Rally outside the TPP talks in Sydney, Oct. 25, 2014. Credit: SumOfUs/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Nov 11 2014 (IPS)

For the third year in a row, government negotiators for 12 Pacific Rim countries have missed an internal deadline to reach agreement on a controversial U.S.-led trade deal.

And though negotiators for the accord, known as the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), say the process is nearing completion, critics of the deal are expressing optimism that both public opinion and political timing are increasingly against the deal.“TPP proponents know they’re under the clock. The resistance against the TPP is as strong as it’s ever been, and is only growing stronger.” -- Arthur Stamoulis of the Citizens Trade Campaign

“The reason the Obama administration keeps missing deadline after deadline, year after year, is that it’s pushing an extremely unpopular agenda that benefits a handful of big corporations at the expense of the economy, environment and public health in each TPP country and beyond,” Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Citizens Trade Campaign, an advocacy group that opposes the TPP, told IPS.

“People and parliaments across the Pacific Rim are starting to realise that the TPP would be bad news for their countries. That includes here in the U.S.”

TPP negotiators confirmed the news on Monday at a regional summit in Beijing. President Barack Obama’s administration, which has been spearheading the TPP talks, had set the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping as a key target for agreement.

President Obama has made the TPP a central part of his attempt to reorient the United States towards Asia – and to economically circumscribe China, which isn’t party to the talks. On Monday, the president himself was in Beijing, where he acknowledged that the TPP process now needed additional political pressure.

“During the past few weeks, our teams have made good progress in resolving several outstanding issues regarding a potential agreement. Today is an opportunity at the political level for us to break some remaining logjams,” the president told trade ministers in Beijing.

“To ensure that TPP is a success, we also have to make sure that all of our people back home understand the benefits for them – that it means more trade, more good jobs, and higher incomes for people throughout the region, including the United States.”

The president said the TPP talks have the possibility of resulting in a “historic achievement”. A statement released by the 12 countries party to the talks suggested that “the end” of the negotiations is “coming into focus”.

Yet disagreements remain, with media reports pointing to agricultural protectionism as proving to be particularly thorny. Others say that substantive frustration remains over a raft of disparate issues, many far from traditional trade concerns – including environmental impact, labour safeguards, medicinal pricing, patent rules and investors’ ability to circumvent national law, among other concerns.

In many ways, it is the broad scope of issues on which the TPP touches that is responsible for strengthening public concern. Now, with President Obama down to his final two years in office, critics are increasingly confident in their ability to stave off agreement.

With the U.S. 2016 president elections likely to heat up as early as the middle of next year, passage of any major trade agreement by U.S. lawmakers would be improbable until 2017 at the earliest.

“TPP proponents know they’re under the clock,” the Citizen Trade Campaign’s Stamoulis says. “The resistance against the TPP is as strong as it’s ever been, and is only growing stronger.”

Corporatist concerns

Last week’s national election here in the U.S. did change the discussion around one issue that would be key for any eventual TPP agreement: whether President Obama is allowed to negotiate unilaterally, or whether he would need Congress’s point-by-point approval of a proposed accord.

Because trade agreements typically touch on so many domestically sensitive issues, U.S. presidents in the past have asked for approval to negotiate without input from lawmakers. Such “fast track” authorities then allow Congress only a single up-or-down vote at the end of the process.

Yet due to concern among U.S. constituents over the potential impact of the TPP on the domestic economy, both houses of the U.S. Congress has been reluctant to approve President Obama’s requests for these authorities. Still, last week’s election some have suggested that this could change.

The issue could now come down to a debate that is taking place within the Republican Party, which increased its majority in the House of Representatives and in January will take over control of the Senate. Yet while the House has consistently opposed passage of fast track authorities for President Obama, the new Republican Senate leadership has suggested that such legislation could now be a key priority early next year.

