TPP is dead, but will its replacement be worse?

The TPP Is Officially Dead. Thank the People's Movement, Not Trump

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), marking a new phase for the broad movement that sought to kill the corporate-friendly trade deal.

Progressive groups campaigned hard against the 12-nation trade agreement which they said threatened public health, environmental protections, and human rights while handing a big win to corporate interests.

Indeed, digital rights group Fight for the Future was quick to credit that movement with Monday's victory. "The victory against the TPP belongs to the people, not to Donald Trump or any other politician," said Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer.

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."....

epaulo13 wrote:

The TPP Is Officially Dead. Thank the People's Movement, Not Trump

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order withdrawing the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), marking a new phase for the broad movement that sought to kill the corporate-friendly trade deal.

Progressive groups campaigned hard against the 12-nation trade agreement which they said threatened public health, environmental protections, and human rights while handing a big win to corporate interests.

Indeed, digital rights group Fight for the Future was quick to credit that movement with Monday's victory. "The victory against the TPP belongs to the people, not to Donald Trump or any other politician," said Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer.

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."....

Due to the hard work it is natural to want the people to have credit. It could also be a mistake.

The TPP should have been defeated for those reasons but that is not why it was.

And the article's question "what will it be replaced with" is the cause for the worry. This is not a US government that cares about any of those issues, rather it is hostile to some of them.

The TPP died only to be replaced with US naked, aggressive bullying.

The TPP will not have the significant negative impact on US workers and environment that was planned. Instead they will get a direct negative impact from their own government.

In Canada what should we cheer? the US instead of the TPP will bully us. Our workers will suffer due to the way the US wants to manage trade and the whole planet will suffer due to their attacks on the environment.

As bad as the TPP was -- the victory of Trump hardly presents anything better -- just a different cup of poison.

I am not convinced that it was the concerns raised that caused US voters to back Trump. It was a more insular, outwardly hostility to the outside that fed protectionism. This was a side effect of the same movement that is hostile to immigrants -- just on trade policy. From this direction I cannot celebrate it.

Had this been a President Sanders cancelling it wanting to negotiate envionmentally and socially progressive trade practices then we woudl have a thing to celebrate.

epaulo13 wrote:

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."....

..this is what we should cheer sean..for a short while at least. and people already have a good idea what they face and have been organizing for it since before the election. the womens' march that happened on a global level is an indication.

Do you think that election of Trump is going to increase or decrease global dominance of capital over people?

Certainly we can celebrate the attention and the awareness brought by opponents of the TPP but can we credit that awareness with its defeat? I am not sure we can.

epaulo13 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."....

..this is what we should cheer sean..for a short while at least. and people already have a good idea what they face and have been organizing for it since before the election. the womens' march that happened on a global level is an indication.

Do you think that election of Trump is going to increase or decrease global dominance of capital over people?

Certainly we can celebrate the attention and the awareness brought by opponents of the TPP but can we credit that awareness with its defeat? I am not sure we can.

..my focus is not on all the bad things that can happen but what the response will be. the only way to defeat whatever is thrown at us is via solidarity. i see the solidarity growing in response to the trumps of the world. i see no other path for us but struggle. no other choice. and i see this tpp as a victory.

Certainly I hope with you for the best possible outcome. I agree solidarity is needed.

epaulo13 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

"An unprecedented international movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together, and lead nothing short of an uprising that stopped an outright corporate takeover of our democratic process," Greer continued. "Together we sounded the alarm and made the TPP so politically toxic that no presidential candidate who wanted to be elected could support it."....

..this is what we should cheer sean..for a short while at least. and people already have a good idea what they face and have been organizing for it since before the election. the womens' march that happened on a global level is an indication.

Do you think that election of Trump is going to increase or decrease global dominance of capital over people?

Certainly we can celebrate the attention and the awareness brought by opponents of the TPP but can we credit that awareness with its defeat? I am not sure we can.

..my focus is not on all the bad things that can happen but what the response will be. the only way to defeat whatever is thrown at us is via solidarity. i see the solidarity growing in response to the trumps of the world. i see no other path for us but struggle. no other choice. and i see this tpp as a victory.

Certainly I hope with you for the best possible outcome. I agree solidarity is needed.

..do you have a view on global solidarity sean?  where do you see it in relation to where we are at today?

I am not sure what you mean. What are you asking?

I think global solidarity is a very difficult proposition in a context where there is intense competion for what may not be just limited resources but what may not even exist at all. And this in a nationalist context.

If you are asking how to achieve this solidarity, I don't know. I recognize the value but I don't know what would help achieve it.

Some Canadians seem to be fearful for themselves and hopeful that Trump just means to beat up on Mexico. It is okay so long as we are not the target. That is not what solidarity looks like. I may not have the answer you are looking for.

