As President Obama continues to push the TPP trade deal, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has accused the White House of lying about the proposal’s finer points, citing sources who said “if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.”
The Obama administration has presented the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership as a 12-nation pact which would “boost US economic growth, support American jobs, and grow Made-in-America exports to some of the most dynamic and fastest growing countries in the world.”
By and the large, the American press has played along, even though the deal worries environmentalists, unions, and human rights groups.

© REUTERS/ Kevin Lamarque
US Free Trade Deals to ‘Write Rules’ for International Trade – Kerry
“Concessions are being made right now to win Democratic support,” Kevin O’Marah writes for Forbes, “but the bottom line is that the TPP is vital to global trade.”
But at least one dissenting voice has spoken up. Writing in response to the president’s appearance on MSNBC, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out her objections to the TPP.
“The government doesn’t want you to read this massive new trade agreement. It’s top secret,” Warren writes. “Why? Here’s the real answer people have given me: ‘We can’t make this deal public because if the American people saw what was in it, they would be opposed to it.'”
Warren points out that while corporate interests have had ample access to the deal’s inner workings, “the doors stay locked for the regular people whose jobs are on the line.”
“Before we sign on to rush through a deal like that – no amendments, no delays, no ability to block a bad bill – the American people should get to see what’s in it.”

© AP Photo/ Charles Dharapak
WikiLeaks: US Govt, Hollywood Secretly Coordinated Reaction to TPP Leaks
Any trade agreement can have a huge impact, especially one that involves Australia, Brunei, Canada, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, and Singapore – roughly 40% of the world’s economy.
As a senator, Warren can review aspects of the deal that the public doesn’t have access to, and as such she has also expressed concern that it could affect regulatory rules put in place to prevent a financial collapse like the 2008 crisis.
“We’ve all seen the tricks and traps that corporations hide in the fine print of contracts,” she writes. “We’ve all seen the provisions they slip into legislation to rig the game in their favor. Now just imagine what they have done working behind closed door with TPP.”

© AFP 2015/ BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
Protesters Rally in Washington Against US Free-Trade Authority Legislation
“If the American people would be opposed to a trade agreement if they saw it,” she adds, “then that agreement should not become the law of the United States.”
On Wednesday, the Senate Finance Committee approved fast-track legislation which brings the TPP one step closer to actualization. Despite opposition from many Democrats, the bill passed by a vote of 20-6.
Speaking before a group of supporters Thursday evening, President Obama again defended the TPP, insisting it was nothing like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which was so controversial among Democrats in the 1990s.
“When people say that this trade deal is bad for working families, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Obama said. “I take that personally. My entire presidency has been about helping working families.”
“The Chamber of Commerce didn’t elect me twice,” he added, “working folks did.”

Sputnik

Organizing for Action Tries to Soothe Dems With Misleading Email on Fast Track Trade Authority

By Jon Schwarz @tinyrevolution

(This post is from our new blog: Unofficial Sources.)
The millions of people who signed up to get email from Mitt Romney in 2012 would be pretty irked if they started getting messages now from his team about a super new bill in Congress that raises taxes, cuts the Pentagon’s budget in half and forcibly marries every registered Republican man to Neil Patrick Harris.
So you can imagine how members of Organizing for Action, or OFA, felt when they got email on Friday telling them about a super new “Trade Promotion Authority” bill. Passage of the Trade Promotion Authority, better known as “fast track,” would pave the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, or TPP, which includes a grab-bag of things the Democratic base absolutely loathes. It would  raise the cost of prescription drugs, give Obama an environmental trade record “worse than George Bush’s,” create a special legal system for multinational corporations to kill any domestic law that hurts profits, and much more.
The OFA email was especially head-turning because OFA is a successor organization to President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns (which had the same initials, then standing for Obama for America), built on the email lists developed during those campaigns of millions of volunteers and supporters. And any political campaign’s email lists are, in a real sense, the shared creation of everyone involved in the campaign.
The OFA email did not ask members to take action supporting fast track; instead, it appears to be an attempt to mollify them enough so they don’t take action opposing it. In any case, the email is filled with assertions clearly crafted to mislead OFA members:

• “… though the TPA is often called ‘fast track,’ that’s a bit of a misnomer. TPA is a bill like any other (it must go through both the Senate and the House, and then be signed by the President).”

This is embarrassing. No one has ever believed “fast track” was called that because the fast track bills themselves were fast-tracked. They’ve been called that because they fast-track trade agreements introduced later.

• “This has been the trade agreement process for decades. In fact, presidents on both sides of the aisle have been relying on Congress to pass versions of the TPA since 1974.”

Congress first gave the president Fast Track authority in 1974, but it expired in 1994. It was passed again in 2002 under George W. Bush and lasted until 2007. So presidents haven’t had fast track authority since 1974, they’ve had it for 25 of those years, or about 60 percent of the time.
Moreover, not having fast track after 1994 didn’t stop the Clinton administration from negotiating and passing 130 trade agreements.

• “The rules set by Congress through the TPA guide the framework for the final trade agreement — the President’s team will then negotiate the deal on the international stage …”

The fast track bill does not set any “rules”; it describes “negotiating objectives” that Congress thinks would be nice, but these don’t bind the Obama administration in any way. And “the President’s team” won’t start negotiating the deal if fast track passes — they’ve been negotiating it for five years, and are clearly almost finished.

• “The good news is that this bill ensures … that the entire process is transparent.”

This is perhaps the most deceptive sentence of the email, because for five years the Obama administration has been pathologically secretive about the TPP. Since they began negotiating it in 2010 there’s been essentially no way for regular people to learn what the the treaty contains except for drafts leaked to WikiLeaks. At first Obama’s trade negotiators even refused to allow members of Congress to see the current text. Meanwhile, many corporate executives, as members of U.S. trade advisory boards, are allowed to see relevant sections whenever they want.
It’s true that the fast track bill will require the Obama administration to make the final text of the TPP public, at long last. But fast track also will forbid Congress from making any changes to it whatsoever. So the “transparent process” will be Obama telling Congress: here it is, take it or leave it.
If you’re a member of OFA and would like to say something about the organization’s support for Fast Track authority and the TPP, please get in touch.
Photo: Alex Milan Tracy/NurPhoto/Sipa/AP

 TheIntercept

Learn More

The TPP would be a nightmare for Internet users everywhere — here are a few articles about the worst parts.

• Force sites to remove allegedly infringing content from the web without a court order — similar to SOPA. (Read more)

• Create harsh criminal penalties for journalists and whistleblowers. (Read more)

• Punish Internet users who share copyrighted material, even without any personal gain. (Read more)

• Limit Fair Use to make copyright even more restrictive on creative innovation. (Read more)

There are a lot of other reasons groups oppose the TPP beyond its impact on the free and open Internet. You can find out more information about those reasons at StopFastTrack.com.
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