“Most of [President Obama’s] party is unenthusiastic about international trade. We think it’s good for America,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate and the figure who will set the body’s agenda this coming year, said at a press conference following last week’s election.

“And the president and I discussed that … and I think he’s interested in moving forward. I said, ‘Send us trade agreements. We’re anxious to take a look at them.’”

The new potential movement on fast track authorities has sparked a furious debate among conservatives, particularly between those who have traditionally supported big business and those increasingly concerned about globalisation’s impact on U.S. workers. This division has strengthened since the 2008 economic downturn.

“It’s only in the past few years that we’ve seen a small cabal of internationalist, Big Business-allied Republicans emerge, and it is this corporatist wing that has pushed for free trade,” Curtis Ellis, a spokesperson with the American Jobs Alliance and executive director of ObamaTrade.com, a conservative watchdog site, told IPS.

“If we’re going to move all of our factories overseas, the American people are going to get stuck with the short end of stick. And really, even supporters of the TPP admit that it’s not about trade but rather about investment – about securing overarching global governance rules on investment.”

Indeed, of the TPP’s 29 proposed chapters, just five deal directly with trade, according to Public Citizen, a consumer interest group here.

“[T]he non-trade provisions would promote lower wages, higher medicine prices, more unsafe imported food, and new rights for foreign investors to demand payments from national treasuries over domestic laws they believe undermine the new TPP privileges they would gain,” Lori Wallach, the head of the group’s Global Trade Watch programme, said Monday.

“Despite the intense secrecy of the negotiations … many TPP nations have woken up to the fact that the deal now on offer would be damaging to most people, even if the large corporations pushing the deal might improve their profit margins.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

Members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2010. Credit: Gobierno de Chile/CC by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

Internal government documents leaked Monday offer a sombre picture of ongoing negotiations towards a major free-trade area covering much of the Pacific Rim. The area is a key objective for the administration of President Barack Obama but has been harshly criticised by a broad spectrum of global civil society.

While U.S. trade officials have insisted on December as a deadline for agreement on the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a new briefing written by one of those 12 governments suggests that negotiators remain far apart on several notable policy areas. The picture that emerges is one of an intransigent U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) being increasingly isolated in the negotiations.

“[T]he U.S. is exerting great pressure to close as many issues as possible … However the Chapters that were reviewed by the [chief negotiators] did not record much progress,” the memo, reportedly written within the past two weeks by one of the governments party to the TPP negotiations and published on Monday by WikiLeaks, stated.

The U.S. chief negotiator “met with all 12 countries and said that they were not progressing according to plan. One country remarked that up until now there had not been any perceivable substantial movement on the part of the U.S., and that is the reason for this situation.” "It’s clear who’s behind the U.S. agenda: large corporate interests."
-- Arthur Stamoulis

TPP negotiators are currently in Singapore for what has been widely seen as a closing round of talks towards the TPP, which has been seriously debated for almost four years.

The narrative of looming success received additional momentum following Saturday’s small but significant agreement under the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the global body’s first accord since its creation in 1995. Following that success, seen as an important fillip for multilateral trade mechanisms, ministers from the TPP countries flew straight to Singapore, where they’re holding talks through Tuesday.

“The latest leaks reveal the USTR continues to bully Asian countries into accepting some of the worst corporate expansions in any international agreement,” Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Citizens Trade Campaign, an advocacy group here, told IPS.

“It’s good to see that many countries are continuing to resist these provisions, but it’s discouraging to see the U.S. going to the mat so strongly for this corporate power rush. It will be interesting to see whether they do the same for labour rights, human rights and the environment.”

No inevitability

The memo’s authenticity has not been substantiated, nor is it known which government’s views it may reflect. A spokesperson for the USTR on Monday told the media that some elements of the document are “outdated” or “totally inaccurate.”

Either way, the document’s substance depicts a pessimistic narrative and calls the possibility of meeting an end-December deadline “very difficult” to imagine.

