The TPP: "If money is speech, Citizen's United is about to go global"
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But we must sound the alarm for democracy, as this sweeping new agreement will affect all of our lives. Past "free trade" agreements have been sold to us as promoting jobs and exports. Since Nafta, we have lost 3.6 million manufacturing jobs from 1994 to 2007. The trade deficit has ballooned from $100 billion to $700 billion, a worrisome figure, as this is money we owe not to ourselves, but to others.
According to the Global Development and Environment Institute, during that same period, corn imports to Mexico from U.S. megafarms rose from 2 million to 10 million tons, putting millions of Mexican farmers out of work. Simultaneously, Mexico lost 120,000 hog-farming jobs primarily to one megacorporation, Smithfield Foods. Chapter 27 of the Mexican Constitution was annulled, which had protected indigenous landowners from foreign expropriation. Cheap labor factories created a nightmare of environmental pollution, gangster rule and human rights abuses. This followed decades of land reform reversal by corrupt governments yielding to international financial pressures. Millions of unemployed came to this country looking for work.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an expansion of corporate, i.e. "investor" rights; participants include Goldman Sachs, Wal-mart, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Phillip Morris, Monsanto and others. "Investor rights" ensures that any corporation can sue through the World Trade Organization in Brussels, if they feel a country's labor, environmental, food or health safety, or banking regulation laws provide a "barrier" to their right to "free trade." Lawsuits based on past "free trade" agreements can be viewed at Public Citizen's "Global Trade Watch" site; examples include: Australia unable to enforce anti-smoking laws due to a Phillip Morris suit for millions of dollars ruled by the World Trade Organization to interfere with their right to make a profit. Mexico was successfully sued by Cargill for $35 million against their ban on high-fructose corn syrup.
If money is speech, Citizen's United is about to go global. Big banks will have no barriers to becoming bigger and more risky, drug companies will have extended patents, prohibiting affordable medications, internet freedom will be limited, our food could be unknowingly laced with chemicals.
Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2013/08/21/3151756/trans-pacific-partnership-trade.html#storylink=cpy
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