The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) that Obama is negotiating with 11 other nations, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam, seeks to eliminate both tariff and nontariff trade barriers with these countries, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
“With over 20 chapters under negotiation, the TPP partners envision the agreement to be ‘comprehensive and high-standard,’ in that they seek to eliminate tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade in goods, services, and agriculture, and to establish or expand rules on a wide range of issues including intellectual property rights, foreign direct investment, and other trade-related issues. They also strive to create a ‘21st-century agreement’ that addresses new and cross-cutting issues presented by an increasingly globalized economy,” the CRS report said.
One of the TPP countries, Vietnam, maintains a Communist regime, according to the State Department.
In 2014, the U.S. ran a $24,858,700,000 trade deficit with Vietnam, according to U.S. government trade data published by the Census Bureau. U.S. producers sold $5,724,900,000 in goods to purchasers in Vietnam. At the same time, producers in Vietnam sold $30,583,600,000 in goods to purchasers in the United States.
The most recent State Department Country Report on Human Rights in Vietnam presents the U.S. government’s assessment of the political system in that country. “The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an authoritarian state ruled by a single party, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), led by General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, and President Truong Tan Sang,” says the State Department report. “The most recent National Assembly elections, held in 2011, were neither free nor fair . . . The government maintained limits on workers’ rights to form and join independent unions and did not enforce safe and healthy working conditions adequately . . . Child labor persisted,” the report added.
Why are we including Communist countries in trade agreements?
The seeds of the Trans-Pacific Partnership were planted in the 1970s by then President Nixon. When he broke a long-standing international agreement, and took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard, he paved the way for manufacturing jobs to be transferred to China where the goods would be made cheaper in slave labor camps.
The TPP actually began in 2005 as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPSEP or P4). The goal was to conclude negotiations for the TPP in 2012, but controversial issues such as agriculture, intellectual property, and services and investments prevented that from happening.
The 2011 Korea FTA was based on an expansion of the NAFTA text, and the Korea pact literally served as the U.S. opening offer for the TPP negotiations.
Contrary to the president’s claim that critics are fighting the last war, America’s trade deficit with Korea ballooned 50 percent after just two years of Obama’s Korea FTA being in effect and the country lost another 50,000-plus American jobs – according to the formula used by the administration to claim the pact would create jobs. The United States had a $3 billion monthly trade deficit with Korea in October 2014 – the highest monthly U.S. goods trade deficit with Korea on record.
The U. S. trade deficit with China has grown from $84 billion in 2000 before Congress approved China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to $324 billion, which equates to 1.3 million American jobs lost. Eighteen U. S. manufacturing workers that lose jobs to trade and find reemployment are typically forced to take pay cuts. Three of every five displaced manufacturing workers who were rehired in 2014 took home smaller paychecks, and one in three lost greater than 20 percent, according to U. S. Department of Labor data. U. S. export growth to countries that are not free trade agreement partners has exceeded U. S. export growth to free trade agreement partners by 30% over the past decade. Do we really need free trade agreements?
In 2011, the TPP countries announced that the TPP intended to “enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, to promote innovation, economic growth and development, and to support the creation and retention of jobs.” Is that the real purpose of the TPP?
Actually, the globalists (New World Order) are just repeating history: Create a feudal system where the people are enslaved and kept at a subsistance level (surviving instead of thriving) as a mode of control. They are creating a class of people that can be remodeled into their collectivist dream, because people aren’t self-sufficient like they used to be, there is no culture, and children are being taught 2 + 2 = 5 in Common Core in government (public) schools. This has all been designed by the big megabanks that run the world.
In a 2012 statement, Peru’s Ministry of Trade and Tourism announced they would send a delegation to the Inter-sectoral Meeting of the TPP scheduled for November 2012. The statement contained a very important revelation about the real purpose of the TPP: “The TPP is a negotiation process that includes countries from three continents (America, Asia and Oceania). It seeks to become the basis and the means to establish the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), and therefore it is open to other countries that have formally expressed their interest in the process.”
Creation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) is the ultimate goal of the secretive TPP negotiations.
According to a Georgetown Journal of International Law article, the TPP negotiations “are designed to culminate in a “gold standard” free trade agreement (FTA) . . . The TPP negotiations are among the more recent of a large number of FTAs and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) that have been or are being negotiated between the member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Since the APEC Leaders’ Bogor Declaration in November 1994, the member economies have been committed on some level to the objective of achieving an environment for “free and open” trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.” The article then said the TPP is a “trade agreement designed to achieve broad liberalization and a high degree of economic integration among the parties.”
At the 2011 APEC meeting, a press release issued by representatives of the member nations attending said, “We are delighted to have achieved this milestone in our common vision to establish a comprehensive, next-generation regional agreement that liberalizes trade and investment and addresses new and traditional trade issues and 21st-century challenges. We are confident that this agreement will be a model for ambition for other free trade agreements in the future….”
When it was announced that Mexico would soon join the TPP, Mexican President Felipe Calderón described the TPP as “one of the free trade initiatives that’s most ambitious in the world” and one that would “foster integration of the Asia Pacific region, one of the regions with the greatest dynamism in the world.”
Integration is a word that hits a nerve in anyone unwilling to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a committee of globalists who are unelected by the American people and unaccountable to them. Integration is an internationalist tool for subordinating American law to the globalist bureaucracy at the United Nations. Economic and political integration will push the once independent United States of America into yet another collectivist bloc that will facilitate the complete dissolution of our nation and our states into no more than impotent members of a one-world government.
In the jargon of globalism, “free and open trade” translates as “economic and political integration.” In other words, globalism is treason. Every politician that votes for this treaty is a traitor to the American Republic.
The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. “Free trade” is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use lawsuits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages.
The first thing to understand is that these so-called “partnerships” are not laws written by Congress. The U. S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to legislate, but these laws are being written without the participation of Congress. The laws are being written by corporations solely in the interest of their power and profit. The office of U. S. Trade Representative was created in order to permit corporations to write law that serves only their interests. This fraud on the Constitution and the people is covered up by calling trade laws “treaties.”
The U. S. Trade Representative is a corporate stooge. He serves the private corporations and will go on to a million dollar annual salary when he no longer works for the government. The corporations have bribed the political leaders in every country to sign away their sovereignty and the general welfare of their people to private corporations. Corporations have paid U. S. senators large sums for transferring Congress’ law-making powers to corporations. When these “partnerships” pass, no country that signed will have any legislative authority to legislate or enforce any law that any corporation regards as inimical to its bottom line.
The usurper in the White House that promised hope and change is changing sovereign nations in the U. S., Europe, and Asia into tyrannical states run by corporations. Citizens in those countries will be left with a feeling of hopelessness.
The TPP was created entirely by the executive branch without a single vote from Congress. It answers to no law and has zero transparency. No representative of the People votes on its provisions. There is no oversight. There is no recourse for the public to challenge its language. The TPP exists utterly outside the boundaries of government and of U.S. law, including the Constitution.
The TPP has been set up so that the top 100 corporations in the world, and their lawyers, tell governments what to do. The governments then write laws transferring power to these corporations. This is what globalism is — private corporations exempting themselves from regulations and taxes, lobbying for higher taxes on their competition. Here is a listing of some of the corporations and organizations that support the New World Order. Here is a listing of the approximately 600 corporations and organizations, some governmental, that have supplied advisers to help create the TPP. Notice how many of the 600 corporations and organizations support the New World Order.
The TPP is an unconstitutional transfer of power. It’s an international and international multi-national corporate takeover of all government functions: Legislative, executive, and judicial. It is occurring at the federal, state, and local levels. Similar changes occurred after the passage of other trade agreements, such as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement).
When NAFTA was being negotiated in 1992, critics pointed out that it was a transfer of power and an attack on the sovereignty of the United States. The critics also pointed out that there would be international tribunals and courts deciding on American law at all levels: National, state, and local. Those critics were laughed at by people such as Vice President Al Gore (a CFR), who said it was about opening up jobs for America and had nothing to do with sovereignty. Ten years after NAFTA passed, cases were brought against American companies that were being decided by NAFTA courts overriding American courts. We have since been deindustrialized, because the globalists could put regulations on America that China wasn’t following, and just transfer the jobs.
Some examples of what has happened to the United States since the implementation of NAFTA are as follows:
- The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.
- In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing. Now there are less than 12 million.
- There are less Americans working in manufacturing today than there were in 1950, even though the population of the country has more than doubled since then.
- In 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.
- When NAFTA was pushed through Congress in 1993, the United States had a trade surplus with Mexico of $1.6 billion. By 2010, we had a trade deficit with Mexico of $61.6 billion.
- In 1985, our trade deficit with China was approximately $6 million for the entire year. In 2012, our trade deficit with China was $315 billion. That was the largest trade deficit that one nation has had with another nation in the history of the world.
- According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing 500,000 jobs to China every single year.
- According to Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University, 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if current trends continue.
- Overall, the United States has run a trade deficit of more than $8 trillion with the rest of the world since 1975.
Is it stupidity — or evil, or both — to ignore the lessons from NAFTA while pursuing ObamaTrade? What do you think the implementation of the TPP will do to the United States?
American businesses would remain shackled by the regulations of EPA, FDA, OSHA, etc., while their foreign competitors could operate in the U. S. unimpeded by those same strictures. Like the infamous NAFTA trade agreement passed in the ’90s, the TPP would usher in another wave of outsourcing, as the remaining manufacturing and technology bases would be given incentives to move to Pacific Rim countries, resulting in millions more American job losses.
The TPP is also being touted as a job creator by Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), among others. ObamaTrade advocates are simultaneously pushing for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, aka “Fast Track”) to get the supposedly jobs-creating trade agreements through Congress, and Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) for U.S. workers who lose their jobs because of the agreements. So which is it? Is ObamaTrade going to lose jobs or create jobs? The answer, according to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and others who support ObamaTrade, is yes — both.
Apparently they believe (or expect voters to believe) that jobs must be lost in order for jobs to be created. Moreover, without government intervention in the marketplace jobs will be lost and created as a result of innovation and consumer preferences. (How many workers make typewriters these days compared to computers?) Does it make sense for the U.S. government to sign treaties that will destroy jobs and then increase government spending to help the displaced workers? How can such an approach end any way but badly?
This agreement DOESN’T need two-thirds vote in the Senate, as a treaty would. When completed, the agreement is merely subject to a majority vote in both Houses … it can’t be filibustered … it can’t be amended … and the GOP can’t refuse to consider it.
This idea of total secrecy with zero oversight from Congress or the public is so offensive to the fundamental ideas of democracy that 132 members of Congress signed on to this letter demanding transparency over the language of the TPP. The letter was utterly ignored by the Obama administration, once again proving it is willing to sell out the American people for corporate interests.
The text of the TPP will not be released to elected representatives. Even though some Senators and Representatives have requested copies of the document, they have been told that’s not possible. They can, however, go look at the document, but can’t take any notes or make any copies. After years of attempts by members of Congress to even see the TPP, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), a liberal progressive, was able to review only a few select sections of the agreement. He immediately characterized it as an “assault on democratic government . . . What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it,” Grayson said. “It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away . . . Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty,” Grayson said. “And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”
According to Alfred De Zayas, the UN’s Special Rapporteur (reporter) on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, if Obama’s proposed international-trade deals become law, it will lead to “a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots.”
These two mammoth trade-pacts, the TTIP for Atlantic nations, and the TPP for Pacific nations excluding China (since Obama is against China), would transfer regulations of corporations to corporations themselves, and away from democratically elected governments. Regulation of working conditions and of the environment, as well as of product-safety including toxic foods and poisonous air and other consumer issues, would be placed into the hands of panels whose members will be appointed by large international corporations. Their decisions will remove the power of democratically elected governments to control these things. “Red tape” that’s imposed by elected national governments would be eliminated — replaced by the international mega-corporate version.
De Zayas was quoted as saying also that, “The bottom line is that these agreements must be revised, modified or terminated,” because they would vastly harm publics everywhere, even though they would enormously benefit the top executives of corporations by giving them control as a sort of corporate-imposed world government, answerable to the people who control those corporations.
Obama is pushing for international cartels to replace important functions of today’s national governments, and De Zayas is saying that, “We don’t want an international order akin to post-democracy or post-law.”
De Zayas also said that the panels that are proposed to be at the very center of these trade-pacts “constitute an attempt to escape the jurisdiction of national courts and bypass the obligation of all states to ensure that all legal cases are tried before independent tribunals that are public, transparent, accountable and appealable.”
That is, in fact, the motivation behind these deals. Costs get transferred from corporations onto consumers, workers, and the environment, while profits are increased for the corporation’s investors, and CEO pay will soar. In fact, the EU’s own study of the economic impact of the TTIP with America, calculated “economic gains as a whole for the EU (€119 billion a year) and US (€95 billion a year). This translates to an extra €545 in disposable income each year for a family of 4 in the EU, on average, and €655 per family in the US. … Income gains are a result of increased trade. EU exports to the US would go up by 28%, equivalent to an additional €187 billion worth of exports of EU goods and services. Overall, total exports would increase 6% in the EU and 8% in the US.” According to the analysis, no one would lose anything. For example, tariffs would be reduced but income taxes and other taxes that the public pays wouldn’t be increased in order to make up for that loss of income to the state from reduced tariffs. Not at all. Instead: “As much as 80% of the total potential gains come from cutting costs imposed by bureaucracy and regulations, as well as from liberalising trade in services and public procurement.”
In other words: government regulations of product-safety and the environment and workers’ rights are a terrible waste, which would be eliminated and handled more efficiently by letting international corporations themselves handle those things, according to the EU’s study. “Liberalising trade in services and public procurement” would cut “red tape” that has prevented government officials who are the purchasers in “public procurement” from getting high-paid corporate directorships, etc. Under the existing regulatory structures in democratic nations, the public, the voters, can hold their own government accountable for such corruption. If these functions become the domain of the international corporations themselves, then existing regulations and the government employees who enforce them can be eliminated. Accountability, in other words, is such a waste for the inside investors in large corporations. They don’t need it; they fight against it. They are fighting against it. They don’t even want accountability to their own outside investors, who might want them removed from corporate management.
The EU simply doesn’t mention the downsides. And they also don’t mention that Obama’s TTIP trade deal with Europe would be disastrous for Europe, according to the First Independent Study.” That study wasn’t paid for by the EU, so they just ignore it. (They even ignore that it found that America’s international corporations would benefit even more from the deal than would Europe’s international corporations, which is the exact opposite result than the EU’s own study calculated. President Obama performs brilliantly for America’s billionaires, even though most of them are Republicans.) The economist who did that study wasn’t paid by anybody to do it. Occasionally, a study like that is performed by an economist. However, paid-for studies get far more publicity, because the findings are then heavily promoted by the sponsoring organization — even though it’s just propaganda.
Surprise! China could eventually join the TPP currently under negotiation, Obama said in a June 3, 2015 interview.
A central part of Obama’s pitch for the TPP has been that it would prevent China from making the rules in the region. Now Obama says China is showing interest in joining the agreement. “They’ve already started putting out feelers about the possibilities of them participating at some point,” Obama said.
If the United States can broker a deal with China’s neighbors that includes stronger labor and environmental standards, “then China is going to have to at least take those international norms into account,” Obama added. “And, we are still pursuing strong bilateral economic relations with China, we still pressure them around issues like currency, or the subsidies that they may be engaged in, or theft of intellectual property. We still directly deal with them on those issues, but it sure helps if they are surrounded with countries that are operating with the same kinds of high standards that, by the way, we already abide by.”
