The TPP trade deal

Random said:
Not all free trade programs are the same. Canada and the US have similar standards of living, and US and Canadian workers can compete on an even playing field with relatively little disruption. When NAFTA came around, they threw Mexico into the mix. Then came the great sucking sound as the much lower labor standards of Mexico kicked in. As I said at the time, “I have no problem with NAFTA, but why are we letting Mexico in it.”
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I remember the debates about the FTA, and how it was primarily Canadians that objected, because it was thought that American corporations would be free to buy up everything in Canada, essentially turning it into an American satellite state. There was some concern in the US that manufacturing would move north to take advantage of the at-the-time weaker Canadian dollar, but the difference wasn't sufficient to make it economically feasible, and most people knew it. The strong similarities, and the quickly growing Canadian dollar, meant that there wouldn't be any substantial impact, except maybe reduced tariffs on cross-border transactions.

When Mexico was added to the mix, that's when the trouble started. Manufacturing jobs quickly went south of the border, as the huge disparity in economic status meant that Mexican workers could be employed at much lower pay, making it economically very attractive for those corporations focused on short-term profits to import workers or relocate. The growing unrest, kleptocratic government, and massive increases in the power of gangs eventually drove the US out, and overseas. Even with the tariffs and other costs, the even lower costs of manufacturing in Southeast Asia, and lower service wages in India (a population with a substantial percentage of English speakers) and the newly opened Russian Federation, meant that it was cheaper and safer to export those jobs overseas than down to Mexico.

The new trade proposals would remove even more costs and restrictions, making it even easier and more profitable in the short term to offshore even more jobs, further degrading American industry and economy, and destroying the American market in the long term.
 
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casebro said:
The Constitution gives the sole responsibility of international treatys to the Senate. Can the Senate abrogate to the President?
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Is this a treaty, or an "agreement"? Treaties require 2/3 supermajority of the Senate. Agreements are usually implemented by legislation, thus a majority of both houses is needed.

The difference between a treaty and an agreement? If the president thinks it's easier to get a majority in HOR and Senate than 2/3 of the Senate (and it usually is), it's an agreement. The first instance of this, I believe, was the Texas Annexation in 1845.
 
I moved from the US to southern Ontario in 1988, and the area was most certainly affected by the US-Canada FTA. Much of the area's economy was light industrial, and many US manufacturers simply shuttered their Canadian subsidiaries to avoid paying all those pesky taxes.

Over the next few years, the recession and the GST passage took the rest of the starch out of the economy, and the only reasonably secure job in town seemed to be working for Employment Canada.

So at least from the viewpoint of that area, the FTA was bad enough, NAFTA just meant that the US got to feel the same pain as Canada.
 
The issue with the TPP is the same issue we had with CUFTA/NAFTA and other recent trade deals: the stakeholders represented are heavily weighted to business interests and labor/environmental and other interests are mostly sidelined.

In this way you end up with trade deals that benefit those stakeholders - and in this way you can have reports come out later that DO demonstrate overall economic benefits, however these same reports need to be read alongside others that get more granular and show us the winners and losers. Some industries and interests will be affected more than others.

I've always liked the *idea* of NAFTA and TPP and free trade deals - I just think we've been implementing them from the position of an ideological straight jacket, forgoing things like broad societal adjustment programs to help those deleteriously affected in vulnerable industries. Canada's Macdonald Royal Commission recommended that NAFTA be accompanied by such programs, but this did not fit the ideological tone of the party in power nor the tone of the political zeitgeist at the time. With triangulation ascendant on the left, no one was really left to ensure these types of agreements were entered into with a broader representation of stakeholders with a policy that saw a broader range of stakeholders benefit (and vulnerable stakeholders better protected/managed through the change).

I dont see that the TPP is in any way addressing these deficits. I am not apocalyptic about it as some opponents are - we probably will see some benefits. The question is how these will be distributed - and how the pain will be distributed too. I share the concerns about transparency as well, which I think are a product of how the stakeholders involved are so narrow - with broader engagement, transparency would not even be necessary.
 
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deadrose said:
I moved from the US to southern Ontario in 1988, and the area was most certainly affected by the US-Canada FTA. Much of the area's economy was light industrial, and many US manufacturers simply shuttered their Canadian subsidiaries to avoid paying all those pesky taxes.

Over the next few years, the recession and the GST passage took the rest of the starch out of the economy, and the only reasonably secure job in town seemed to be working for Employment Canada.

So at least from the viewpoint of that area, the FTA was bad enough, NAFTA just meant that the US got to feel the same pain as Canada.
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Married into a family from Cambridge, dad was machinist, others in the family were involved tangentially in the network of economic activity connected to the auto industry.

Saw up close and personal how these changes directly affected my wife's family and the region - they did ok, but it wasn't easy - and even if life is not *supposed* to be easy, we could have managed this change better IMO, and we had some policy prescriptions on the shelf we could have used.

I always wonder what would have happened to the perception of trade deals had we done it the "right way" - would people on the right/left be so scared of the next deal?

Probably not! This whirlwind of opposition is one of the dealmaker's own making.
 
deadrose said:
I moved from the US to southern Ontario in 1988, and the area was most certainly affected by the US-Canada FTA. Much of the area's economy was light industrial, and many US manufacturers simply shuttered their Canadian subsidiaries to avoid paying all those pesky taxes.
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And yet total trade between the countries ballooned after the FTA went through. (I also recall from a few years ago how some U.S. companies were finding it cheaper to operate in Canada as the national health care system here meant not having to pay lots in health benefits as compared to U.S. workers. So, as always, it seems, there is good and bad. The final analysis depends on whether the good outweighs the bad.)
 
theprestige said:
To be honest, I understand the need to keep negotiating positions secret while the negotiations are going on. If that's all this is, then I withdraw my objections. I might raise them again if the final draft is not made public for a reasonable amount of time before it goes to Congress, or if Congressional leaders quash debate before voting, or if the White House is unwilling or unprepared to address concerns about the published draft.
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In a vid I linked about Alan Grayson, Dem, he says that Congress members would be given 88 seconds each to state their opinion.
 
