Common Dreams
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| (Image: CD) |
The
trade deal, negotiated in secret, is now trying to receive fact track
authority so that it can be rushed through Congress with little say by
elected lawmakers. The past couple of decades
of globalization have been a disaster for planetary ecosystems,
indigenous peoples, and most middle-class citizens, but a gravy train
for big investors, investment bankers, and managers of transnational
corporations. This unprecedented expansion of international trade was
driven by the convergence of key resources, developments, and
inventions: cheap oil, satellite communications, container ships,
computerized monitoring of inventories, the flourishing of multinational
corporations, the proliferation of liberal trade treaties (including
NAFTA), and the emergence of transnational bodies such as the World
Trade Organization.
"Want to label GM foods? Sorry,
that’s a barrier to trade. Want local schools to buy healthy food from
local farmers? Nope, that might violate the rights of Big Ag. Want to
protect a forest? Stand aside, you’re in the way of profits."
Economists said everyone would eventually benefit, but
casualties quickly mounted. Inflation-adjusted wages for American
workers stagnated. Manufacturing towns throughout the Northeast and
Midwest withered. Meanwhile, China began burning immense amounts of coal
to make mountains of toys, furniture, clothing, tools, appliances, and
consumer electronics, cloaking its cities in a pall of toxic fumes and
driving its greenhouse gas emissions to world record-setting levels. In
effect, the United States has been importing cheap consumer goods while
exporting jobs and polluting industries. In both China and the US,
levels of economic inequality have soared.
Now comes the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a new trade
deal negotiated in secret (only corporations get to contribute to, and
look at, the draft language). The point of the Treaty: to double down on
globalization at precisely the moment in time when the entire
enterprise is beginning to fail as a result of stubbornly high oil
prices, worsening climate change impacts (floods, droughts, wildfires),
debt deflation, and middle-class fears of losing even more ground.