As a socialist I should support "globalization" but there is a major reason I don't support it.  The system is not about lifting people out of poverty and standing together.  It pits nation vs nation and its primerly reason to exist is to make people profit.  But the worst part of the globalization is that it raises anger agaisnt those that should be helped.  How are you going to react if your career is ended in a western country because your job moved to a location where a person earns 1/10 of your salary.  This labour arbitrage is the reason that we are seeing right wing parties winning.  Its ironic that the more succesful globalization became is was creating its seed of destruction. 

I made it clear in many previous posts that I believed that the power of politics will overide economic power.  If trump is serious about tarrifs running a surplus trade position then current system is dead.  The last major crisis in the international trading system was in around 1970's when the bretton woods system collasped because the US economy could manage to hold the system together.  It was based on hybrid gold/us dollar system.  Nations used the fiat dollar to trade but any nation could go to the US government and trade their fiat dollars for set amount of gold.  By the sixites the surplus trade position was to a deficit trade position in the US.  The first to get out of this system were the French when they started demand gold instead dollars for the goods.  The drain of gold from the US became critical and gold window was closed and system came apart.

The replacement was the fiat dollar system.  The link with dollar and gold was broken and now us dollar was good as gold.  The current system is based on the us accepting infinite trade deficits and letting the global community to sell into the US domestic market with little interference.  The US pays for goods with us treasury notes and in return the global community provides physical goods in return.  Again the problem infinte trade decficts to the world(coresponding debt), how many jobs can the US loss to trade before their is a political reaction AKA Trump.

I am not sure I quite understand what you are saying. I think you are expressing some sense of a directional force. I would like to think this way but I have to admit I am unable to. Rather I think we are in a dynamic where a level of discomfort or pain pushes us to make change for the better but this ceases once some are comfortable enough. In other words the progress we seek is self defeating becuase we lose our collective ability to work to improve things when we make some progress. Then we fall back and start over.

Only when things are widely bad will people work together to improve things. Greed and competition create divisions preventing progress.

I think we have to fight this dynamic with solidarit. When there is enough we actually might succeed.

Thanks NDPP, right on target...and we have Trump to thank...or perhaps more accurately the collapsing economics in the heart of the USA for its globalization and financialization processes.......

just say no to NAFTA...no doubt this is the coming battle...but as a first step to align forces to fight NAFTA and globalization generally....the fake left intelligentsia must be exposed...while a genuine socialist and decentralist and ecologic movement must arise!

sorry to piss some here...but this is historical...the left always has had its neoliberal social democratic make the best of a bad system adherents....no...system change.....with Trump the opportunity has arisen!

How about procesing our trees  for lumber and rebuild our furniture industry in Canada, kick out Ikea et al...how about turning over our forests to community forests with ecologic provisos, so that the communities can utilize the lumber and firewood for their own interests...but that takes alternatives to capitalism...a horrid thought of course to the fake left who pretend to be concerned for people´s welfare...capitalism with a human face...the farce that this is of course....

Saying no to NAFTA is not the easy thing it was prior to saying yes.

Back when we were fighting free trade in 1987-8 it was pointed out that you cannot realistically get out of these without significant loss. The toll is paid going both direction. The adjustment to the agreement meant losses and gains to Canadians. We argued then that the losses exceeded the gains and the net result was very negative. We lost and we, as a country, paid those losses.

Now if we leave we will lose what we did gain but what we lost will not return.

The same thing happened with NAFTA. This is why we always characterized it as one-way even although boosters of both agreements claimed we had options to get out. At the time some pointed out that both had the option to kill the deal and that it could be used as  extortion by one party towards a weaker one. This is now happening

We may have been able to claim that going into NAFTA will be a net loss from the status quo (pre NAFTA) and staying out would not be a loss. We now have to admit that getting out of NAFTA is also going to be a net loss as we give up whatever gains we had in it (for which we paid too high a price).

The problem is staying in NAFTA will also be a net loss from the status quo. The status quo is off the table now. Going into lopsided argreements and dependencies with a much more powerful partner was a bad idea and this is proving it.

So the problem here is we have to advocate going in a direction of loss since all directions are losses now. Getting out of NAFTA may be the least costly but it is still going to hurt.

We lost the last argument. The present argument is in some ways harder and more complicated to make.

We will be worse off than we are today by getting out. We will be even worse if we stay in for the bullying.

This is what blackmail looks like. There is no possible win.

Unionist wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

Back when we were fighting free trade in 1987-8 it was pointed out that you cannot realistically get out of these without significant loss.

Who said that? Someone who was actually mobilizing against the FTA at the time? Names, please. 

Quote:

Now if we leave we will lose what we did gain but what we lost will not return.

I know we lost thousands of good unionized (and other) manufacturing jobs, and infrastructure for those jobs. Please remind me exactly what we gained. My memory isn't what it used to be.

Quote:

The same thing happened with NAFTA.

So, same questions. Who said we wouldn't be able to get out without "significant loss". And what, exactly, would we lose?