“This leak guts the sense of inevitability about TPP that the negotiators have been so relentlessly building,” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a consumer watchdog group, said Monday. “It shows, thankfully, how far from agreement the countries are and it puts people in all of the involved countries on notice about just how dangerous this deal would be for them.”

The TPP negotiations process has been pilloried by civil society due to its secrecy, with much of the public’s knowledge of the substance of the talks coming from leaks such as Monday’s.

On the other hand, some of the world’s largest multinational companies have reportedly been given prime access to the discussions, and critics have warned that corporate interests have had an irrevocable impact on the broad sweep of the TPP’s evolving outline. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the country’s largest business lobby group, has wholeheartedly embraced the TPP’s opportunity, stating it would “pay huge dividends for the United States.”

But supporters and opponents alike agree that the stakes are high. If eventually signed, the TPP would provide a blueprint for U.S. trade arrangements for the foreseeable future, and as an open-ended agreement, it could also expand as required.

Still, the new leaked memo outlines dozens of outstanding disagreements, many substantive and most involving the United States, in at least 15 broad chapters. On several important issues, such as environmental and labour safeguards, it appears that the discussion has barely even begun.

Sovereign investors

One of the most controversial issues appears to be a strong push by the United States to require the creation of an independent mediation mechanism for disputes between investors and states. Such “investor-state tribunals” have been a regular part of bilateral U.S. trade deals since the 1990s, particularly in Latin America, and allow foreign investors to sue governments outside of the national legal system for policies seen as impinging on profits.

U.S. negotiators are now seen as pushing an even more stringent tribunal proposal and refusing to back down in the face of opposition. The memo noted that this is “the most important issue for the majority of members” but complained that the United States “has shown no flexibility on its proposal, being one of the most significant barriers to closing the [investment-related] chapter.”

Reportedly, the tribunal proposal is being supported only by the United States and Japan, with the rest objecting to the fact that the provision would apply to “nearly all significant contracts that can be made between a State and a foreign investor.”

“Apparently this proposal would go beyond existing pacts in terms of the powers given to corporations, which would apply to contracting in mining, oil exports, public works and more,” Citizen Trade’s Stamoulis said. “The fact that all TPP countries except Japan appear to be resisting USTR’s worst pushes on investor-state disputes is encouraging, but the document suggests the United States is being completely inflexible – to the point of threatening the agreement.”

Still, it is unclear whether deadlock over the investor-state tribunal issue could actually scupper the broader TPP talks in which the Obama administration is deeply invested.

“Other countries are still holding strong, but it’s an open question how long they will be able to hold out as negotiations shift into the political realm,” Stamoulis said. “At the same time, it’s clear who’s behind the [U.S.] agenda: these large corporate interests. If they don’t get their way, they might take their ball and go home.”

Intellectual property provisions proposed by the United States would extend monopoly powers derived from patents to pharmaceutical companies that sell their medicines abroad. Credit: Bigstock

By Jared Metzker
WASHINGTON, Jul 16 2013 (IPS)

As a new round of talks behind a major proposed free trade area, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), get underway this week, the United States is pushing several developing countries to accept provisions that critics say would make it more difficult for their citizens to access medicine.

“The concern about access to medicine, and that the TPP deal will lead to high health-care costs, is huge,” Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign, a fair trade advocacy group based here, told IPS.“TPP is certainly not being written in the interest of small business owners or working people.” -- Arthur Stamoulis of the Citizens Trade Campaign

On Monday, as negotiations for the TPP enter their 18th round, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), a humanitarian organisation, reflected this concern, urged negotiating countries “to remove terms that could block people from accessing affordable medicines, choke off production of generic medicines, and constrain the ability of governments to pass laws in the interest of public health.”

Negotiations for the TPP, which officially started in 2010, are currently being held in Malaysia, and the countries participating include the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Canada and Mexico.

Japan is expected to join at the end of this round, while others have expressed interest in signing on, as well.