Yet just three days later, the federal government admitted hackers accessed the personal data of at least four million current and former federal employees, in a vast cyberattack that is suspected to have originated in China. “As a result of the incident,” uncovered in April, the Office of Personnel Management has said it “will send notifications to approximately four million individuals”. It added that additional exposures “may come to light”. On July 9, 2015, the government said more than 21 million employees had been affected. The government’s personnel department handles hundreds of thousands of sensitive security clearances and background investigations on prospective employees each year.
It was not immediately clear whether the hack affected Obama, other senior government officials or the intelligence community.
Some media outlets cited government officials as saying that Chinese hackers were behind the breach. China has labelled the reports as “irresponsible” that it was behind a massive hack of personal data of millions of current and former U. S. federal employees.
This is who Obama is trying to include in the TPP!
In reality, both China and Russia joining the TPP has always been the plan. Actually it would be the TPP merging with the FTAAP, which will include China and Russia.
In November 2014, world leaders from the 21 member states of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) gathered together for APEC China 2014, the 26th annual APEC summit, held in Beijing. APEC leaders discussed the proposed TPP and agreed to commence work on the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), an even larger free-trade regime that would include not only all 12 of the TPP member states, but also Communist China and Russia.
On the opening day of the summit, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who supports the TPP, told reporters, “I think that everyone wants to see freer trade in the Asia-Pacific region and my understanding is that once the TPP has been concluded, other countries are welcome to accede to it.” Could one of those “other countries” include Communist China? News reports suggest yes.
An October 10, 2014 article published in the Diplomat online reported: “China is open to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a high-ranking Chinese official indicated on Wednesday at a think-tank in Washington, DC.” When asked if China would be interested in joining the TPP, Zhu Guangyao, China’s vice minister of finance and a member of the Communist Party of China since 1987, replied that “China was ‘very open’ to the global economy and plans to continue its decades-long process of ‘reform and opening up’ under Xi Jinping.” In the same article, the Diplomat further reported that “In May 2013, China’s Commerce Ministry indicated that it was looking more seriously at the possibility of China joining the TPP.”
Reporting on APEC China 2014, China Daily, the Communist Party of China’s state-run newspaper, stated that China’s goal is to “counter the growing trend of fragmentation in the region that directly undermines economic integration, not the TPP or any other specific freetrade agreement.” So China claims that it is not working to counter the TPP, but rather “the growing trend of fragmentation in the region.” [Emphasis added]. Behind all the Leninist newspeak, “fragmentation” can be understood to mean the independence of nations. China wants greater economic integration for the Asia Pacific region, replacing independence with interdependence.
Addressing APEC leaders at the summit, Chinese President and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping said, “The world economic recovery still faces many unpredictable and destabilizing factors. We need to intensify regional economic integration and foster an open environment that is conducive to long-term development.”
Despite these movements on China’s part, the American mainstream media has, for the most part, portrayed the TPP as a counterweight to contain the rise of China. One article published in Forbes magazine stated: “American trade policy is trying to contain China, notably through the mega-regional TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), from which China is excluded.” Another article, from the Wall Street Journal, portrays the TPP as an American initiative rivaling the FTAAP, which is portrayed as a Chinese initiative: In the run-up to the APEC summit, people familiar with the matter say, the U.S. blocked China’s efforts to begin negotiations on a regional free-trade agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, because it conflicted with a Washington-backed alternative known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership that excludes China. The Wall Street Journal article did, however, concede the following fact: “Beijing continued to promote its preferred deal in presummit meetings but won endorsement for the pact only as a long-term goal.”
The truth is that both China and the United States are members of APEC. The fact that China won endorsement for the FTAAP as a “long-term goal” demonstrates Obama’s willingness to commit treason by abolishing the sovereignty of the United States, and to economically integrate the United States with Russia and China in a future Asia-Pacific regional government based out of Beijing. Further evidence of the Obama administration’s duplicity can be found in an official APEC press release posted on the White House website. The release, dated November 13, 2010 states, “Based on the results of this work, we have agreed that now is the time for APEC to translate FTAAP from an aspirational to a more concrete vision. To that end, we instruct APEC to take concrete steps toward realization of an FTAAP, which is a major instrument to further APEC’s Regional Economic Integration (REI) agenda.”
Here the White House not only admits its role, as a leader in APEC, in supporting a free-trade agreement of the entire Asia Pacific that would include the United States along with Russia and China, but we also see the White House going the extra mile by calling on APEC to take action, instructing “APEC to take concrete steps toward realization of an FTAAP.” The United States wants the FTAAP every bit as much as China. The TPP is not designed to contain China; it’s to converge with China. The press release goes on to say: “We believe that an FTAAP should be pursued as a comprehensive free trade agreement by developing and building on ongoing regional undertakings, such as ASEAN+3, ASEAN+6, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, among others.” [Emphasis added.] The TPP is the stepping stone for the FTAAP, and the White House acknowledges this in the APEC press release on the White House website.
As The New American magazine’s Senior Editor William F. Jasper has previously reported, “the TPP is actually intended as a door opener to an even larger and more ambitious Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP) …” One very important source that Jasper cites is a pro-TPP book published in 2013 by the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) (a NWO org), entitled Understanding the Trans-Pacific Partnership, coauthored by Jeffrey J. Schott, Barbara Kotschwar, and Julia Muir. “The PIIE is one of the premier global think tanks and has played an especially important role in promoting the WTO, IMF, United Nations, and free trade agreements (FTAs), including NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, and FTAAP,” Jasper writes.
Chapter 1 of Understanding the Trans-Pacific Partnership we find: The TPP is regarded as an interim arrangement or stepping stone toward a broader, regionwide Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP), possibly within a decade, as envisaged by APEC leaders in Bogor [Indonesia] in November 1994 and reaffirmed more recently by them in their meeting in November 2011. TPP negotiators are not only thinking about new countries joining the ongoing talks but also planning and constructing the trade pact with a view toward future linkages with other APEC members, including and especially China. [Emphasis added].
The book’s sixth chapter, revealingly entitled “Moving from TPP to FTAAP,” declares: “The current TPP architects envision building an eventual FTAAP on the comprehensive foundations of the TPP accord, with other APEC countries joining the pact in coming years.”
Understanding the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the White House press release should remove any doubt or speculation regarding the TPP’s true purpose. Far from creating new American jobs and bolstering the U.S. economy or that of its allies in the face of a rising China or Russia, it is the engine fueling the drive toward a future unified Asia Pacific regional bloc, in which the United States would be relegated to a subordinate member state with Eastern-bloc Marxist states such as China and Russia at the helm.
The TPP’s passage would be a major step toward the realization of APEC’s vision for the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific, facilitating not only the economic convergence of East and West but eroding the remaining vestiges of American sovereignty and independence.
There are negotiation meetings going on with hundreds of representatives of corporate America, foreign corporations, big labor unions, and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) such as the Sierra Club’s Natural Resources Defense Council. Corporation representatives and big labor are given a secure password to a website that they can access and read the TPP documents at any time. Over 600 corporate CEOs, including CEOs of companies that have been repeatedly found guilty of felony crimes in America, have been allowed to influence the details of the TPP agreement. Monsanto (a NWO corp), Wal-Mart (a NWO corp), and Big Pharma corporations are reportedly given top influence positions in this super-secret Obama organization that hands the future of the world over to the most evil corporations of all time. Why do we tolerate this? Why hasn’t Congress subpoenaed the documents and stopped the foreign corporate takeover?
Emails released under a Freedom of Information Act request show how one chemical company CEO was so pleased with the rules being set by the TPP trade deal that he joked about making a “royalty payment” to U. S. government officials before bragging, “these rules are our rules.”
Four hundred pages of confidential emails between industry advisors and USTR officials were obtained by Intellectual Property Watch. Although the majority of the emails are blacked out, they “reveal a close-knit relationship between negotiators and the industry advisors that is likely unmatched by any other stakeholders.”
“The cleared advisors in the email exchanges represent a range of industries and companies, including law firms. Among them are (in no particular order): Recording Industry Association of America, PhRMA (a NWO corp), General Electric (a NWO corp), Intel (a NWO corp), Cisco, White and Case (a NWO corp), Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) (a NWO org), Motion Picture Association of America (a NWO org), Wiley Rein, Entertainment Software Association (a NWO org), Fanwood Chemical, American Chemistry Council (a NWO org), CropLife (a NWO corp), Medtronic, American Continental Group consultants, and Abbott (a NWO corp). There is also an exchange with generics pharmaceutical industry representatives,” said the Intellectual Property Watch, noting that many of the industry advisors are themselves former USTR officials.
Numerous other issues are raised in the emails, from “access to medicines, Canada and culture, US patent reform, IPR and environmental information, software patentability, relations with the European Union, other trade agreements and international developments, and as expected numerous consultations over elements of the draft treaty text,” the Intellectual Property Watch added.
One of the emails was written by Jim DeLisi of Fanwood Chemical, a company that provides “technical marketing, direct sales, manufacturing and regulatory services” to the chemical industry. Addressed to the USTR’s Barbara Weisel, the email states: “Hi Barbara – John sent through a link to the P4 agreement. I have taken a quick look at the rules of origin. Someone owes USTR a royalty payment – these are our rules. They will need some tweaking but will likely not need major surgery. This is a very pleasant surprise. I will study more closely over the weekend.”
The context of the comments suggests that DeLisi is not actually advocating that U.S. officials be paid off, but the remarks clearly indicate how pleased corporations involved in the TPP negotiations are with the rules being made in secret by the U.S. government.
Foreign governments are pulling out all the stops to get the trade deals passed by hiring former members of Congress to lobby current members of Congress. This is now “par for the course,” according to an investigator at the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight [POGO]. “If a certain country wants trade legislation that will be beneficial to them they can hire an American lobbyist to get them the access they need.”
Japan is the leader among TPP nations trying to influence American policy makers. They have hired former Democratic Leader Tom Daschle’s (a NWO) firm as well as well-connected public relations firm DCI. The full extent of Daschle’s or DCI’s work on behalf of Japan won’t be known until their next series of Foreign Agent Registration Act [FARA] disclosure reports are filed with the Department of Justice in a few months.
One concern among good government advocates is that a lack of timely FARA reporting could obfuscate some of the lobbying going on at the behest of foreign clients. A 2014 report by POGO found that 46 percent of the reports were filed late. Enforcement is rare for these relatively minor infractions and the DOJ’s website states it “seeks to obtain voluntary compliance with the statute.” The POGO organization has called on Congress to add civil penalties to the FARA Act to encourage more aggressive enforcement of its statutes.
Japan relies on Akin, Gump, Strauss Hauer & Feld for most of their direct lobbying, whom they paid $388,000 during the most recent six-month reporting period. In that time the firm’s lobbyists contacted Congressional offices at least sixty times and engaged in at least eight exchanges with the United States Trade Representative’s office specifically focused on the TPP, TPA, and related issues. Seventeen of those contacts were with one particular staffer, Kaitlin Sighinolfi, a trade policy advisor for Republican Louisiana Congressman Charles Boustany (a CFR).
Prior to recruiting Daschle, the highest profile lobbyist on Japan’s team was Tony Podesta, brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. His firm, The Podesta Group, receives $15,000 per month to counsel Japan on U.S. policy.
John Podesta is a former Counselor to the President, resigning in February 2015. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of the Center for American Progress (CAP) (a NWO corp). The CAP is a progressive think tank that was created to advance Hillary Clinton’s political career, and mostly funded by George Soros (a BB, CFR).
Another TPP country, Vietnam, received more hands-on service from the Podesta Group—paying them $180,000 during the same six-month period. On Vietnam’s behalf, the firm made contact with government officials at least 90 times. They also engaged with media outlets ranging from The New York Times to the Food Network on behalf of Japan.
Working at the behest of foreign governments is a lucrative practice area for the Podesta Group which billed slightly more than $2 million to more than nine overseas governments, including Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Korea, Somalia, and Hong Kong during the last six months of 2014.
According to Frank Samolis, co-chair of the international trade group at Squire Patton Boggs, there has been a measurable “uptick [in business under the Foreign Agent Registration Act] due to TPA and related bills in Congress.” Mr. Samolis is a veteran of Capitol Hill trade fights. He previously worked on behalf of Korea, Columbia, and Peru during their trade negotiations with the United States. He now represents Temasek, Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, which paid his firm $132,055.72 during the last six-month filing period, as the country engaged in TPP talks.
Squire Patton Boggs represents multiple foreign principals with an interest in the TPP, including China, which paid the firm $392,014.17 over the same period. According to Obama, the TPP does not include China so the U. S. can remain a leader in trade. Why would China be lobbying Congress? Remember, China will be joining the TPP after it has been signed and new member nations can be added at any time because it is a “living” document.
Insiders like Samolis play another critical role. “At least half of my time is devoted to providing intel on US developments and likely future actions,” he stated.
This points to the reason Japan and other countries are eager to hire former senior members of Congress and well-connected insiders. The ability to glean information from former colleagues and contacts is just as important as their skill at influencing legislative and administrative outcomes. This expertise is particularly crucial during complex foreign negotiations requiring approval of a finicky and partisan Congress.
According to Derek Scissors, Ph.D., “rules of origin,” which are particularly key to the TPP, dictate “how to treat goods and services from sources that are not party to the agreement.”
According to C. Fred Bergsten (a CFR), part of the Peterson Institute of Economics (a NWO org), who previously worked at the National Security Council with Henry Kissinger (BB, CFR, TC), and is one of the architects of the TPP, the TPP is just a stepping stone to the FTAAP (Free Trade Area Asian Pacific), and will include dozens of countries around the Pacific Rim, in addition to the 12 TPP countries.
The TPP is a process that will continue to evolve with large structures of global governance, meaning world government. The agreement is considered to be a “living” agreement, because once it has been signed and is in place, unlimited changes can be made to it and no one can stop those changes from taking place. If this treaty is approved, the United States will be permanently bound by the provisions of this treaty and will never be able to change them unless all of the other countries agree.
Modeled after the deceptive, open-ended process of the European Union, the TPP claims to be a “living agreement” with “a structure, institutions, and processes that allow the agreement to evolve.” As such, it would initiate an ongoing demolition of American sovereignty and the step-by-step economic, political, and social integration of the United States with our Atlantic and Pacific “partners.”
The TPP currently includes 12 Pacific Rim member states, but is expected to expand to include more nations, including Communist China. The TTIP proposes to begin “deep and comprehensive” integration between the 28-member States of the European Union and the United States.
On November 12, 2011, the leaders of the TPP nations endorsed the TPP “Trade Ministers’ Report to Leaders,” Section 5 of which spelled out some of the mutational dangers inherent in the TPP:
(5) Living Agreement
We have agreed to develop the TPP as a living agreement. While we are establishing a state-of-the-art agreement, we want to ensure that we have the ability to update the agreement as appropriate. Therefore, the TPP teams are establishing a structure, institutions, and processes that allow the agreement to evolve in response to developments in trade, technology or other emerging issues and challenges. We envision a continuing joint work program, including new commitments in areas of common interest or to enable us to quickly respond to developments in global trade or technology. At the same time, we remain cognizant of our goal to eventually expand the TPP to include other economies from across the Asia-Pacific region. [Emphasis added.]
The Congressional Research Service, in a study entitled, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Negotiations and Issues for Congress,” released on March 20, 2015, notes about this crucial aspect of the TPP, reporting:
A “Living Agreement”
The TPP has been envisaged as a “living agreement,” one that is both open to new members willing to sign up to its commitments and open to addressing new issues as they evolve.