I'm tired of mass psychosis. I listen to the CBC and they say, "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, we might lose NAFTA and NATO - and we've already lost the TPP!!!!"

Do I really need to hear that here?

I'm more interested in epaulo's question: Who is going to organize to get rid of NAFTA (and I'll add NATO), and how?

Quote:

This is what blackmail looks like. There is no possible win.

Ah well, that settles it then I guess.

Let me go back to the books I published at the time. Do you need addresses? It was a very common warning that there would be losses both directions -- I was involved in this significantly.

The argument was that we would trade something bigger for something much smaller that then we would have to give up if we wanted out. This was the answer Maude Barlow, Majorie Montgomery Bowker and many others put out to point out how ridiculous the opt-out provisions were.

We were all told by boosters that you could go in without worries becuase you could just pull out by invoking termination. Opponents argued that it was not as easy as that -- that we would lose everything at stake to go in and whatever we got back -- which would be much less -- would be lost on the way out.

Bowker said in On Guard For Thee, An Independent Review of the Free Trade Agreement, published 1988, selling 53,000 copies sitting 12 weeks on the best seller list:

P 73

"Some Canadians have been heard to say, "Let's sign the Agreement anyway. We can terminate it on six months' notice if we don't like it."

"However it is defintely not so simple. For one thing the termination clause works both ways. The United States could use it against Canada to force agreement on certain concessions by threatening to pull out - at a time unsuitable to Canada. This could arise in the controversial subject of unfair subsidies which must still be worked out in the coming years. The United States might threaten to terminate the Agreement unless the new definitions are to their satisfaction.

"No matter which country were to terminate the Agreement, it could place Canada in a serious predicament. Once the Agreement takes effect in January 1989, Canadian Industries would begin 'gearing up' in anticipation of greater exports to the United States. This could include costly capital expenditures for upgrading factories, modernizing equipment and re-training workers. Once Canada had embnarked on an industrial conversion process, cancellation would create another major disruption to our national economy. Indeed we would be in a worse position if we were to enter into the Agreement, then terminate it, than if we had never entered it at all.

"For these reasons, termination cannot be looked upon as a "way out." It is better that Canadians understand the Agreement now, before giving it final approval."

I do not have HT Wilson's book at had from 1989 -- but in that book he pointed out that there was a steep price to enter and no ability to hang on to any gains, however limited they might be, on getting out.

So does this count?

I was very, very involved in the debate at the time myself. I read the agreement line by line -- something even the minister responsible for trade said he had not done. I include myself in those who predicted often that the gains would be small but then would represent losses if we wanted to get out. A toll in both directions. To be sure the price coming in may be higher but it is given up in not just what was (whole industries) but also potential. The loss on the way out will be paid not just in trade opportuntieis but the relationships built in the context of the FTA. Particualry the FTA is not just about trade but about investments. It served to increase the number of branch-plant arrangements with Canada such that with the agreement gone more would pick up stakes and leave than if the agreement had not ever been. The trade opportunities Canada would benefit from would be used to extort more concenssions. I said it then and am saying it now.

All of this was predicted at the time and critical reasons why the agreement was not coming on approval but pain now and more later.

I raised this last year when it came to the TPP -- had we gone ahead there woudl have been a price and what little we might have gotten out of it (for some industries) would be only part of the price to pay on exit.

Trump was saying that if you want to sell a car in the USA you will have to build one there. Canada should have the same policy. I beieve this is how the auto pact worked way back when...

I do not have HT Wilson's book at had from 1989 -- but in that book he pointed out that there was a steep price to enter and no ability to hang on to any gains, however limited they might be, on getting out.

sean thank you for your insights. 

I wish that Canada is ready for the possible negative implications from trump.  From I have read on subject specialisation and that canadian population to small to have a domesic auto industry is not whole picture.  

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/rankings/

economic complexity index

this shows just what each country exports and valued added is exported.  Canada ranks 39.  Canada problem is not its small population the problem we have no industrail policy to speak off.  This hands off additude really reshaped our economy.  Their is bundle of smaller countries that have very advanced industries compared to canada.

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/export/can/all/show/2014/

Is very disappointing to look at we export to the world,  imagine that trumps curtails the car industry.  Our profile looks to be rather base resources producer where is the value added production is limited.  As longs we play be market rules and non inference in the market will not develop beyond a primarly resoucers exporter.  Toggle import/export and see what is we import.  Why can we not make some this stuff canada?

Should Canada Scrap NAFTA and Seek a New Deal With Trump?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/should-canada-scrap-na...

"Agreeing to end the NAFTA could allow Canada to get ahead of the issue with the Trump administration, much better than being desperately on the defensive, tring to defend a three-way deal to preserve our two-way trade.

Given Trump's belligerent 'America First' stance and the real risk of the NAFTA being terminated, rather than being in a defensive mode, Canada could be ahead of the curve with concrete ideas for improving and modernizing the FTA, in the end making it a 21st century bilateral trade agreement..."