The Office of the United States Trade Representative has explained that the purpose of the deal is to “enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, promote innovation, economic growth and development, and support the creation and retention of jobs.”

Yet critics have long warned that the United States appeared to be setting onerous conditions for any agreement, while complaining that the talks have been held in near secrecy, lacking oversight even from the U.S. Congress.

While intellectual property provisions proposed by the United States may be intended to promote innovation, MSF notes that they would extend monopoly powers derived from patents to pharmaceutical companies that sell their medicines abroad.

This means that it would take longer for cheaper generic drugs to come to market in low-income countries, where citizens often struggle to afford basic necessities.

Further, by hamstringing Asian suppliers of generic drugs, the effect of TTP’s restrictive intellectual property provisions could ultimately reverberate beyond the countries involved in the agreement.

“The critically important role that many Asian countries have in supplying both generic medicines and the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to produce drugs is in jeopardy because of new restrictions proposed in the TPP,” says Judit Rius Sanjuan, U.S. manager of MSF’s Access Campaign.

“The TPP threatens to put a stranglehold on the world’s supply of affordable treatments, with dire consequences for patients, treatment providers, and pharmaceutical producers in developing countries.”

The proposed agreement could facilitate “evergreening” by patent-holding pharmaceutical companies, a term that refers to legal manoeuvres that, when successful, lead to monopoly powers being maintained longer than the 20 years typically allotted by patents.

Imposing these types of new restrictions would run counter to previous international agreements and national legislation under which Washington has pledged to expand access to generic medicines.

Any restriction in access to such medicines would also affect the United States’ own global health goals. Generics are said to make up some 98 percent of the medicines used by PEPFAR, the United States’ flagship anti-HIV/AIDS programme and the world’s largest.

MSF calls the practice of evergreening “abusive”. Further, under a free trade agreement all adhering countries would conform their laws, and the standard promoted by the United States would, the group is warning, do so in a way that would make evergreening more feasible abroad.

Sense of urgency

For the administration of President Barack Obama, there has been a sense of urgency to finish the TPP negotiations by the fall. Some observers have suggested that this could lead countries that would otherwise reject the clauses affecting access to medicine to allow them to remain.

“We are hearing from other negotiating teams that the pressure to finalise this agreement by October is rising,” Sanjuan told IPS during a previous round of negotiations, “and they fear that if there is not more time for substantive discussion, this chapter could stand.”

She also notes that negotiations are being carried out in secret and without input from civil society. Her office became aware of the clauses related to intellectual property and access to medicine only after text of a chapter was leaked to them.

In fact, concerned groups and the media have had extremely limited opportunities to speak with negotiators. Much of the communication has occurred at so-called “stakeholder meetings”, wherein groups are allowed to make brief presentations to certain negotiators and given controlled access to speak face-to-face with them.

IPS recently attended a stakeholder meeting related to another major proposed U.S.-led free trade agreement and was told by multiple delegates that the information they could divulge was very limited.

That lack of transparency is being interpreted by some as a clear indication that the TPP agreement is not being negotiated in the interest of the general public. Indeed, the vast majority of those who have had access to the TPP talks have been representatives of major corporations.

“TPP is certainly not being written in the interest of small business owners or working people,” the Citizens Trade Campaign’s Stamoulis says. Instead, he suggests it will serve the interest of “a small handful of very powerful corporations”.

Stamoulis, too, notes mounting pressure on negotiators to finish the deal by the end of the year.

“They’re definitely going full steam ahead to get this thing done as fast as possible, there’s no doubt about that,” he says.

For her part, Sanjuan recommends that the urgency of those looking to push the agreement through be met by urgency on the part of those who want to avoid restricting medicinal access to poor people.

“The time for negotiators to fix the TPP is now, in this round of talks, before political pressure escalates and a deal that is bad for public health is sealed in the interest of time.”