We're going to hear a whole lot more about it in the coming months. In the meantime, here's some reading material about it.
From Huff Post Politics: The TPP Hands Control Over Trade to the World's Wealthiest.
From BoingBoing: Independent Economists: TPP Will Kill 450,000 US Jobs....
From the Vancouver Sun: Nobel Laureate Warns of TPP Dangers
From the Washington Post: People Are Freaking Out About the TPP ISDS....
Very few governments have turned down any trade deals, but this isn't, apparently, about trade. It's about "Investor State Dispute Settlement" which will usurp the rights of sovereign countries to make and enforce their own laws and regulations in a manner that is best for their country.
The Green Party of Canada has posted an article on the subject, giving several good reasons why the deal must not be ratified.
A recent article from The Tyee delves into some of the history of other trade agreements and links the fallout from those to what will happen as a result of the TPP.
One commentator put it this way:
Top ten reasons PARLIAMENT must kill the TPP
1. The Trans Pacific Partnership is not a partnership. It was initiated in the US by large corporations to consolidate their control over the smaller economies of the member states.
2. It is not about “free trade.”It has more to do with investor rights which serve to debilitate national governments (nation states) as is already happening with NAFTA and other such agreements.
3. As they can already do under NAFTA corporations will be able to sue governments for non-compliance. This has already cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars.
4. It is about labor mobility. Corporations want to be able to hire the
cheapest possible labor, where ever and whenever. There will be open
immigration to bring in low wage workers from other countries. In 2013 the RBC
did this very thing.
5. It is an extension and intensification of existing agreements that are already debilitating the middle class in the US, Canada and numerous other countries. They hollow out democracy and destroy our social fabric.
6. It is about ISDS. These are to be legal tribunals where laws and judgements can be made to supersede a country’s regulatory structures. This in itself will make it next to impossible to make real progress on climate change and other environmental issues.
7. Over the past forty years there has been a massive retreat from real governance in this country. Politicians have yielded too much power to corporations. The neo-liberal free market economy, dominated by corporate greed, is a race to the bottom where all countries end up as Third World countries.
8. Over the past forty years Canada has suffered one incremental loss of sovereignty after another. We are generally regarded internationally as a weak-kneed American vassal state. Signing on to the TPP for us is the final
capitulation.
9. Governments everywhere must get back in the business of real leadership and quit pandering to what is a global corporate fascism being consolidated by agreements like the TPP.
10. We cannot assume for a minute we are immune to consequences. Like Greece we too can hit bottom.
It needs to be stopped.
Update - An older article from January 2015, written by Robert Reich, was titled "Why the TPP Agreement is a Pending Disaster"
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