Personally, I am leery about it because of NAFTA when Ross Perot said that if NAFTA passes, you will hear a big whooshing sound of all the jobs leaving the country, which happened.
 
jakesteele said:
Personally, I am leery about it because of NAFTA when Ross Perot said that if NAFTA passes, you will hear a big whooshing sound of all the jobs leaving the country, which happened.
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Yep, all the jobs left the U.S. which is why its unemployment rate is 100%! :D
 
It worries me that all the negotiations are being kept secret but big business gets to be part of the negotiations.

One of the concerns is that businesses from the USA will be allow to dictate to the Australian government using rulings from the US. I doubt the plain packaging food cigarettes would have been passed into law I'd this is true, for example.
 
Corsair 115 said:
So, as always, it seems, there is good and bad. The final analysis depends on whether the good outweighs the bad.)
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THis is true but the top-level 'good' or 'bad' number is misleading - you need to get granular and map out the winners and losers. You could end up thinking the whole thing was "good" but for significant portions of the population, serious distress and economic hardship could be happening just as the financial services cats are buying their 2nd boats...

Typically we've seen white collar, financial services type employment do really well in the wake of these trade deals. Other industries can be affected in acute and very negative ways, typically blue collar.
 
a_unique_person said:
It worries me that all the negotiations are being kept secret but big business gets to be part of the negotiations.

One of the concerns is that businesses from the USA will be allow to dictate to the Australian government using rulings from the US. I doubt the plain packaging food cigarettes would have been passed into law I'd this is true, for example.
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Indeed. I find it rather ironic that this was posted in the US Politics forum, and people from the US a predicting doom and gloom for their economy, when in actual fact the US (edit: US corporations - there is a difference) will be by far and wide the greatest beneficiaries, at least compared to other parties to the "partnership"
 
Praktik said:
Typically we've seen white collar, financial services type employment do really well in the wake of these trade deals. Other industries can be affected in acute and very negative ways, typically blue collar.
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And that's the thing. After NAFTA, the US was forced to move from a manufacturing economy to a service economy after a huge chunk of manufacturing left the country. The upper echelons benefited while the working classes were severely impacted.

With further loosening of the rules regarding offshoring and H1B visas, a lot of those service industry jobs began to go away as well, resulting in mass layoffs of the lower echelons, especially in tech industries. The end of the late-'90s, early-'00s dotcom bubble saw mass closures of domestic call centers as those jobs were outsourced to India. The financial sector also saw substantial layoffs of the lower-level accountants and data-entry techs as those jobs were sent to Russian agencies.

The economy grew, but only in the top, as high-level service personnel and management remained intact. Average time spent on unemployment rose from weeks to months (and during the depression, extended to years, requiring the government to extend unemployment benefits beyond what workers were normally eligible for). Many service and tech industry workers were forced to retrain and take positions that compensated them at much lower rates than their previous jobs. Others were forced to give up on full-time employment and work as contractors, at reduced pay and benefits, often for the same companies who had previously laid them off.

And this trend continues today. Major tech industries are hiring fewer and fewer American developers and support staff; and are importing huge numbers of foreign workers from India and Russia, particularly in my area. (Which, as an aside, has had some rather unpleasant consequences for my region, as the rapidly growing Russian immigrant community has become responsible for an huge and unprecedented spike in violent crime against GLBTs).
 
luchog said:
After NAFTA, the US was forced to move from a manufacturing economy to a service economy after a huge chunk of manufacturing left the country. The upper echelons benefited while the working classes were severely impacted.
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Correlation is not causation. They are many possible influences on how and why things happen as they do. I would expect in something as complicated as a national economy there are a myriad of factors at play, everything from taxation policy to typical corporate business philosophy.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Correlation is not causation. They are many possible influences on how and why things happen as they do. I would expect in something as complicated as a national economy there are a myriad of factors at play, everything from taxation policy to typical corporate business philosophy.
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Yep. We had been moving toward a service economy long before NAFTA was ever thought of.
 
luchog said:
And that's the thing. After NAFTA, the US was forced to move from a manufacturing economy to a service economy after a huge chunk of manufacturing left the country. The upper echelons benefited while the working classes were severely impacted.
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For this to be true, then something also "forced" us to move from an agrarian society to a manufacturing society. What was it?
 
Corsair 115 said:
Correlation is not causation. They are many possible influences on how and why things happen as they do. I would expect in something as complicated as a national economy there are a myriad of factors at play, everything from taxation policy to typical corporate business philosophy.
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Those things do, however, seem to be correlated.
 
350.org

350 Responds to House Votes on Trade Package
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/06/12/350-responds-house-votes-trade-package

“Today’s votes to stall fast-track and TPP are a major win for anyone who cares about climate change. This disastrous deal would extend the world's dependence on fracked gas, forbid our negotiators from ever using trade agreements in the fight against global warming, and make it easier for big polluters to burn carbon while suing anyone who gets in the way. That message clearly broke through today, as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi got up, bucked enormous pressure, and rallied against the deal, specifically citing concerns about its impact on climate change. Today was a big win, but the thousands of climate activists across the country who stood up and linked arms with fellow progressives to get us here won’t rest until fast-track and TPP are dead for good.”
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