In the development of the European Union — from its origin as the European Coal and Steel Community to the Common Market to the European Community to, finally, the EU — this subversive mutational process has been referred to as “broadening and deepening.” Broadening (or “widening”) refers to the constant expansion through addition of new member-states; deepening refers to the constant creation of new supranational institutional structures and continuous expansion and usurpation by regional authorities of powers and jurisdiction that previously were exercised by national, state, and local governments. The “living,” “evolving” treaties and agreements of the EU have eviscerated the national sovereignty of the EU member-states and increasingly subjugated them to unaccountable rulers in Brussels under the rubric of “integration,” “harmonization,” “an ever closer union,” “convergence,” “pooled sovereignty,” “interdependence,” and “comprehensive cooperation.”
The globalists intend on transferring economic power and global political power, legislative, executive, and judicial, to global institutions, and eventually to the United Nations. The TPP is a suborganization of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (a NWO org), which is part of the United Nations. The WTO plays a very important role in everything, and will continue to deal with trade issues. However, only 20% of the TPP involves trade issues. Some of the other issues it deals with are customs, intellectual trade, and taxation. It deals with everything outside of trade. It is governance, and NATO is the UN army.
Only 20% of the TPP involves trade issues, so why is it called a trade agreement? Why are negotiations going on with corporations, labor unions, and non-governmental organizations, but not Congress? Why are all negotiations being conducted in total secrecy regarding the details of the agreement? If the TPP were good for America, do you think negotiations would be secret?
According to U. S. Trade Representative Michael Froman (a CFR), the secrecy is in the best interests of the American people because, well, we’re just too dumb to understand that they are negotiating away the sovereignty of the United States and completely destroying the country and our future. He was quoted as saying that, “. . . if the text was public, people would misunderstand “negotiating positions.”” Sounds more like the government is afraid the people would understand what the government was up to, and they can’t have that.
Amazingly, the only U.S. government projection of TPP’s outcomes concluded it would result in 0% economic growth. That’s probably due to the fact it includes offshoring incentives that make it easier for firms to relocate to low-wage countries. These terms were also in the North American Free Trade Agreement, a deal that cost more than 700,000 American jobs.
The U. S. Agriculture Department completed a study that reflected developments in the TPP member nations agriculture imports and exports between 2014 and 2025, the assumed TPP implementation period. Some agriculture areas will see a 5% increase in agriculture exports, but most areas will see less than a 1% increase in exports in 2025! There were no estimates for any year prior to 2025. Does that mean they will be zero?
Even if TPP does not kill your job, it will undermine Americans’ wages by pitting us in competition against Vietnamese workers making less than 60 cents an hour. The wages of all workers with similar skill levels decline when Americans losing better-paying manufacturing jobs join the glut of workers competing for non-offshorable jobs.
The TPP also would gut Buy American, so our tax dollars would also be offshored rather than reinvested to create jobs here. And the administration refused to include rules against currency cheating, even though several TPP countries are notorious for this practice that destroys U.S. businesses and jobs.
The 2012 South Korea agreement was used as the TPP template. The U. S. goods trade deficit with Korea almost doubled in the pact’s first three years. This equates to more than 90,000 American jobs lost, according to the ratio the administration used to promise job gains from the deal.
Incredibly, job-killing trade deficits have grown more than 425% with countries we have trade agreements with, but declined 11% with those we don’t.
Why do we continue approving trade agreements that have cost Americans jobs and wages for the past 20 years?
Is the TPP Constitutional?
Many people have questioned whether the TPP is even Constitutional, and with good reason.
Can a treaty override the U.S. Constitution? In a landmark case (Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957)), the U. S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. According to the decision, “this Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty . . . No agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or on any other branch of Government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution.”
In the 1957 ruling, the U. S. Supreme Court declared:
“Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, declares:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof, and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; . . .
“There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution. Nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification of the Constitution which even suggests such a result. These debates, as well as the history that surrounds the adoption of the treaty provision in Article VI, make it clear that the reason treaties were not limited to those made in “pursuance” of the Constitution was so that agreements made by the United States under the Articles of Confederation, including the important peace treaties which concluded the Revolutionary [p17] War, would remain in effect. [n31] It would be manifestly contrary to the objectives of those who created the Constitution, as well as those who were responsible for the Bill of Rights — let alone alien to our entire constitutional history and tradition — to construe Article VI as permitting the United States to exercise power under an international agreement without observing constitutional prohibitions. [n32] In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government, and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and the Senate combined.
“There is nothing new or unique about what we say here. This Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty. [n33] For example, in Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258, 267, it declared:
“The treaty power, as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments, and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the [p18] government, or in that of one of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter, without its consent.
“This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which must comply with the Constitution, is on a full parity with a treaty, and that, when a statute which is subsequent in time is inconsistent with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict renders the treaty null. [n34] It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument.
“There is nothing in Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416, which is contrary to the position taken here.”
Remember, in a letter to Obama, Sen. Sessions (R-AL), wrote, “Under fast-track, Congress transfers its authority to the executive and agrees to give up several of its most basic powers. These concessions include: the power to write legislation, the power to amend legislation, the power to fully consider legislation on the floor, the power to keep debate open until Senate cloture is invoked, and the constitutional requirement that treaties receive a two-thirds vote. The latter is especially important since, having been to the closed room to review the secret text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is clear it more closely resembles a treaty than a trade deal.”
Sen. Sessions also said that the TPP would create global governance.
In an effort to force the TPP through Congress, Obama has demanded Congress give him “fast-track authority” to negotiate the TPP.
WHAT IS FAST-TRACK AUTHORITY?
Fast track transfers the Constitutional authority on trade policymaking (Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) from Congress to the White House. The Article grants Congress the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
Fast track began in the 1930s. In 1933, President Roosevelt first requested the authority from Congress allowing the executive branch to enter into trade agreements with foreign nations in order to lower trade tariffs.
In 1934, Congress passed, and FDR signed, the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act (RTAA), granting the president such authority. “Signed into law on June 12, 1934, the RTAA represented a fundamental shift in U.S. trade policy . . . The Constitution gives Congress the right to regulate foreign commerce and establish tariff rates. Under the RTAA, Congress granted the president the right — on a temporary basis, subject to renewal after three years,” according to the State Department’s Office of the Historian.
According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), “Congress renewed presidential reciprocal trade authority eleven times, until 1962, through trade agreement extension acts.” RTAA was then replaced by the passage of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which, according to the CRS, “Congress granted the President authority for five years to negotiate the reduction or elimination of tariffs and expanded its role in the process by requiring the President to submit for congressional review a copy of each concluded agreement and a presidential statement explaining why the agreement was concluded.
Congress did not renew the Trade Expansion Act when it expired in 1967; instead, it debated for another seven years. When Congress passed the Trade Act of 1974, it created “fast track authority” for the President to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can approve or disapprove, but cannot amend or filibuster. At the time it was felt that foreign nations would not want to enter trade negotiations with the United States if they would be subject to protracted debate and amendments by Congress after the president had already signed them, hence the reasoning behind the creation of fast track authority.
The Act expired in 1994, and was not reauthorized by Congress until the passage of the Bipartisan Trade Promotion Authority Act (BPTAA) of 2002. BPTAA reinstated fast track authority, renamed as “trade promotion authority” (TPA), which expired in 2007. Although fast track authority ended in 2007, it still applied to any agreements that began while fast track authority was in place. The last trade agreement that was passed with fast track authority was signed in 2011. In 2012, the Obama Administration began trying to obtain renewal of the authority to complete negotiations for the TPP and TTIP.
If the President transmits a fast track trade agreement to Congress, the majority leaders of the House and Senate must introduce the implementing bill submitted by the President on the first day on which their House is in session. Senators and Representatives may not amend the President’s bill, either in committee or in the Senate or House. The committees to which the bill has been referred have 45 days after its introduction to report the bill, or be automatically discharged, and each House must vote within 15 days after the bill is reported or discharged.
Since fast track was created in 1974, the United States has had a trade deficit each year. Fast track has resulted in the loss of millions of manufacturing and good-paying middle-class jobs due to outsourcing.
When Congress votes “fast track,” it means Congress accepts that corporations can write the trade laws without the participation of Congress.
Another feature of fast track is that if it expires and there are any outstanding trade agreements that began when fast track was in effect, the trade agreements proceed as if fast track were still in effect.
According to an article in the New York Times, “Mr. Obama wants the agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill . . . Under this extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before Congress voted on it. And Congress’s post-facto vote would be under rules limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote.”
While Congress was largely excluded from the negotiating process, fast track set up private-sector advisory committees that entitled hundreds of business interests to have special access to negotiators and confidential U. S. negotiating documents not available to the legislative branch or the public. The fast track process undermined essential checks and balances between the branches of government that the Founding Fathers wisely built into the U. S. Constitution.
The fast track process facilitated a system of “diplomatic legislating” with executive branch trade negotiators able to effectively rewrite swaths of U. S. domestic non-trade policy otherwise under the jurisdiction of the Congress and U. S. state legislatures. Prior to the Trade Act of 1974, U. S. trade pacts only covered traditional trade matters such as tariff cuts and customs rules.
The fast track authority being requested by Obama for the next six years would give him and his successor whatever type of trade negotiation Obama chooses to enter into. If he can write the UN Arms Trade Treaty into a trade agreement, then it can’t be filibustered or amended or prevented from consideration by Congress. It is significant that, in Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) 114-page bill specifying the goals of U.S. trade negotiations (S. 995), there is not a single word prohibiting Obama from using the agreements to implement gun control. And yet, that gun control will be just as binding as if Congress enacted it in a statute.
According to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), once Obama has been given fast-track authority, he could approve any future trade deal, even if Congress voted to reject that particular trade deal. The Senator explained that, “Even if Congress declines to implement a trade agreement, the President’s signature will already be on it, opening the U.S. up to judgments before an international arbitration body known as the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), or perhaps even before the WTO. An offshoot of the World Bank, ICSID exists to hear disputes between international companies and foreign governments, at all levels. Congress ratified a 1965 treaty which stipulated that any ICSID awards will be binding as if awarded by a U.S. court, and the Vienna Convention—which the State Department generally considers “customary international law”—states that the President’s signature on the agreement obligates the U.S. not to “frustrate the purpose” of a trade agreement. As such, the President’s signature alone could put many U.S. industries and localities at risk, not to mention binding Congress’ ability to pass future laws without significant international consequences.”
As a Constitutionally ineligible president, would any trade agreement Obama signed actually be legally binding for the United States?
WHAT WILL THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP ACTUALLY DO?
In the 1970’s, Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) warned about the Trilateral Commission’s plan to get the leaders of Asia, the European Union, and the North American Union together to transfer governmental power into non-elected secretive corporate quasi-governmental boards. So we are being conquered.
The U. S. government officials and think tank gurus that put together the TTP and TTIP admit they are not trade agreements. They are partnerships, and economic and political convergence schemes.
Why does Congress believe they can’t look at the trade agreements except in a secret room where they can’t take notes, and only see a small section of the agreement? It’s because the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties have been taken over by the globalists who have gained control of both parties. Top leaders of the Republican party, like Sen. Hatch (R-UT), Sen. McConnell (R-KY) (married to a CFR). Rep. Ryan (R-Wi), and others are conniving with the Obama Administration, including Secretary of State John Kerry (a CFR). They receive assistance from the aligned corporations of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Business Council (a NWO org), the Global Business Dialogue, the Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN), and the Business Roundtable (a NWO org). Some of them are even members of the TPN.
To “influence” a politician, the globalists have put together a huge lobbying force of corporate power and send lobbyists to a politician’s district or state to inundate them with promises of a lucrative position at a corporation, a think tank, or a coalition after leaving Congress, if they vote the way the lobbyists want them to vote.
Any politician that votes for a trade agreement that affects the sovereignty of the United States has committed treason, and they don’t care because they’re just looking forward to their reward. They don’t care about how their actions will destroy the lives of their country and its citizens, the very people that voted them into office. All of these traitors must be recalled from office as soon as possible!
The TPP is an existential threat to principles the United States was founded on, and the everyday life of all Americans. An example of what life under the TPP will be like happened on May 18, 2015, when the World Trade Organization ruled that the United States cannot have country of origin labels on meat products sold in stores, even though that is a law that was passed by Congress. What did Congress do? The next day the House Agricultural Committee got together and said they need to change the law because there was nothing they could do about it. They have already introduced legislation, with 60 sponsors, to change the law and knuckle under to the WTO. The ruling by the WTO is the result of a lawsuit brought about because of NAFTA, by Canada and Mexico. Such good trading partners!
The WTO is the judicial branch of the New World Order, and is key to the New World Order. It acts as a subversive force to legislate from the bench.
The architects of the TPP and the TTIP are referring to the agreements as “living,” evolving agreements. They will be open-ended, like Obamacare is, which will allow them to do whatever they want. This is called dictatorship. This shows Congress has already sold out for promises of a lucrative future. Your tax dollars at work!
State legislators in Texas have been told that when these trade agreements are passed, in 5 – 15 years they will be able to run for office in Mexico and Canada, and isn’t that great!
The immigration chapters of the TPP are to ultimately do away with borders, and are similar to the Korean trade agreement that greatly expanded the L-1 visas for “temporary” workers that become permanent. This is what they are doing in the European Union. Immigration becomes migration, and is called welfare tourism. Migrants come into a country, and never leave, so they have to go on welfare to survive. CNN reportedly publishes a travel guide of how Chinese can come to America and get on welfare.
Currently, the United States can deport illegal aliens, despite what Obama tries to do. Once we become part of the TPP, TTIP, NAU, or FTAAP, if the U. S. tries to deport someone, they will have the right to sue. Recently a Romanian woman on welfare that had migrated to England sued when they tried to deport her, saying she had a right to be there, and she won her court case.
Historically, free trade has been about tariffs. The TPP is about regulations of every facet of our lives.
What the “partnerships” do is make private corporations immune to the laws of sovereign countries on the grounds that laws of countries adversely impact corporate profits and constitute “restraint of trade.” For example, under the Transatlantic Partnership, French laws against GMOs would be overturned as “restraints on trade” by law suits filed by Monsanto.
Countries that require testing of imported food, such as pork for trichinosis, and fumigation would be subject to lawsuits from corporations, because these regulations increase the cost of imports.
Countries that do not provide monopoly protection for brand name pharmaceuticals and chemical products, and allow generics in their place, could be sued for damages by corporations.
According to an op-ed article, even though “the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released . . . This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports.”
In 2013, a joint statement by the TPP signatories said that “a final Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement must reflect our common vision to establish a comprehensive, next-generation model for addressing both new and traditional trade and investment issues, supporting the creation and retention of jobs and promoting economic development in our countries. The deepest and broadest possible liberalization of trade and investment will ensure the greatest benefits for countries’ large and small manufacturers, service providers, farmers, and ranchers, as well as workers, innovators, investors, and consumers.”
Here are some of the “greatest benefits” we can expect to see if the TPP is adopted:
- More large scale farming and more monocultures;
- Destruction of local economies;
- No input into how our food is grown or what we will be eating;
- More deforestation;
- Increased use of herbicides and pesticides;
- Increased patenting of life forms;
- More GMO plants and foods; and
- No labeling of GMOs in food.
Together these are a step backwards for human rights and a giant step towards Monsanto’s control of our food.
In his weekly Saturday address on April 25, 2015, Obama said that, “If America doesn’t shape the rules of the global economy today, to benefit our workers, while our economy is in a position of new global strength, then China will write those rules . . . It’s got strong provisions for workers and the environment — provisions that, unlike in past agreements, are actually enforceable . . . If I didn’t think this was the right thing to do for working families, I wouldn’t be fighting for it.” He went on to say, “We’ve spent the past six years trying to rescue the economy, retool the auto industry and revitalize American manufacturing. And if there were ever an agreement that undercut that progress, or hurt those workers, I wouldn’t sign it.”
