April
08, 2015
Katrina vanden Heuvel
.
“China
wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region …
We should write those rules,” President Obama declared in his State
of the Union address. To sell Congress on giving him authority to
“fast track” consideration of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP), a trade and investment treaty with 12 nations that has been
under negotiation for five years, the president argues it is vital
that “we” write the rules. The real question, of course, is what
does he mean by “we”?
.
Our
global trade and tax policies have been and still are controlled by
corporate and financial interests. They, not workers or consumers,
write the rules. In the early post-World War II years, trade treaties
were focused on lowering tariffs. In theory at least, workers in both
nations might benefit from larger markets and increased trade. But
now a significant portion of our trade is intra-corporate trade, an
exchange between one branch of a multinational and another.
Multinationals have different interests than national companies. They
profit even if U.S. workers suffer. Increasingly companies choose to
report their profits or ship their jobs to countries with the lowest
standards where the legal position of companies is the strongest.
Companies like Wal-Mart set up global distribution systems designed
to drive down wages here and abroad. The Waltons are the richest
family in the world. Their workers are paid so little that they are
forced to rely on taxpayer subsidies like Medicaid and food stamps.
.
One
product of the corporate-defined trade rules is that the United
States has run unprecedented trade deficits, totaling more than $8
trillion since 2000 alone. Trade deficits cost jobs. Worse, companies
have used the threat to move jobs abroad to drive down wages here at
home. Our corporate-defined trade policies contribute significantly
to the reality that, as Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz writes,
“the real median income of a full time male worker is lower now
than it was 40 years ago.”
.
With
tariffs already low, current trade treaties are focused less on
tariffs and trade than on “harmonizing regulations” for
investors. But these regulations concern worker rights, consumer and
environmental protections, economic policies that are the expression
of our democracy. Too often, “harmonization” is simply an excuse
for corporations to institute a race to the bottom.
.
U.S.
negotiators forcefully demand other countries pay a price for greater
access to the U.S. market. But that price generally involves one or
another corporate lobby, not the interests of the American people. So
our drug companies get protections against the introduction of
generic drugs, driving up prices abroad. Our agribusiness gets
protection for its genetically altered foodstuffs. Wall Street gets
rules making the sale of arcane derivatives easier.
.
The
TPP is a classic expression of the way the rules are fixed to benefit
the few and not the many. It has been negotiated in secret, but 500
corporations and banks sit on advisory committees with access to
various chapters. The lead negotiator, Michael Froman, was a protege
of former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, and followed him from
Treasury to Citibank, the bank whose excesses helped blow up the
economy before it had to be bailed out. Although corporations are
wired in, the American people are locked out of the TPP negotiations.
And, as Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said, “Members of Congress and
their staff have an easier time accessing national security documents
than proposed trade deals, but if I were negotiating this deal I
suppose I wouldn’t want people to see it
either.”
.
No comments:
Post a Comment