service to Citi in various capacities since 1999."
Many large corporations with a strong incentive to influence public policy award bonuses and other incentive pay to executives if they take jobs within the government. CitiGroup, for instance, provides an executive contract that awards additional retirement pay upon leaving to take a "full time high level position with the U.S. government or regulatory body." Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, the Blackstone Group, Fannie Mae, Northern Trust, and Northrop Grumman are among the other firms that offer financial rewards upon retirement for government service.
Froman joined the administration in 2009. Selig is currently awaiting Senate confirmation before he can take his post, which collaborates with the trade officials to support the TPP.
The controversial TPP trade deal has rankled activists for containing provisions that would newly empower corporations to sue governments in ad hoc arbitration tribunals to demand compensation from governments for laws and regulations they claim undermine their business interests. Leaked TPP negotiation documents show the Obama administration is seeking to prevent foreign governments from issuing a broad variety of financial rules designed to stem another bank crisis.
A leaked text of the TPP's investment chapter shows that the pact would include the controversial investor-state dispute resolution system. A fact-sheet provided by Public Citizen explains how multi-national corporations may use the TPP deal to skirt domestic courts and local laws. The arrangement would allows corporations to go after governments before foreign tribunals to demand compensations for tobacco, prescription drug and environment protections that they claim would undermine their expected future profits. Last year, Senator Elizabeth Warren warned that trade agreements such as the TPP provide "a chance for these banks to get something done quietly out of sight that they could not accomplish in a public place with the cameras rolling and the lights on."
Others have raised similar alarm.
"Not only do US treaties mandate that all forms of finance move across borders freely and without delay, but deals such as the TPP would allow private investors to directly file claims against governments that regulate them, as opposed to a WTO-like system where nation states (ie the regulators) decide whether claims are brought," notes Boston University associate professor Kevin Gallagher.
http://www.republicreport.org/2014/big-banks-tpp

The great danger of revolving doors...

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Magda Hassan - 23-06-2014

US Embassy In Berlin Offering Cold, Hard Cash For People To Create Pro-TAFTA/TTIP Propaganda

from the beats-transparency dept

We've been writing about the big US/EU "free trade" agreement negotiations (which aren't really about free trade at all), variously named TAFTA or TTIP (negotiators prefer TTIP, to avoid comparisons to NAFTA) for quite some time now. If it were really about free trade, there might be some interesting elements to it, but it's much more about the standard issues like providing corporate sovereignty over national sovereignty, and other things like ratcheting up copyright and patent laws in secret. All this "democracy" is all done very much behind closed doors that won't be opened until many years after the agreement is already reached.

The key negotiators have long been complaining about "misinformation" being spread about this and other agreements -- but it often appears that the misinformation is actually coming directly from the negotiators themselves. Besides, it's pretty rich to complain about misinformation on a deal that you're negotiating in secret. Want to end much of that supposed "misinformation"? Here's a simple suggestion: open up, show some transparency and release the negotiating positions you're taking, or even draft documents of the agreement to allow the public to comment.

But instead of transparency, it appears that the US State Department has settled on another option: paying for propaganda.

No joke, the US Embassy in Berlin has apparently been tweeting out offers to give out between $5,000 and $20,000 to organizations willing to produce pro-TAFTA/TTIP propaganda. The document doesn't ask for proposals for unbiased analysis on the impact of any potential agreement, instead it starts out by simply declaring:

T-TIP will be a fair deal for Europeans and Americans that will build on an already existing strong friendship.

Now that's an interesting claim, given that there is no agreement yet, and what's been negotiated so far is (and will remain) entirely secret. So, uh, how does anyone know if it will be "a fair deal." Wouldn't it be more reasonable and, dare I say, objective, to ask for an analysis of what kinds of things might be useful in an agreement, and what kinds of things might cause harm? Or, better yet, how about a study on the pros and cons of certain proposals, so as to better weigh the benefits and dangers? Instead, the State Department just insists that this secretive, and nowhere near concluded, agreement will definitely be fair... and is offering cold hard cash to anyone who will cook up some argument for why that must be. Anything will do:

The activities funded with a Federal Assistance Award (Grant) ranging from $5000 to $20,000 might include the following innovative ideas:

short documentaries on T-TIP
Expert Speaker Tour with proposed names(s) for travel (including per diem and honoraria)
creation of a Twitterfall wall during a conference
digital posters in German with QR codes to inform about T-TIP objectives
a T-TIP conference with a broad swath of stakeholders that can be live-streamed
online discussion forums on T-TIP
website devoted to T-TIP

Hmm. We run a site that has online discussions around the agreement. Perhaps we should apply... Somehow, I don't think we'll pass the "screening" process.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140620/14292827638/us-embassy-berlin-offering-cold-hard-cash-people-to-create-pro-taftattip-propaganda.shtml

Wikileaks blows lid on secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership - Magda Hassan - 16-10-2014

WikiLeaks Publishes TPP Intellectual Property Chapter

Attack on Affordability of Cancer Treatments Revealed in New WikiLeaks Trans-Pacific Trade Pact Text

Obama Administration Budget Pledge to Cut Medicare, Medicaid Costs Would Be Undermined
October 16, 2014

WikiLeaks Publishes TPP Intellectual Property Chapter

Attack on Affordability of Cancer Treatments Revealed in New WikiLeaks Trans-Pacific Trade Pact Text

Obama Administration Budget Pledge to Cut Medicare, Medicaid Costs Would Be Undermined
October 16, 2014
WASHINGTON, D.C. Access to affordable cancer treatments in the U.S and 11 other countries would be delayed for years if terms revealed today in the leaked draft Intellectual Property Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were to go into effect, Public Citizen said. The text, obtained by WikiLeaks, analyzed in collaboration with Public Citizen and released today also shows worrying developments on other patent and copyright issues and explains in part why TPP talks remain deadlocked a month before President Barack Obama's declared deadline for a deal.
"The leak shows our government demanding rules that would lead to preventable suffering and death in Pacific Rim countries, while eliminating opportunities to ease financial hardship on American families and our health programs at home," said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Global Access to Medicines Program. Public Citizen's analysis and background information is available at http://www.citizen.org/tpp-ip-wikileaks. Continue reading...

Public Citizen Analyses of the Newly Leaked Intellectual Property Chapter

Derechos Digitales Analyses of the Newly Leaked Intellectual Property Chapter

WASHINGTON, D.C. Access to affordable cancer treatments in the U.S and 11 other countries would be delayed for years if terms revealed today in the leaked draft Intellectual Property Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were to go into effect, Public Citizen said. The text, obtained by WikiLeaks, analyzed in collaboration with Public Citizen and released today also shows worrying developments on other patent and copyright issues and explains in part why TPP talks remain deadlocked a month before President Barack Obama's declared deadline for a deal.
"The leak shows our government demanding rules that would lead to preventable suffering and death in Pacific Rim countries, while eliminating opportunities to ease financial hardship on American families and our health programs at home," said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Global Access to Medicines Program. Public Citizen's analysis and background information is available at http://www.citizen.org/tpp-ip-wikileaks. Continue reading...