Yet, six weeks later Obama said that China was now interested in joining the TPP. In reality, Obama has spent the last six years vacationing, golfing, and destroying the economy.
How can the U. S. economy “be in a position of new global strength” when Obama has presided over the lowest average first-quarter GDP growth of any president since the Bureau of Economic Analysis began calculating quarterly GDP growth in 1947?
In all first quarters since 1947, the real annual rate of growth of GDP has averaged 4.0 percent. Since Obama has been in the White House, leaving out the first quarter of 2009 due to the recession, the real annual rate of growth of GDP has averaged only 0.4 percent in the first quarters of the six years since the recession ended.
According to leaks that have been reported about what the TPP agreement contains, some of the things Obama thinks are “the right thing to do for working families” and are worth fighting for are as follows:
No Restrictions on GMO Food —
Currently there is a growing movement worldwide to ban the use of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) in food. All GMO food is dangerous and deadly to eat. The Monsanto Company (a NWO corp) was among the pioneers of the GMO process, and in 2013, Congress passed what has been referred to as the Monsanto Protection Act. The language in Section 735 of the legislation effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of genetically modified crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from their consumption may come to light in the future, Monsanto has been destroying the world since 1901 through its creations of saccharin, DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, aspartame (it bought the company that created aspartame), and Roundup. The chemical in the herbicide Roundup, called glyphosate, is routinely found in cancers, especially breast cancer. It is now being found in the food we eat. It also kills honey bees, which produce 30% of our food supply.
All countries signing the TPP must allow GMOs to be grown in their country and secretly used throughout the food supply. All GMO labeling will be outlawed. Any nation that attempts to ban GMOs will be labeled an “anti-free trade practices” country and could face economic sanctions as a result.
Japan currently has labeling laws for GMOs in food. Under the TPP, Japan would no longer be allowed to label GMOs. This situation is the same for New Zealand and Australia. If the TPP is approved, GMO labeling would no longer be allowed.
In 2010, Obama appointed Islam Siddiqui to be the Chief Agricultural Negotiator for the United States. Siddiqui is the former Vice President for Science and Regulatory Affairs at CropLife America (a NWO corp), a Monsanto front group. He is working with the administration on the TPP.
In the U. S., we are just beginning to see progress towards labeling GMOs. However, the potential for allowing countries that grow food without any kind of regulations on pesticides and other restrictions to export their food to the U. S. and other nations is already beginning to happen.
In 2013, Smithfield Foods, Inc., the world’s largest pork producer and processor, which produces the majority of pork products sold in the U. S., was acquired by a Chinese company. China knowingly sells us poisoned and toxic toys for our children. They have “cancer villages” where they grow toxic food that knowingly causes cancer. This is the food they feed their people. How has the quality of Smithfield pork been since it was sold to China in 2013?
In April 2013, Peru placed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods and plants. This prohibits the import, production and use of GMOs in foods and GMO plants and is aimed at safeguarding Peru’s agricultural diversity. The hope is to prevent cross-pollination with non-GMO crops and to ban GMO crops like Bt corn. Will Peru’s moratorium become obsolete if the TPP is passed?
Instead of there being a specific chapter on agriculture in the TPP, rules affecting food systems and food safety are woven throughout the text. The TPP is attempting to establish corporations’ rights to skirt domestic courts and laws and sue governments directly with taxpayers paying compensation and fines directly from the treasury.
Procurement rules specifically forbid discrimination based on the quality of production. This means that public programs that favor the use of sustainably produced local foods in school lunch programs could be prohibited.
There is a growing resistance to Monsanto’s agricultural plans in Vietnam. Monsanto (the US corporation controlling an estimated 90% of the world seed genetics) has a dark history with Vietnam. Many believe that Monsanto has no right to do business in a country where Monsanto’s product Agent Orange is estimated to have killed 400,000 Vietnamese, deformed another 500,000 and stricken another 2 million with various diseases.
Legacies of other trade agreements that serve as a warning about the TPP have a history of displacing small farmers and destroying local food economies. Ten years following the passage of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) 1.5 million Mexican farmers became bankrupt because they could not compete with the highly subsidized US corn entering the Mexican market.
In the same 10 years Mexico went from a country virtually producing all of its own corn to a country that now imports at least half of this food staple. Mexican consumers are now paying higher prices for Monsanto’s GMO corn.
With little or no competition for large corporations, Monsanto (a NWO corp), DuPont (a NWO corp) and Syngenta now control 57 percent of the commercial food market.
While the TPP is in many ways like NAFTA and other existing trade agreements, it appears that the corporations have learned from previous experience. They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.
No Enforcement of Regulations on Pesticides and Herbicides Used in Imported Food —
Flooding the U. S. market with polluted, unsafe food products from nations that have virtually no enforcement of regulations on pesticides and herbicides will become the new normal. As it has already been reported, “[Corporations] are carefully crafting the TPP to ensure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.”
Massive Job Losses Due to Offshoring Will Accelerate —
The TPP would expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) “trade” pact model that has spurred massive U.S. trade deficits and job loss, downward pressure on wages, unprecedented levels of inequality and new floods of agricultural imports. The TPP not only replicates, but expands NAFTA’s special protections for firms that offshore U.S. jobs. And U.S. TPP negotiators literally used the 2011 Korea FTA – under which exports have fallen and trade deficits have surged – as the template for the TPP.
Yet another leak revealed that the deal would include even more expansive incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore than were included in NAFTA — a deal that drained millions of manufacturing jobs from the American economy.
Although it is called a “free trade” agreement, the TPP is not mainly about trade. Of TPP’s 29 draft chapters, only five deal with traditional trade issues. One chapter would provide incentives to offshore jobs to low-wage countries. Many would impose limits on government policies that we rely on in our daily lives for safe food, a clean environment, and more. Our domestic federal, state and local policies would be required to comply with TPP rules.
Over the past several decades, every time a major trade agreement has been signed we have seen even more good jobs leave the United States.
It isn’t difficult to figure out why this is happening. If corporations can move jobs to the other side of the planet to nations where it is legal to pay slave labor wages, they will make larger profits.
Any basic course in economics will teach you that labor flows from markets where labor costs are high to markets where labor costs are lower. And at this point it costs less to make almost everything overseas. As a result, we have already lost millions upon millions of good jobs, and countless small and mid-size U.S. companies have been forced to shut down because they cannot compete with foreign manufacturers.
We buy far, far more from the rest of the world than they buy from us, and that is a recipe for national economic suicide.
Immigration Becomes Migration — European-Union Style Unlimited Migration with No Way to Stop It —
Reports have already surfaced that the TPP draft contains a whole chapter with a European Union-style provision allowing unlimited migration from Mexico into the United States. This would fulfill Obama’s dream, which he has tried to make a reality with executive amnesty, to import millions of new anti-gun (liberal) voters into the country.
The TPP is also a “Trojan horse” to advance Obama’s “unrestricted immigration” agenda, according to political insiders and critics who have studied the secretive scheming. The Big Government wing of the Republican Party is trying to empower the Obama administration with fast-track Trade Promotion Authority to make it easier to impose the TPP and other radical agreements on the American people, and opponents are warning that the White House immigration agenda may become all but impossible to stop.
The TPP is disguised as a treaty to promote “free trade” — translation: managed or corporatist trade — among nations surrounding the Pacific. However, the TPP agreement, currently being negotiated behind closed doors by governments, dictatorships, and special interests, includes some major surprises. As reported recently, a leaked chapter of the TPP deal would create NAFTA-style international “tribunals” with the purported authority to override American laws, courts, and even the U.S. and state constitutions, all for the benefit of special interests, foreigners, and crony capitalists. The American people and self-government would be the big losers.
Another chapter of the agreement purports to regulate immigration policies among TPP signatories. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership includes an entire chapter on immigration,” observed the executive director of the American Jobs Alliance. “It is a Trojan horse for Obama’s immigration agenda. House members who were ready to defund the Department of Homeland Security to stop President Obama’s executive action on immigration must not give him TPA, which he will use to ensure his immigration actions are locked in when he leaves office.”
Despite harsh rhetoric and various empty threats about stopping the Obama administration’s executive decrees purporting to provide amnesty for illegal immigrants, Republican leaders in Congress, who promptly caved to White House demands on amnesty, have failed to even mention the TPP immigration schemes since 2012. In fact, beyond simply refusing to address the subject, establishment GOP lawmakers are working overtime, with establishment Democrats, to empower Obama with Trade Promotion Authority. On April 16, 2015, lawmakers unveiled S. 995 to surrender their constitutionally delegated authority over trade to Obama via fast-track TPA. If approved, Obama’s immigration machinations, including a drastically expanded “temporary worker” program, would reportedly be set in stone, beyond the reach of the American people or their elected representatives.
“All these ‘21st-century trade agreements’ are written by the same corporate interests and negotiators, and all have the same goal: more visas for foreign workers,” according to the American Jobs Alliance executive director. “If TPP goes into effect, they will be beyond the reach of any future Congress. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another instance of Obama using every means he can to advance his immigration agenda, as he said he would.”
Obama’s Trade Representative in charge of negotiating the pact with foreign regimes and special interests has even boasted that the “temporary entry” guest worker scheme is a “key feature” of the controversial “trade” regime being negotiated. “TPP countries have substantially concluded the general provisions of the chapter,” the administration said, referring to the TPP chapter on immigration matters. “Specific obligations related to individual categories of business person are under discussion.”
Using a “trade” scheme to rewrite immigration law in the TPP is similar to what Obama did in the U.S.-South Korea pseudo-“free trade” regime, which expanded the L-1 visa program. The Homeland Security Inspect General criticized the practice because of the significant potential for fraud used by corporations to bring more foreign workers into the United States. Obama even celebrated his machinations on the L-1 immigration program in March at a corporate summit, saying it “allows corporations to temporarily move workers from a foreign office to a U.S. office in a faster, simpler way.” He also boasted that “hundreds of thousands” of foreign workers could benefit from his scheme.
Big Business and special interests hoping to destroy national sovereignty in favor of regionalism and globalism are looking forward to the prospect of uncontrolled immigration. According to a corporate trade association, “The TPP should remove restrictions on nationality or residency requirements for the selection of personnel.” In other words, de facto open borders.
According to the American Jobs Alliance executive director, “Remember this: nothing Congress puts in TPA will alter what’s already been negotiated over the past six years.”
Free migration of labor among the signatory nations is a provision of the TPP. Patterned after similar provisions in treaties used to destroy national sovereignty and impose the unaccountable super-state now known as the European Union, could “easily be interpreted” as “allowing farm workers and others to flow back and forth without legal regulation,” and all beyond the reach of Congress, according to a Newsmax columnist.
“The treaty could lead to the effective repeal of the specifically enumerated power granted to Congress in Article I of the Constitution to regulate immigration and naturalization,” the columnist said. “While the treaty is still being negotiated, the current focus on white-collar immigration [is] sufficiently elastic to allow open borders.”
No Generic Drugs Allowed —
All generic drug manufacturers who make “copycat” drugs that compete with the monopoly patents of top U. S. drug makers will be shut down.
As specified in the terms of the TPP, drug companies could force member nations to keep drug costs artificially high, thereby enriching the profits of Big Pharma. The TPP Timeline reveals that PhRMA (a NWO org), the lobby group representing the top drug companies and vaccine manufacturers, has special influence over the TPP.
As already reported, “Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as ‘advisers,’ have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the [TPP] agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal.”
The intellectual property provisions of the TPP are also a big handout to Big Pharma. They allow drug companies to shut down generic drug manufacturers that are currently keeping medication costs low in many member nations. Under the TPP, drug companies like Merck (a NWO corp) would be able to enforce global monopoly pricing, even across poor nations where the costs of a month’s medications would vastly exceed a typically monthly income.
According to a report on some leaked TPP text, there are “terms that would allow pharmaceutical firms to challenge the measures that the US government uses domestically to negotiate lower medicine costs for Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health programmes.”
But that’s how Big Pharma operates: The goal of the entire industry is to extract as much human wealth from the planet as possible, regardless of the true cost in human suffering or global chemical pollution from pharmaceutical manufacturing.
If the TPP is passed, it will eventually morph into a close-knit international collective of government agencies that collaborate on medical-drug “safety.” Translation: the U. S. FDA, Health Canada, the Australian TGA, the New Zealand MEDSAFE, and the medical regulatory agencies of Singapore, Vietnam, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, and Peru will declare dangerous drugs to be safe. Together. On behalf of the corporations who manufacture them.
When a massive global agency like the TPP is actually a criminal organization, it enjoys special benefits, such as freedom from prosecution.
The TPP will allow pharmaceutical companies to extend the life of patents on drugs. Those drugs will be exported and imported, from country to country, with far less oversight concerning their destructive health effects, because, in phase one, drug companies will be able to sue governments, in private tribunals, for “restraint of free trade,” when the specter of drug-dangers is raised and drug-imports are refused and turned away.
In phase two, the government regulatory agencies in the TPP countries will become unified. They will simply rubber-stamp new medical drugs together. And say the drugs are safe. It’s easier that way. Less conflict. Fewer disputes. Whenever they are used widely, modern medicines are a leading cause of death.
One example, of many, of the dangers of drugs is the pain and arthritis medication Vioxx. Manufactured by Merck (a NWO corp) and approved by the FDA as safe and effective in 1999, Merck earned approximately $12.5 billion in global sales before Vioxx was taken off the market in 2004.
Once Vioxx was taken off the market, it was revealed it had caused between 88,000 and 140,000 cases of heart disease. Approximately 30% to 40% of those cases were probably fatal, and these are very conservative estimates. After 10,000 individual suits were filed against Merck, 190 class-action lawsuits, and a 2010 U. S. federal case, Merck paid out roughly $8 billion in judgments.
The agency responsible for certifying medicines as safe and effective before they are released for public use in the United States is the FDA. If the TPP is passed, once the FDA decides a drug is safe and effective, the U. S. drug manufacturer can demand that every other TPP country accept that judgment as well.
If the TPP had been in effect while Vioxx was on the market, since the FDA had claimed Vioxx was safe, Merck would have been able to sell Vioxx to all of the TPP signatory countries. If any government had refused to sell Vioxx on the grounds of safety, Merck could have sued the refusing government in a secret corporate court and would have won, even though Vioxx is deadly. That’s phase one activity.
In phase two, this corrosive “conflict resolution” would eventually give way to a much more basic collusion of all the health agencies of the TPP member countries automatically agreeing on the safety of new drugs, whether they’re safe or not, just to avoid the inconvenience of a dispute.
In an interview, a former FDA reviewer reported “…widespread [FDA] racketeering, including witness tampering and witness retaliation.” The reviewer also said he “was threatened with prison . . . One [FDA] manager threatened my children… I was afraid that I could be killed for talking to Congress and criminal investigators.” What was his covert task at the FDA supposed to be? “Drug reviewers were clearly told not to question drug companies and that our job was to approve drugs,” the reviewer said. In other words, the approval process was just to rubber stamp the drugs, even if they were not safe and effective.
The reviewer recalled a meeting where a drug-company representative stated that his company had paid the FDA for a new-drug approval, as in a bribe. He also mentioned that the drug pyridostigmine, given to U. S. troops to prevent the effects of nerve gas, “actually increased the lethality” of certain nerve agents.
The reviewer also said he had been given records of safety data on a drug, and then told which sections not to read by his bosses. Obviously the bosses knew the drug was dangerous, and where that would be revealed in the reports.
Unfortunately these are not isolated incidents of cheating, lying, or bought-off FDA employees. The situation at the FDA is an ongoing criminal enterprise. In a landmark review, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on July 26, 2000, it clearly states that FDA-approved drugs kill 106,000 Americans per year. That’s more than one million deaths per decade.
In a 2009 interview, the doctor that published the review said her figures were on the conservative side. She also said that, incredibly, no federal agency had approached her for help in remedying this decimation of human life, and she was aware of no government program aimed at an overall solution since her review had been published in 2000.
Another factor in the death toll from the approval of dangerous drugs to consider is the widespread and endemic fraud in medical journals, which publish studies that praise and exonerate the drugs.
In 2009, an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, published this statement:
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”
The TPP creates a Healthcare Annex that WikiLeaks says, “seeks to regulate state schemes for medicines and medical devices. It forces healthcare authorities to give big pharmaceutical companies more information about national decisions on public access to medicine, and grants corporations greater powers to challenge decisions they perceive as harmful to their interests.”
According to a doctor that gave a professional review and analysis of the documents to WikiLeaks, “The purported aim of the Annex is to facilitate ‘high-quality healthcare’ but the Annex does nothing to achieve this. It is clearly intended to cater to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry,” the doctor added, “Nor does this do anything to promote ‘free trade.’ The inclusion of the Healthcare Transparency Annex in the TPP serves no useful public interest purpose. It sets a terrible precedent for using regional trade deals to tamper with other countries’ health systems and could circumscribe the options available to developing countries seeking to introduce pharmaceutical coverage programs in the future.”
For Americans, it means Congress wouldn’t be able to reform Medicare, reported WikiLeaks. In addition, the document isn’t to be released until four years after the TPP is passed into law.
The TPP is global government of, by, and for mega-corporations. And one elite class of corporation is pharmaceutical.
Significant Restrictions on Internet Use and Intellectual Property Use —
In November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the TPP. This chapter is perhaps the most controversial chapter due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents. Significantly, the released text includes the negotiation positions and disagreements between all 12 prospective member states.
The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret U. S.-EU pact TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), for which President Obama initiated U. S.-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China, but more countries could be added at any time simce the agreements will be “living.”
The 95-page, 30,000-word Intellectual Property (IP) Chapter lays out provisions for instituting a far-reaching, transnational legal and enforcement regime, modifying or replacing existing laws in TPP member states. The Chapter’s subsections include agreements relating to patents (who may produce goods or drugs), copyright (who may transmit information), trademarks (who may describe information or goods as authentic) and industrial design.
The longest section of the Chapter, ’Enforcement’, is devoted to detailing new policing measures, with far-reaching implications for individual rights, civil liberties, publishers, internet service providers and internet privacy, as well as for the creative, intellectual, biological and environmental commons. Particular measures proposed include supranational litigation tribunals to which sovereign national courts are expected to defer, but which have no human rights safeguards. The IP Chapter states that these courts can conduct hearings with secret evidence. The IP Chapter also replicates many of the surveillance and enforcement provisions from the shelved SOPA and ACTA treaties.
The consolidated text WikiLeaks obtained following the August 2013 TPP meeting in Brunei contains annotations detailing each country’s positions on the issues under negotiation. WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange emphasizes that a “cringingly obsequious” Australia is the nation most likely to support the hardline position of U.S. negotiators against other countries, while states including Vietnam, Chile and Malaysia are more likely to be in opposition. Numerous key Pacific Rim and nearby nations, including Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and, most significantly, Russia and China, have not been involved in the drafting of the treaty.
According to Assange, “If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”
The “Fair Use” of copyrighted material would no longer be allowed. Anyone using an image, a short video clip, an audio clip, etc., would be commiting a crime, and could possibly be arrested and imprisoned under the TPP. Anyone engaging in the Fair Use of copyrighted material would be banned from using the internet. This would shut down virtually the entire alternative media, many blogs, and silence most critics of the global corporate cabal.
All signatory countries will be required to conform their domestic laws and policies to the provisions of the Agreement. In the US, this is likely to further entrench controversial aspects of US copyright law (such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [DMCA]) and restrict the ability of Congress to engage in domestic law reform to meet the evolving IP needs of American citizens and the innovative technology sector. The recently leaked US-proposed IP chapter also includes provisions that appear to go beyond current US law.
Member nations in the TPP would be forced to criminalize small-scale copyright infringement, such as someone sharing a music file with a friend. Domineering copyright enforcement provisions are being influenced by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) (a NWO org), which has also been given extraordinary influence over the language of the TPP.
In May 2014, a draft of the TPP Intellectual Property Chapter [PDF] was leaked, showing that U. S. negotiators are pushing for the adoption of copyright measures far more restrictive than currently required by international treaties, including the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
Do you remember the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) of 2011? There was a huge public backlash when the very strict Internet copyright provisions of SOPA were revealed to the public, and the American people loudly expressed their displeasure to members of Congress. The TPP includes those same provisions of SOPA. Most of them have reportedly been very quietly inserted into this treaty. If this treaty is enacted, those provisions will become law and the American people will not be able to do a thing about it.
The official purpose of SOPA was to “expand the ability of U. S. law enforcement to combat online copyright infringement and online trafficking in counterfeit goods.” In reality, though, the measure would have surrendered control of the Internet to federal agencies, and given the federal government the ability to potentially shut down millions of websites. It would have essentially been the equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on the Internet. Government officials would have unlimited power to very rapidly shut down any website that is found to “engage in, enable or facilitate” copyright infringement. That language is very broad and very vague. Many fear that it would be used to shut down any websites that even inadvertently link to “infringing material”. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube would have to hire thousands of Internet censors to make sure no “infringing material” was posted. Some prominent websites could simply decide that allowing users to post content was no longer profitable and just not worth the hassle. SOPA could be the death of the free Internet.
SOPA is being heavily promoted by big media corporations, because it would have given them back control. An article on lifehacker.com explained how easy it would be to bring a claim against a website under SOPA:
If it’s possible to post pirated content on the site, or information that could further online piracy, a claim can be brought against it. This can be something as minor as you posting a copyrighted image to your Facebook page, or piracy-friendly information in the comments of a post such as this one. The vague, sweeping language in this bill is what makes it so troubling.
Some of the biggest names on the Internet apparently feigned opposition to SOPA. Google (a NWO corp) Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt (a BB and CFR) said, “By criminalizing links, what these bills do is they force you to take content off the Internet.”
Yet, Google is one of the 600 companies that has unlimited access to the TPP document.
In the United States, we used to believe the government should not take our property away without a fair trial. SOPA would allow the U. S. government to hit Internet websites with a “death penalty” without even having to go to court.
Do we really want Chinese-style Internet censorship in America?
Obama recently named Robert Holleyman as deputy U. S. trade representative. Although until recently he worked as a “chief executive of BSA/the Software Alliance (a NWO org), a trade organization for software companies that counts Apple (a NWO corp), IBM (a NWO corp), Microsoft (a NWO corp) and other top computer firms among its members.” A few years ago, Holleyman worked as a professional promoter of the SOPA.
When SOPA was stopped by public outrage, the Software Alliance turned to the TPP, since it would be negotiated in secret without the public knowing what was being done.
The leaked U. S. IP chapter includes many detailed requirements that are more restrictive than current international standards, and would require significant changes to other countries’ copyright laws. These include obligations for countries to:
- Place Greater Liability on Internet Intermediaries: The TPP would force the adoption of the U.S. DMCA Internet intermediaries copyright safe harbor regime in its entirety. For example, this would require Chile to rewrite its forward-looking 2010 copyright law that currently establishes a judicial notice-and-takedown regime, which provides greater protection to Internet users’ expression and privacy than the DMCA.
- Escalate Protections for Digital Locks: It will compel signatory nations to enact laws banning circumvention of digital locks (technological protection measures or TPMs) [PDF] that mirror the DMCA and treat violation of the TPM provisions as a separate offense even when no copyright infringement is involved. This would require countries like New Zealand to completely rewrite its innovative 2008 copyright law, as well as override Australia’s carefully-crafted 2007 TPM regime exclusions for region-coding on movies on DVDs, video games, and players, and for embedded software in devices that restrict access to goods and services for the device—a thoughtful effort by Australian policy makers to avoid the pitfalls experienced with the U. S. digital locks provisions. In the U. S., business competitors have used the DMCA to try to block printer cartridge refill services, competing garage door openers, and to lock mobile phones to particular network providers.
- Create New Threats for Journalists and Whistleblowers: Dangerously vague text on the misuse of trade secrets, which could be used to enact harsh criminal punishments against anyone who reveals or even accesses information through a “computer system” that is allegedly confidential.
- Expand Copyright Terms: Create copyright terms well beyond the internationally agreed period in the 1994 Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The TPP could extend copyright term protections from life of the author + 50 years, to Life + 70 years for works created by individuals, and either 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation for corporate owned works (such as Mickey Mouse).
- Enact a “Three-Step Test” Language That Puts Restrictions on Fair Use: The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is putting fair use at risk with restrictive language in the TPP’s IP chapter. U. S. and Australia have proposed very restrictive text, while other countries such as Chile, New Zealand, and Malaysia, have proposed more flexible, user-friendly terms.
- Adopt Criminal Sanctions: Adopt criminal sanctions for copyright infringement that is done without a commercial motivation. Users could be jailed or hit with debilitating fines over file sharing, and may have their property or domains seized even without a formal complaint from the copyright holder.
In short, countries would have to abandon any efforts to learn from the mistakes of the U. S. and its experience with the DMCA over the last 12 years, and adopt many of the most controversial aspects of U. S. copyright law in their entirety. At the same time, the U. S. IP chapter does not export the limitations and exceptions in the U. S. copyright regime like fair use, which have enabled freedom of expression and technological innovation to flourish in the U. S. It includes only a placeholder for exceptions and limitations. This raises serious concerns about other countries’ sovereignty and the ability of national governments to set laws and policies to meet their domestic priorities.
A web ID is part of the agreement. Currently, if you have any accounts tied to Google (a NWO corp), they can shut down all your accounts and practically erase your identity, if they choose to.
The TPP would require all countries involved to align their laws with the agreements copyright laws.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the “TPP raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities.”
The TPP will also create an international “internet police” that will have the power to censor content and remove whole websites. Mega corporations will gain more power to wage war against competition and censor speech online.
The IPR section of the draft agreement launches another attack on U.S. sovereignty through the mandate that member nations enact regulations requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to privately enforce copyright protection laws. Putting such pressure on service providers is a threat not only to the owners of these small businesses, but also to Internet freedom as well.
In a post-TPP world, ISPs would be forced to raise prices dramatically in order to cover the increase in their own overhead brought on by the requirement that they monitor and manage the websites they host.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the United States joining the TPP would probably result in private ISP enforcement of copyright posing a serious threat to free speech on the Internet, because it would make offering open platforms for user-generated content economically untenable. For example, on an ad-supported site, the costs of reviewing each post will generally exceed the pennies of revenue one might get from ads. Even obvious fair uses could become too risky to host, leading to an Internet with only cautious and conservative content.
When operating a news organization website, time is of the essence in posting news items. If the regulations of the TPP become the law, then ISPs would be forced to immediately remove any subscriber content posted online that is challenged by someone claiming a copyright infringement. This broad expansion of copyright protection could be devastating to a news organization, or blogger, for that matter.
Such procedures bypass the U. S. court system and the Constitution by abolishing the due process owed to those accused of crimes. Rather than requiring a person to present evidence of an alleged copyright violation to an impartial judge, the TPP would allow someone to demand that the outlet’s ISP immediately remove the content in question. Any legal proceedings on the merits of the charges would occur after the damage has been done.
The TPP would “restrict the ability of Congress to engage in domestic law reform to meet the evolving IP needs of American citizens and the innovative technology sector,” according to the EFF. The group also warned that the TPP would “rewrite global rules on intellectual property enforcement.”
The U. S. Trade Representative is pursuing a TPP agreement that will require signatory countries to adopt heightened copyright protection that advances the agenda of the U. S. entertainment and pharmaceutical industries agendas, but omits the flexibilities and exceptions that protect Internet users and technology innovators.
The TPP will affect countries beyond the 11 that are currently involved in negotiations. Like ACTA, the TPP Agreement is a plurilateral agreement that will be used to create new heightened global IP enforcement norms. Countries that are not parties to the negotiation will likely be asked to accede to the TPP as a condition of bilateral trade agreements with the U. S. and other TPP members, or evaluated against the TPP’s copyright enforcement standards in the annual Special 301 process administered by the U. S. Trade Representative.
Enforcing Climate-Change Regulations —
In a June 3, 2015 interview, Obama said that enforcing climate change regulations will indeed be part of the TPP.
Obama said, “If we want to solve something like climate change, which is one of my highest priorities, then I’ve got to be able to get into places like Malaysia, and say to them, this is in your interest. What leverage do I have to get them to stop deforestation? Well part of the leverage is if I’m in a trade relationship with them that allows me to raise standards.” The difference between deforestation and climate change is that deforestation is an actual problem that exists.
In December, Obama will negotiate a multi-country climate agreement in Paris. We already know from Obama’s joint announcement with China that he will commit the United States to a huge reduction in carbon emissions of 26%-28% from 2005 levels, but he will let China, already a much larger carbon emitter, continue to expand its carbon emissions until 2030.
Obama would not need to get Congress to approve the unfair climate change treaty terms that he negotiates. Instead, he could get the Commission set up by the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement to add those terms to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. After that, the Investor-State Dispute Settlement Provisions, set up by the TPP, could enforce Obama’s terms through the threat of multi-billion-dollar fines upon the U.S. government. Billions of dollars in fines for an imaginary problem!
Giving Even More Power to the Banks —
Even more banking regulations would be eliminated, allowing criminal banksters to steal even more money globally while facing no repercussions for their actions. “The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis,” according to an op-ed article. “Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.”
Foreign Companies Can Sue to Overturn U.S. Laws and U.S. Taxpayers Would Pay the Fines —
The TPP includes a provision called “Investor-State Dispute Settlement,” or ISDS, that would let foreign firms challenge U.S. laws, potentially overruling those laws and resulting in fines to be paid by taxpayers. The provisions are becoming common in some trade deals between other nations. Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), said that the White House has dismissed the fears, claiming that the country normally wins legal trade disputes. But he noted how a U.S. cigarette maker is challenging Uruguay and Australia packaging rules because the laws challenge trade treaty language that bars legislation that could damage profits. In addition, the U. S. just lost a major case about labeling meat with the country of origin. The World Trade Organization agreed with Mexico and Canada and against the United States. Congress is now trying to change a law they created requiring country of origin labeling.
According to a prominent international economist at Columbia University, the provision is an attempt by foreign companies to make an “end run” around tough U. S. laws and regulations. “Essentially, ISDS allows companies to sue states in a special ad hoc tribunal that is outside the court systems and outside of the legal systems of the host countries,” he warned. “U. S. law, U. S. court findings, could be set aside by this ad hoc process really designed and pushed by the corporate sector which sees this as an end run around national law.”
In other words, the TPP and TTIP are about America and the other participating countries handing their democratic sovereignty — on regulation of the environment, consumer protection, worker protection, and finance — over to panels, all of whose members will be selected by the large international corporations that for years have been working with Obama’s trade representative to draft these “trade” treaties.
Here’s an example of how sovereignty would be irrelevant: If some corporation “C” under these ‘trade deals’ brings a case to one of those panels and says that country “X” has any regulations regarding the environment, consumer protection, worker protection, or finance, that are stricter than the ones that are set forth in TPP and TTIP, then country X will be assessed to pay a fine to corporation C, for “unfair trade practices” against that corporation. These corporate panels will constitute a new international government, with the power to fine countries for exceeding the regulations that are set forth in these international ‘trade’ treaties.
Obama’s Trade Representative, Michael Froman (a CFR), has told the AFL-CIO and U. S. Senators that when countries such as Colombia systematically murder labor-union organizers, it’s no violation of workers’ rights — nothing that is of any concern to the U. S. regarding this country’s international trade policies or enforcement. On April 22nd, Huffington Post bannered “AFL-CIO’s Trumka: USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation,” and reported that, “Defenders of the White House push for sweeping trade deals argue they include tough enforcement of labor standards. But a top union leader scoffed at such claims Tuesday, revealing that administration officials have said privately that they don’t consider even the killings of labor organizers to be violations of those pacts.”
This is and will be the low level of the playing-field that U. S. workers will be competing against in TPP and TTIP, just as it is already, in the far-smaller NAFTA. “Trumka said that even after the Obama administration crafted an agreement to tighten labor protections four years ago, some 105 labor organizers have been killed, and more than 1,300 have been threatened with death.” The Obama Administration is ignoring the tightened regulations that it itself managed to get implemented on paper. “Pressed for details about Trumka’s assertion that murder doesn’t count as a violation of labor rules, Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO deputy chief of staff, told HuffPost that USTR officials said in at least two meetings where she was present that killing and brutalizing organizers would not be considered interfering with labor rights under the terms of the trade measures.” Furthermore: “’We documented five or six murders of Guatemalan trade unionists that the government had failed to effectively investigate or prosecute,’ Lee said. ‘The USTR told us that the murders of trade unionists or violence against trade unionists was not a violation of the labor chapter.’” That U. S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, is the same person Obama has negotiating with foreign governments, and with international corporations, both the TPP, and the TTIP.
Can you imagine how cold-blooded someone would have to be to decide if the murder of a human being violates a trade agreement? Did all the member nations of the TPP and TTIP get together and decide if murder violates the labor rules of the trade agreement, and if so, under what circumstances? Did the Obama Administration arbitrarily decide this on their own so as not to interfere with the trade agreements?
Any country in TPP or TTIP that brings up worker-protection regulations which are beyond this abysmal level will be fined by corporate panels, and those fines will then become income to the companies whose ‘rights’ (such as to murder labor-organizers) have been violated, under the terms of the given treaty: TPP or TTIP.
And that’s just one example of the type of sovereignty (in this instance over workers’ rights) that is being ceded to international corporations, under these ‘trade’ deals.
Currently, Obama doesn’t even enforce the workers’ rights provisions in the existing NAFTA and other existing trade-deals.
As the UN’s top official on such matters has said, TTP & TTIP will produce “a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots.”
Think that will never happen in the United States? It already has.
In April 2015, under another trade agreement, the Obama administration was directed by a WTO tribunal to change — and essentially gut — a U. S. food-labeling law that dramatically reduced the killing of dolphins by commercial tuna-fishing fleets. Responding to public outrage over the mass slaughtering of the mammals, our Congress passed an effective dolphin-free law. But some tuna operations in Mexico complained that using dolphin-free nets hurt their profits, and the WTO ordered our sovereign nation to surrender our law to the dolphin-killing Mexican profiteers.
Here’s an example of how governments and corporations are currently working together. A Chinese technology company receives technical guidance from a former People’s Liberation Army high-ranking official. Another company was instrumental in creating China’s first atomic bomb. A third company sells technology to China’s missile research academy.
In addition to sharing extensive links to the Chinese military, they also share partnerships with American tech giants IBM (a NWO corp), Cisco Systems, or Microsoft (a NWO corp).
These partnerships involve American technology companies and Chinese companies sharing, licensing, or jointly developing advanced technologies. The question of harming United States national security is increasingly being raised by security experts.
Initially the partnerships involved technology used for commercial purposes, but over time those purposes have become more defense in purpose. Concern is being expressed that this cooperation with Chinese companies could quickly enhance China’s military operations.
As Obama himself is completely aware, he’s lying everytime he accuses Democrats, such as Sen. Warren, of lying when they point out that the TPP would let foreign corporations sue the USA in corporate-run international tribunals to force our officials to weaken or kill laws that might harm a corporation’s profits. “There is no chance, zero chance” of that happening, the liar-in-chief says.
Every Senator, and every member of the U.S. House, who votes for “Fast Track” approval for these deals, is looking for big money from big corporations, and not for fulfilling his or her supposed and oathed job: to be an authentic representative of the public back home — and of their children, and future generations.
The idea that these are ‘free market’ treaties is the biggest of all Big Lies. They’re a transfer of sovereignty from national democracies to a fascistic world government. This is the biggest news-story of our times, and it’s been virtually ignored, until it’s too late to stop.
No More Innocent Until Proven Guilty, One of the Most Sacred Principles in the American Criminal Justice System —
Under the TPP, there will be no due process or presumption of innocence. Corporate entities will be on the same level with governments. An individual corporation will be able to go into arbitration and have equal representation with an entire government. They are codifying the covert censorship they have been testing on Google (a NWO corp) and Facebook (a NWO corp) for years.
The TPP agreement will place domestic U. S. firms that do not do business overseas at a competitive disadvantage. Based on leaked documents, foreign firms under the TPP could conceivably appeal federal regulatory and court rulings against them to an international tribunal with the apparent authority to overrule U. S. sovereignty. If foreign companies want to do business in America, they should have to follow the same rules as everyone else.
It is telling that the only apparent way these Pacific nations will enter a free trade agreement with the U. S. is if they are exempt from our onerous environmental and financial regulations that make it cost-ineffective to do business here. Instead of making these foreign firms exempt from these burdensome rules, they should just repeal the regulations and make it cheaper to do business here.
Obama is negotiating a trade pact that would constitute a judicial authority higher than even the U. S. Supreme Court that could overrule federal court rulings applying U.S. law to foreign companies. That is unconstitutional.
Does the TPP Include Gun Control?
There have been reports that gun control is included in the TPP, but that hasn’t been confirmed yet. Gun control doesn’t have to be in the TPP when it is signed, because it could be added at any time after signing.
If Congress grants Obama the power to unilaterally negotiate and contract trade agreements with foreign powers, these “executive agreements” can cover any topic that the White House considers “trade.” That includes firearms.
If the TPA passes, then the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) would not need to be subject to senatorial debate. In fact, it would not be up for debate at all. The TPA calls for a simple up or down vote on such presidentially brokered international agreements.
What does the Arms Trade Treaty do? First, it grants a monopoly over all weaponry in the hands of the very entity (government) responsible for over 300 million murders in the 20th century. It would also leave private citizens powerless to oppose future atrocities.
An irrefutable fact of armed violence unaddressed by the UN in its gun grab is that all the murders committed by all the serial killers in history don’t amount to a fraction of the brutal killings committed by “authorized state parties” using the very weapons over which they will exercise absolute control under the terms of the Arms Trade Treaty.
Article 2 of the treaty defines the scope of the treaty’s prohibitions. The right to own, buy, sell, trade, or transfer all means of armed resistance, including handguns, is denied to civilians by this section of the Arms Trade Treaty.
Article 3 places the “ammunition/munitions fired, launched or delivered by the conventional arms covered under Article 2” within the scope of the treaty’s prohibitions, as well.
Article 4 rounds out the regulations, also placing all “parts and components” of weapons within the scheme.
Perhaps the most immediate threat to the rights of gun owners in the Arms Trade Treaty is found in Article 5. Under the title of “General Implementation,” Article 5 mandates that all countries participating in the treaty “shall establish and maintain a national control system, including a national control list.” This list should “apply the provisions of this Treaty to the broadest range of conventional arms.”
In very clear terms, ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty by the United States would require that the U.S. government force gun owners to add their names to the national registry. Citizens would be required to report the amount and type of all firearms and ammunition they possess. Section 4 of Article 12 of the treaty requires that the list be kept for at least 10 years.
The agreement also demands that national governments take “appropriate measures” to enforce the terms of the treaty, including civilian disarmament. If these countries can’t get this done on their own, however, Article 16 provides for UN assistance, specifically including help with the enforcement of “stockpile management, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes.” In fact, a “voluntary trust fund” will be established to assist those countries that need help from UN peacekeepers or other regional forces to disarm their citizens.
Paragraph 21 of the U.S.-approved resolution calls on member states “to consider ratifying or acceding to the Arms Trade Treaty as soon as possible and encourages States, intergovernmental, regional and subregional organizations that are in a position to do so to render assistance in capacity-building to enable States Parties to fulfil [sic] and implement the Treaty’s obligations.”
In other words, the United States UN representatives (and other member states who have not ratified the ATT) claim that people’s representatives in Congress don’t need to bother with the pesky process of ratifying the UN’s disarmament mandate; the federal government could simply accede to it. Accede. That sounds suspiciously like something that could be accomplished easily and “as soon as possible” should the TPA be handed to Obama.
WHAT HAS CONGRESS BEEN DOING?
In February 2014, House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi announced her rejection of the “Fast Track” bill, saying it was “out of the question.” Senate Majority leader Harry Reid had previously said he was also against it. Opposition from Democrat leaders in the House and Senate was a major setback for the Fast Track bill, and likely came as a result of public opposition from hundreds of thousands of individuals and organizations across the US.
Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has voiced his support for the trade agreements, encouraging the president to “prioritize” passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Speaking at the Center for the National Interest dinner in New York City on October 23, 2014, Sen. Paul said:
“Our national power is a function of the national economy. During the Reagan renaissance, our strength in the world reflected our successful economy. Low growth, high unemployment, and big deficits have undercut our influence in the world. Americans have suffered real consequences from a weak economy.
President George W. Bush understood that part of the projection of American power is the exporting of American goods and culture. His administration successfully brokered fourteen new free trade agreements and negotiated three others that are the only new free trade agreements approved since President Obama took office. Instead of just talking about a so-called “pivot to Asia,” the Obama administration should prioritize negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership by year’s end.” [Emphasis added.]
Had Sen. Paul read the TPP? Was he aware of everything it covered? Sen. Paul is now a 2016 presidential candidate.
Both the TPP and the TTIP are unprecedented regional agreements purported to create millions of new jobs and expand the U.S. economy via greater integration with the Asia-Pacific rim nations (TPP) and with the European Union (TTIP) at the expense of American sovereignty. Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), one of the few members of Congress given limited access to the TPP negotiation documents, told the Huffington Post, “Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty.”
On April 25, 2015, House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that following through with trade agreements in Europe and the Pacific would create jobs and grow the economy.“ You see, 96 percent of the world’s consumers — they don’t live in the United States; they live in other countries,” Ryan said. “We have to make more things in America and sell them overseas.We let other countries sell their products here, but they’ve put up trade barriers that make it hard to sell our products over there.” Except we do 30% more trade with countries we don’t have trade agreements with, than countries we do have trade agreements with. Not to mention that all trade agreements involve job losses.
Ryan then said this “puts Congress in the driver’s seat” because they can reject trade agreements they disapprove of. “Congress gets the final say,” Ryan said. “If you meet all of these requirements, we will give the agreement an up-or-down vote.” But, Congress can’t make any amendments, and Obama can sign the agreement before Congress even looks at it.
On May 3, 2015, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) began warning colleagues and the American public with a “critical alert,” that voting for the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) deal that would set up the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal with Asian countries is fraught with problems and concerns:
“Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret . . . It must improve the quality of life, the earnings, and the per-capita wealth of everyday working Americans. The sustained long-term loss of middle class jobs and incomes should compel all lawmakers to apply added scrutiny to a ‘fast-track’ procedure wherein Congress would yield its legislative powers and allow the White House to implement one of largest global financial agreements in our history—comprising at least 12 nations and nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP . . . The time when this nation can suffer the loss of a single job as a result of a poor trade agreement is over.”
Sen. Sessions critical alert document discusses five critical concerns about the proposed trade agreements. The concerns Sen. Sessions identifies are as follows:
There would be a “consolidation of power in the executive branch,” not a return of more power to Congress as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (married to a CFR) have claimed.
If Congress were to pass the TPA, it would result in “increased trade deficits.” U.S. trade deficits reduce economic growth. Since Obama’s 2011 trade deal with South Korea, there has been a 50 percent jump in the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea, which equates to 50,000 U.S. jobs lost. The South Korea free trade agreement was used as the template for the TPP.
Passing TPA, and then TPP, means the United States is effectively “ceding sovereign authority to to international powers.” Both the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) have said the so-called “living agreement” inside the TPP agreement means the agreement could be changed by other countries and the president without congressional approval whatsoever.
It’s a well-known “secret” in the international market that other countries are devaluing their currencies to artificially lower the price of their exports while artificially raising the price of U. S. exports to them, resulting in massive loss of domestic manufacturing wealth. Currency manipulation can easily dwarf tariffs in its economic impact, but neither the TPA nor the TPP address currency manipulation at all.
The TPA agreement would allow the president to increase immigration above current law and Congress would be powerless to stop it. Language could be added into the TPP (or maybe it’s already included) and any future trade agreement submitted for fast-track consideration in the next 6 years, that would facilitate or enable the movement of foreign workers and employees into the United States (including intracompany transfers), and there would be no capacity for lawmakers to strike the offending provision, since the Administration could simply act on its own to negotiate foreign worker increases with foreign trading partners without ever advertising those plans to Congress. The 2011 Soauth Korea Free Trade Agreement —which was “never brought before Congress”—increased the duration of time people can get L-1 visas to come into the United States and take jobs away from Americans. There are no protections for U.S. workers in the L-1 visa program.
Sen. Sessions wrote that, “The President has already subjected American workers to profound wage loss through executive-ordered foreign worker increases on top of existing record immigration levels. Yet, despite these extraordinary actions, the Administration will casually assert that is has merely modernized, clarified, improved, streamlined, and updated immigration rules. Thus, at any point during the 6-year life of TPA, the Administration could send Congress a trade deal—or issue an executive action subsequent to a trade deal as part of its implementation—that increased foreign worker entry into the U.S., all while claiming it has never changed immigration law. The President has circumvented Congress on immigration with serial regularity. But the TPA would yield new power to the executive to alter admissions while subtracting congressional checks against those actions. This runs contrary to our Founders’ belief, as stated in the Constitution, that immigration should be in the hands of Congress. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the Constitution grants Congress plenary authority over immigration policy.”
As of May 7, 2015, only two Republican senators out of 54 have admitted they read the details of the TPP trade deal. The press secretary for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said he had reviewed the TPP, but was undecided. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has said several times he has read it. Other senators could have read the document, but chose not to admit doing so.
In an effort to get his trade deals passed, Obama decided to use personal insults against prominent liberal Democrats in Congress, liberal Democrats across the nation, organized labor, and leading public interest and environmental groups who share doubts about the TPP trade deal.
Obama’s insults against liberal Democrats have included accusations that they are ignorant about trade policy, insincere when offering their opinions, motivated by politics and not the national interest, and backward looking towards the past. Obama has repeatedly attacked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and charged that her concern about the trade bill is motivated not by a reasoned view of what is right for America, but by her personal political motivations.
Sen. Warren, a nationally respected liberal leader in American politics, is not alone in her doubts about the trade bill. They are shared by Senate Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and a majority of Democrats in the Senate and House, as well as a significant number of leading liberal economists.
Was Obama just being insulting, or was he using community organizer tactics he learned years ago? A community organizer, according to the creator of community organizers Saul Alinsky, must pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. By freezing a target, supporters will usually rally around the target, and some of the supporters may have been unknown before a target was attacked.
On May 14, 2015, a Senate vote was taken on the “Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act” amendment to the TPA agreement, and it passed by a 65 to 33 vote margin. Some media outlets incorrectly reported that this was the vote that gave Obama TPA authority, but it was not. However, had the vote failed, the TPA would have also failed.
On May 18, 2015, Sen. Sessions (R-AL) spoke on the Senate floor concerning the decline in American’s real hourly wages, median incomes, and shrinking middle class, partially as a result of trade deals.
“It is time to begin a vigorous analysis of our conduct of trade,” Sessions said. “Do our policies and TPP concede too much to our mercantilist competitor allies? At bottom, we must ask whether or not our aggressive trading partners, using a mercantilist philosophy, may be gaining unfair advantage. These countries—good nations, good allies—are not religious about free trade. In general, while they assert their desire is for expanded free trade, their actual policies seek fewer U.S. exports to them using non-tariff as well as tariff barriers. Our trade competitors use currency manipulation, subsidies, and other actions to expand their exports to us. Their goal is, naturally, to seek full employment in their countries while exporting their unemployment to the United States.”
Sessions added, “So when a company closes its plant in the United States, and shifts production to a lower-wage country, the company may make more money but the workers, and their communities—who cannot move overseas—suddenly don’t have jobs. They are hurt.” he said. “Of course we cannot stop the effects of globalization. But we can work for trade agreements that create a more level playing field against our good but mercantilist trading partners.” He also emphasized the importance of trade agreements being for the benefit of the American people, but the fast-track proposal would essentially result in a rubber stamp for any end trade treaty over the next six years.
During the past several months, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has worked almost single-handedly to build support for fast track for Obama.
In an interview on May 20, 2015, Ryan said, “I just think it would be a big mistake for our country if we were to fail to do this. I think this would be a punctuation mark on the declining narrative of America and we should not have our fingerprints, as Republicans, on anything that makes it look like we’re in decline. Trade is very important, it’s about time that this administration gets around to it. Forget our party, this is important for our country.”
Ryan has even been working with conservative groups like Club for Growth (a NWO org) and The Heritage Foundation (a NWO org).
Ryan has also sought help from the business community when lawmakers were concerned about issues surrounding transparency of what’s included in the deal, as well as immigration and congressional authority. According to a representative for the Business Roundtable-led Trade Benefits America Coalition, Ryan has been “unrelenting in engaging members. He is an authentic expert on this with many members. They feel much more assured when they are actively talking to Chairman Ryan, or Tiberi or House Ways and Means Committee staff because they have such a deep knowledge of this issue.”
Exactly what is Ryan an expert on, and what does he have a deep knowledge of? Does his knowledge include the fact that the TPP will destroy the sovereignty of the U. S., and is he OK with committing treason? Is he aware that the TPP will provide unlimited migration into the U. S. and Congress won’t be able to stop it; that corporations will be deciding the laws of the U. S., not the government; that internet use and intellectual property use will be severely controlled; that no generic drugs will be allowed; that massive job losses will continue; that no regulations will be allowed to stop GMO food from being sold, or food produced with pesticides and herbicides from being imported?
The vast majority of members of the Business Roundtable (a NWO org) work for corporations that support the New World Order. The TTIP agreement has been a goal of the globalists for many years.
Has Ryan read the TPP agreement? The “big mistake for our country” would be if the U. S. passed the TPP. Trade is very important, but only 20% of the TPP is about trade. Doesn’t he know that, and if not, why not?
On May 22, 2015, the Senate voted down an amendment designed to create strict regulation of global currency markets. The AFL-CIO lobbied heavily for the passage of the amendment, since they oppose the TPP. The amendment was designed as a get-tough gesture toward China, which has long been accused of manipulating its currency to make its exports cheaper.
The amendment had been sponsored by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), whose states have been ravaged by losses of manufacturing jobs to foreign competition.
Then, the Treasury Department warned the Senate that if they passed the amendment, Obama would veto it, because the other nations would potentially abandon the TPP talks. Can’t be passing any amendments to protect American jobs since the TPP will be eliminating jobs. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) also warned the Senate that Obama would veto the amendment.
In the end, 41 Republicans and 10 Democrats defeated the amendment, which was considered the last major hurdle to securing Senate passage of the legislation. Five Republicans joined 32 Democrats in opposing TPA, which included Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) and his top two lieutenants, and staunch conservatives such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “Congress is forgetting its duty: to improve jobs and wages for Americans,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), one of the most conservative senators, said in a statement.
On May 22, 2015, House Speaker John Boehner praised the Senate’s passage of the trade bill, and called on Democrats to join with Republicans to pass the law in the House.
“Trade helps create good-paying American jobs, so it’s good news that the Senate has put us one step closer to eliminating trade barriers. These reforms have the support of farmers, manufacturers, small business owners, and Americans from all walks of life, and it’s not hard to figure out why,” Boehner said in a statement. “With trade promotion authority, we’ll be able to hold President Obama accountable so America’s workers can get the best agreements. Without it, our workers will fall further behind as China writes the rules of the global economy. It is a no-brainer. The House will take up this measure, and Republicans will do our part, but ultimately success will require Democrats putting politics aside and doing what’s best for the country. Let’s seize this opportunity to open new doors for the things Americans make and the people who make them.”
Does Boehner actually believe these lies about what the trade agreements will do for American workers, or could there possibly be another reason he supports the trade bills?
According to its website, since its creation “in 1992 to promote the closest possible partnership between the Governments and the peoples of the European Union and the United States, the Transatlantic Policy Network (TPN) has a proud record of achievement as well as vital ambitions for the future. TPN’s immediate priority is to strongly encourage the United States and the European Union to agree a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). TPN has argued the case for progress towards transatlantic free trade and a close political partnership for nearly 20 years, with a particular focus on creating a Transatlantic Market by 2020.”
In 1995, the TPN emphasized that the EU and the U. S. should strive to create processes and mechanisms able to stabilise exchange rates, to co-ordinate political and economic efforts in Central and Eastern Europe and to evolve a common approach to further opening of the markets of Japan and East Asia. They should also work in concert to integrate Russia, China and India into the global economic system.
Stronger Transatlantic political and economic relations must reinforce, not weaken, multilateral organisations, especially the WTO (a NWO org). There is likewise widespread and growing recognition that the success of partners’ respective international policies will increasingly depend on Transatlantic cooperation. At the same time, the risk of Transatlantic conflict over partners’ multilateral political and economic interests, and over relations with specific third countries, is growing. Perceived priorities in this context today include:
• The need for regional stability in certain parts of the world, notably in Russia and CIS states, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa;
• The need to adapt the global economic management system (the WTO and the Bretton Woods (a NWO org) institutions) to the new realities of the global economy;
• The need for stable monetary conditions
NATO will become the chief organization run by an overlap among NATO, the Western European Union, and the European Union.
That means the globalists have been working on the TTIP for more than 20 years!
Members of the TPN Congressional Group are drawn from a broad basis of representation in the United States, and include some members of Congress. That might explain why one member, House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), is trying so hard to pass TPA, so Obama can sign the TPP. Other Congressional members include those listed below.
Congressional Members That Belong to the Treasonous Transatlantic Policy Network —
Congressional Position | Name of Politician | Political Party | State |
---|---|---|---|
Representative | Marsha Blackburn | Republican | TN |
John Boehner | Republican | OH |
|
Kevin Brady | Republican | TX |
|
Michael Conaway | Republican | TX |
|
Jim Costa | Democrat | CA |
|
Joseph Crowley | Democrat | NY |
|
Susan Davis | Democrat | CA |
|
Eliot Engel | Democrat | NY |
|
Sam Farr | Democrat | CA |
|
Bob GoodLatte | Republican | VA |
|
Steve Israel | Democrat | NY |
|
Darrell Issa | Republican | CA |
|
Ron Kind | Democrat | WI |
|
Sander Levin | Democrat | MI |
|
Kenny Marchant | Republican | TX |
|
Jim McDermott | Democrat | WA |
|
John Mica | Republican | FL |
|
Candice Miller | Republican | MI |
|
Erik Paulsen | Republican | MN |
|
Ed Perlmutter | Democrat | CO |
|
Collin Peterson | Democrat | MN |
|
Dennis Ross | Republican | FL |
|
Ed Royce | Republican | CA |
|
F. James Sensenbrenner | Republican | WI |
|
Fred Upton | Republican | MI |
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Greg Walden | Republican | OR |
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Joe Wilson | Republican | SC |
|
Senators | Thad Cochran | Republican | MS |
Mark Kirk | Republican | IL |
|
Barbara Mikulski | Democrat | MD |
|
Roger Wicker | Republican | MS |
After all the information that has been publicized about how destructive these trade agreements are for the United States, are we suppose to believe these Senators and Congressmen are unaware how harmful the TPP will be for the United States?
Have you ever wondered how much it would cost to buy a vote in Congress? Apparently as little as $35,000, but then Sen. Grassley (R-IA) is 81 years old. Some votes cost even less!
How much do you think it cost corporate America to buy enough votes in the Senate to pass the Fast Track Authorization bill? Ten million? Twenty million? Fifty million? Not even close. It took just $1.15 million from coalition members of the US Business Coalition for TPP to buy enough yes votes to guarantee passage of the bill. The average Republican was given approximately $19,700 for their yes vote. The average Democrat was given approximately $9,700 from the same donors. Who was the biggest donor? Goldman Sachs, of course, one of the owners of the banking cartel that owns the Federal Reserve, and one of the biggest recipients of the banker bailouts in 2008 that were presided over by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (a CFR), a former Goldman Sachs Chairman. The donations were made between January and March, 2015, when the Senate was debating fast track and the TPP.
Many industries, such as banks, insurance companies, and utilities, have donated $218.4 million to current senators since October 2008, according to money in politics researcher MapLight. That’s about nine times more than the $23.2 million contributed by groups that oppose it. Senators that voted to approve the TPA received an average of $2.34 million from trade agreement supporters, 22 percent more than those who voted no. Senators who voted against the TPA received an average of $443,254 from industries that oppose it, which was approximately four times more than those who voted yes.
There were several different votes taken in the days leading up to the final vote. If any of those votes had failed, the Fast-Track Authority would have failed. Two days before the fast-track vote, Ron Wyden and seven other Senate Democrats announced they were on the fence, since at that time there were not enough yes votes to pass the bill.
Corrupt corporate America to the rescue! In just 24 hours, Wyden and five of those Democratic holdouts – Michael Bennet of Colorado, Dianne Feinstein of California, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Patty Murray of Washington, and Bill Nelson of Florida – caved and voted for fast-track.
The amount of the bribes depended on whether the senator is running for reelection in 2016. Those votes cost more than what the other senators were paid.
How Much Corporations Paid Some Senators for Their Vote on the TPA and TPP —
Name of Senator | Political Party | State | Total Amount of Bribe | Bribe Amounts Some Corporations Paid Between January and March 2015 | Bribe Amounts Paid Between 10/2008 and 9/2014 | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kelly Ayotte | R | NH | $98,050 | Goldman Sachs -- $49,700 | ||
John Barrasso | R | WY | $1,000 | |||
Michael Bennet | D | CO | $53,700 | Goldman Sachs -- $22,500 Morgan Stanley -- $2,500 | ||
Ray Blunt | R | MO | $77,950 | Goldman Sachs -- $5,200 Monsanto -- $13,500 Morgan Stanley -- $1,000 | $4,478,334 | Blunt introduced the Monsanto Protection Act in 2013, which passed |
John Boozman | R | AR | $5,050 | Goldman Sachs -- $1,000 | ||
Richard Burr | R | NC | $60,000 | Citigroup -- $5,000 Facebook -- $2,500 Goldman Sachs -- $1,000 Monsanto -- $1,000 | ||
Thomas Carper | D | DE | $2,000 | |||
Daniel Coats | R | IN | $4,500 | |||
Christopher Coons | D | DE | $3,500 | |||
John Cornyn | R | TX | $4,661,729 | |||
Tom Cotton | R | AR | $3,500 | |||
Mike Crapo | R | ID | $24,000 | Citigroup -- $2,500 Goldman Sachs -- $2,500 Morgan Stanley -- $4,000 | ||
Ted Cruz | R | TX | $35,425 | Goldman Sachs -- $13,550 | His wife is an executive at Goldman Sachs | |
Joni Ernst | R | IA | $13,000 | |||
Dianne Feinstein | R | CA | $1,000 | |||
Deb Fischer | R | NE | $9,000 | Facebook -- $2,500 | ||
Jeff Flake | R | AZ | $3,500 | Goldman Sachs -- $1,000 | ||
Cory Gardner | R | CO | $5,000 | |||
Kirsten Gillibrand | D | NY | $6,283,229 | |||
Chuck Grassley | R | IA | $35,000 | Monsanto -- $3,000 | ||
Orrin Hatch | R | UT | $11,000 | Goldman Sachs -- $2,000 Morgan Stanley -- $1,000 | $3,934,793 | |
Heidi Heitkamp | D | ND | $10,500 | Goldman Sachs -- $2,500 Morgan Stanley -- $2,000 | ||
Dean Heller | R | NV | $9,500 | Goldman Sachs -- $2,500 | ||
John Hoeven | R | ND | $8,500 | Facebook -- $2,500 | ||
Johnny Isakson | R | GA | $102,575 | Morgan Stanley -- $1,000 | ||
Ron Johnson | R | WI | $18,500 | |||
Mark Kirk | R | IL | $28,200 | Citigroup -- $200 Goldman Sachs -- $3,000 | ||
James Lankford | R | OK | $5,500 | |||
Mike Lee | R | UT | $14,511 | Facebook -- $2,500 | ||
John McCain | R | AZ | $51,750 | Morgan Stanley -- $13,300 | ||
Claire McCaskill | D | MO | $1,000 | |||
Mitch McConnell | R | KY | $4,500 | Goldman Sachs -- $2,500 | $8,260,738 | |
Jerry Moran | R | KS | $36,000 | Citigroup -- $2,500 Goldman Sachs -- $5,000 | ||
Lisa Murkowski | R | AK | $28,500 | |||
Patty Murray | D | WA | $25,760 | Goldman Sachs -- $2,500 Morgan Stanley -- $1,500 | ||
Bill Nelson | D | FL | $2,000 | |||
Rand Paul | R | KY | $5,000 | |||
David Perdue | R | GA | $12,500 | |||
Rob Portman | R | OH | $119,750 | Citigroup -- $2,950 Facebook -- $2,500 GoldmanSachs -- $70,600 Morgan Stanley -- $1,500 Pfizer -- $15,700 | $6,012,831 | Portman is a former U. S. Trade Representative, and one of the loudest proponents of the TPP |
Harry Reid | D | NV | $4,256,681 | |||
Mike Rounds | R | SD | $1,000 | |||
Marco Rubio | R | FL | $14,500 | Facebook -- $2,500 Morgan Stanley -- $1,000 | ||
Bernie Sanders | I | VT | $140,000 | |||
Benjamin Sasse | R | NE | $1,000 | |||
Charles Schumer | D | NY | $5,900,484 | |||
Tim Scott | R | SC | $67,500 | Morgan Stanley -- $2,000 | ||
Richard Shelby | R | AL | $4,500 | |||
John Thune | R | SD | $28,500 | Citigroup -- $1,000 Goldman Sachs -- $5,000 Monsanto -- $1,500 Morgan Stanley -- $1,500 | ||
Thom Tillis | R | NC | $11,000 | |||
Pat Toomey | R | PA | $63,750 | Citigroup -- $28,550 Facebook -- $2,500 Goldman Sachs -- $3,500 Morgan Stanley -- $1,000 | $4,455,096 | |
Mark Warner | D | VA | $4,118,863 | |||
Ron Wyden | D | OR | $26,500 | Monsanto -- $1,000 Morgan Stanley -- $1,500 |
According to a spokesman for the anti-corruption group Represent.Us, “It’s a rare thing for members of Congress to go against the money these days. They know exactly which special interests they need to keep happy if they want to fund their reelection campaigns or secure a future job as a lobbyist. How can we expect politicians who routinely receive campaign money, lucrative job offers, and lavish gifts from special interests to make impartial decisions that directly affect those same special interests? As long as this kind of transparently corrupt behavior remains legal, we won’t have a government that truly represents the people.”
Bribery of a public official is a crime resulting in a fine, prison time, or both. What is Attorney General Lynch (a CFR) doing, who made a name for herself prosecuting local officials for soliciting bribes and favors when she was in the U. S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn? Oh yeah, she’s going after the international soccer federation (FIFA) for alleged bribery and corruption issues. That’s apparently more important than enforcing the laws of the United States that she took an oath to uphold. But then, as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, doesn’t that also make her corrupt?
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI.) continues to spew propaganda to try and sell the treasonous TPP. In an op-ed article, he actually wrote that if the House does not authorize fast-track authority (the step necessary before Obama can sign the TPP that destroys the sovereignty of the U. S.), “it will signal to the world that America itself, not just President Obama, has grown weary of leadership. By contrast, if the House approves TPA, it will show that America is once again taking the lead. He also said that, “if the House rejects TPA, it will announce to the world that America is unreliable.” In reality, rejecting the TPA is rejecting globalism, which is destroying the world.
In an interview on June 2, 2015, Ryan said that China doesn’t play by the rules and adhere to the United States’ standards. “These other countries are agreeing to our cross-border data flow protections, our internet protections, our intellectual property protections, our tariff and our non-tariff barriers, not subsidizing state-owned enterprises. China is nowhere near willing to do that,” said Ryan, adding that bad government policies, including on free trade, are hurting U.S. economic growth.
When asked about unions opposing the TPP because they say it will lead to more American jobs being shipped overseas, Ryan replied that he usually tells union members that if more markets are opened to American products, it will produce more jobs here at home.
“Right now if a very big company wants to sell in another country, they go make it in that country, they set up a factory in that country, outsource jobs,” said Ryan, emphasizing that the trade barriers need to be removed.
At a pro-trade meeting on June 3, 2015, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said that passing fast-track trade authority is “an important priority for the country.”
When asked if he had a problem with not being able to see the entire document anytime Congress wants to, Boehner replied, “This is not about the president; frankly, it’s about the country. It’s why I’ve worked with the president on a number of trade agreements over the course of his tenure and my tenure as Speaker,” including deals with Panama and South Korea. Since the South Korean trade deal was used as the template for the TPP, he has a very good idea of what’s in the TPP.
In an interview, House GOP Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said the pro-trade gathering was part of “the push to the finish.”
“It’s about encouraging the coalition to make sure they are calling and making the case district by district and in this country as to the positive impact of trade on our economy as well as our national security,” she said. Since when did destroying our national sovereignty become a positive impact on national security? Where do these people come from?
More Congressmen are refusing to admit whether they have read the TPP document. As of June 4, 2015, Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) refused to admit whether they have read the text of the TPP trade deal, but they still support granting Obama the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to fast track it.
Even some of the 2016 presidential candidates are refusing to admit whether they’ve read the bill. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who voted for it in the U.S. Senate after making it a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, has repeatedly refused over the past month to answer whether he’s made it to the room to read the TPP text. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is also refusing to answer whether he read it.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) are the only two GOP presidential candidates in the Senate who read it, and Paul is the only one who voted against Obamatrade. Cruz voted for it after reading the text, but expressed his public support for the deal weeks before he read it in an op-ed with Ryan in the Wall Street Journal.
House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) has repeatedly refused, through a spokesman, to say whether he has read the TPP text, but he still supports Obamatrade.
On June 5, 2015, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) wrote a scathing new letter to Obama pressuring him to explain why Obamatrade has been so secretive.
The letter said, “On May 6th of this year, I sent you a letter (enclosed) regarding your request for Congress to grant you fast-track executive authority. Under fast-track, Congress transfers its authority to the executive and agrees to give up several of its most basic powers. These concessions include: the power to write legislation, the power to amend legislation, the power to fully consider legislation on the floor, the power to keep debate open until Senate cloture is invoked, and the constitutional requirement that treaties receive a two-thirds vote. The latter is especially important since, having been to the closed room to review the secret text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is clear it more closely resembles a treaty than a trade deal. In other words, through fast-track, Congress would be pre-clearing a political and economic union before a word of that arrangement has been made available to a single private citizen.”
“The letter, which received no reply, asked several fundamental questions Congress ought to have answered before even considering whether to grant the executive such broad new powers,” Sessions said. “Among those, I asked that you make public the section of the TPP that creates a new transnational governance structure known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission. The details of this new governance commission are extremely broad and have the earmarks of a nascent European Union, with many similarities. Reviewing the secret text, plus the secret guidance document that accompanies it, reveals that this new transnational commission – chartered with a ‘Living Agreement’ clause – would have the authority to amend the agreement after its adoption, to add new members, and to issue regulations impacting labor, immigration, environmental, and commercial policy. Under this new commission, the Sultan of Brunei would have an equal vote to that of the United States. The implications of this new Pacific Union are extraordinary and ought to be discussed in full, in public, before Congress even contemplates fast-tracking its creation and pre-surrendering its power to apply the constitutional two-thirds treaty vote,” Sessions wrote.
“In effect, to adopt fast-track is to agree to remove the constitutional protections against the creation of global governance structures before those structures are even made public. I would therefore ask that you provide to me the legal and constitutional basis for keeping this information from the public and explain why I cannot share the details of what I have read with the American people. Congress should not even consider fast-tracking the transfer of sovereign power to a transnational structure before the details of that new structure are made fully available for public review.”
Freshman GOP Congresswoman Rep. Mimi Walters (R-CA), has been pushing Obamatrade on television, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show on June 8, 2015. Co-host Mika Brzezinski (a CFR) (daughter of Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski) said Walters is the official “liaison” between House GOP freshmen and Speaker Rep. John Boehner’s (R-OH) leadership team, even though her office admits she hasn’t read the bill she wants to fast-track through Congress.
On the Morning Joe to push Obamatrade, Rep. Walters said, “And what Trade Promotion Authority, known as TPA, is it’s really the framework of giving the president the opportunity to negotiate trade agreements with other countries. It’s very, very important that we pass this piece of legislation. It’s bipartisan. One in five jobs in America are created because 95 percent of consumers are outside of the United States and if America doesn’t take the lead on trade then China is going to. I want America to take the lead and set the standards on trade.”
In reality, as mentioned earlier in this article, China is going to join the TPP, and the U. S. does 30% more trade with countries not in a free trade agreement than we do with countries in a free trade agreement.
Walters was asked how Obamatrade would help America beat China in international trade when last week Obama confirmed that China is not only seeking to become part of the TPP deal, but is in negotiations to do so. The Congresswoman didn’t seem to care about that contradiction in logic, as her spokeswoman actually said the congresswoman is cool with China becoming a part of the secretive deal.
“The U.S. has been an integral part of the TPP negotiations from the beginning,” the spokeswoman said. “Thus, the U.S. has exerted substantial influence on writing the rules of the road for trade in the 21st Century. China’s potential accession to the TPP would mean that China would have to adhere to U.S.-approved trade rules. China would have to meet the rules we set. In contrast, if the U.S. were to abandon the TPP, China will lead the Asia-Pacific region with its proposed trade deal – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). ”
Had either one of them bothered to read the TPP, they hopefully would have read the section that describes how corporations, not governments, will be setting trade rules.
This makes Walters the third member of the House GOP leadership, joining Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) and Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), to confirm they are pushing for Obamatrade even though they haven’t been to the room to read the text of the TPP.
Congress is being so secretive about Obamatrade that Congressional authorities are not only keeping the text of Obama’s various trade deals secret, they’re also keeping the log that lists which members of Congress have gone to read the TPP secret as well.
The TiSA and TTIP text documents are not currently available for members of Congress to read, but the TPP text is available for members to read in the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Room for the Senate. The Senate Security Office keeps track of the secret log, according to a senate staffer. A log inside the secret room is kept listing any members who go read the TPP text, but the log listing the senators who have actually read what they’re about to vote on is also kept secret from the public. That means Americans have no way of knowing, outside of their members of Congress confirming publicly they’ve visited the room to read the TPP text, whether their members of Congress have any clue what it is they are voting on.
An official from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence indicated there is part of the TPP being kept in a secured room for House members to review. However, according to the spokesperson for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman, if members of the House of Representatives wish to review the TPP, they must contact the United States Trade Representative.
After it was revealed, on June 10, 2015, that technically a vote for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would be a vote to grant the executive branch massively-expanded immigration powers, the Washington establishment cooked up an elaborate ruse to try to save Obamatrade.
Secret Obamatrade documents leaked to Wikileaks show that there are provisions contained within draft Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) text that would massively expand President Obama’s immigration authority when it comes to immigration matters.
In response and in conjunction with chief Obamatrade proponent Ryan, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced an ineffective fix to the problem, and said it would be attached to a different piece of legislation, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, not the TPA.
Ryan replied, “I understand the concerns you have expressed about including in U. S. free trade agreements any provisions related to U. S. immigration laws, particularly any provision obligating the United States to grant access or expand access to visas issued under section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101 (a)(15)). In acknowledgement of these concerns, I would like to convey that when the Trade Facilitation and Enforcement Act of 2015 is considered in the House, I intend to seek adoption of the text of Senate Amendment 1385, offered by Senator Hatch and Senator Cruz when the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act was considered by the Senate last month, as well as the language you propose in your letter, to ensure that trade agreements do not require changes to U. S. immigration laws.”
Ryan continued, “Specifically, the effect of this amendment would be that any provision in new trade agreements that would obligate the United States to grant or expand access to visas would not be consistent with the negotiating objectives in the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act. As such, if the administration includes any such provision in a trade agreement, I would support moving a Consultation and Compliance Resolution under that Act through the Ways & Means Committee.”
Ryan is saying he will include an amendment in future legislation, not the current TPA. That means that the current TPA, if it passes the House, would still allow the immigration provisions to move forward. It also means the U. S. Senate could reject the amendment on the future legislation — which it probably will — and that if the Senate somehow does pass the legislation, Obama could veto it.
That didn’t stop King from claiming — inaccurately — in a press release that this compromise with Ryan would fix the issue.
“I am glad to have worked with Chairman Ryan on my added language to Trade Promotion Authority (TPA),” King said in his release announcing his deal with Ryan. “My limitation language says: ‘To ensure that trade agreements do not require changes to the immigration laws of the United States or obligate the United States to grant access or expand access to visas issued under 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15). My amendment that passed in CJS appropriations states: ‘None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to negotiate or finalize a trade agreement that includes provisions relating to visas issued under section 101(a)(15) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)).’ This amendment is the foundation of my language that will be enrolled with TPA. My language tells the executive branch that they cannot negotiate changes in our immigration laws or use visa programs as a negotiating tool. Further, my language keeps immigration out of all future trade agreements negotiated under TPA. I am confident this has improved TPA and it gets me to a yes on the final bill.”
According to a King aide, if his amendment to the future legislation is to pass the House, Senate and be signed by the president, it would amend the TPA at that point — but didn’t explain how or why King thinks both chambers of Congress would take the amendment and why King seems to think Obama would sign it.
According to the executive director of Eagle Forum, “Although American voters gave Republicans the majority in Congress to stop Obama, Republican Leadership is desperate to accomplish his top priority — the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There are a variety of concerns with the process and the policy of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), and Leadership is currently twisting arms and making promises in a desperate attempt to limit defections of conservative Members who have legitimate concerns. Unfortunately, several Members have traded their votes for meaningless, pie-in-the-sky promises on issues like immigration, currency manipulation, anti-dumping provisions. These are legitimate issues that should be addressed in the actual text of TPA with enforceable provisions, not currently included in TPA. Instead, Chairman Ryan is promising that their concerns will be addressed in a future customs bill — the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act. The customs bill is completely separate from TPA, and even if these concerns are addressed, it will be conferenced with the Senate where conservatives are unlikely to win. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that President Obama will sign the customs bill, even if it passes the House and the Senate. These promises will only serve to garner TPA enough votes; they will not affect the final agreement. Pew Research Center recently released a poll stating 75 percent of the Republican-leaning public want Republicans in Congress to challenge Obama more often. Instead, Republican Leadership is intent on running roughshod over conservative principles to achieve President Obama’s top priority in the name of free trade.”
All of these points are concerning, but according to Sen. Sessions, they are essentially moot, because once Obama has TPA, he can sign any trade agreement without Congress even seeing it, let alone voting on it.
On June 12, 2015, the House voted down a measure to grant financial aid to displaced workers, 302 to 126, defeating the legislation and the TPA, known as fast-track.
The silver lining for Obama and his unusual Republican allies is that the balance of the trade package narrowly won support. The House voted 219 to 211 to approve fast-track, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, which had been expected to be the most crucial vote. On that vote, 219 to 211, 28 Democrats joined 191 Republicans in supporting the president.
Since House leaders split the bill into several pieces, approval of the worker assistance program, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, or TAA, is needed to advance fast-track.
Establishment Republicans desperately trying to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), are now willing to increase taxes on small businesses in a way that would violate a pledge almost every Republican Congressman has taken when elected into office. To secure final passage through Congress of a package that would include TPA fast-track authority, the House would need to pass the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) package that was necessary for Senate passage of TPA. The House voted TAA down 302-126 with widespread bipartisan opposition on June 12, 2015, but House Ways and Means Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his allies in the House GOP leadership pledged they would try to pass it again.
The TAA was originally supposed to be financed with Medicare cuts, which sparked major outrage, and cries of hypocrisy. Under pressure, Republican leadership, mainly Boehner and Ryan, negotiated with Democrats to remove the Medicare cuts from the financial backing of TAA and instead will be using direct tax hikes by raising the penalties for misfiled taxes.
According to the founder of the Obamatrade.com website, a vote for Obamatrade ” is a vote to give the IRS more power and more incentives to go after small businesses. It’s pretty outrageous what is called for in this bill that Congress is going to vote . . . it literally doubles and triples the taxes on small businesses. Small businesses that are already over-burdened with IRS paperwork will be penalized even further if they make a technical mistake on filing informational paperwork. There’s a lot of dishonesty going on when the bill is described as raising the fines on tax violations. That’s dishonest because the fines aren’t for people who failed to pay their taxes, the fines are on businesses that for no fault of their own, they forget to file a piece of paperwork telling the IRS how much someone else owes on their taxes. It’s outrageous that Republicans who complain all the time – rightfully so – about the IRS’s overreach and over burdening small business are actually increasing the incentive for the IRS to spy on people – to spy on small businesses.”
Essentially, any time a small business paid an independent contractor or freelancer a commission or any tips, it must be reported to the IRS with a 1099 form, with a copy also sent to the contractor or freelancer. If the small business is late in filing this form, then it is fined by the IRS. The new proposal, as it stands, would double and triple these fines.
“It is the height of cynicism for Congress to plan on paying for a welfare program for unions by increasing the penalties for small businesses,” according to the Obamatrade.com founder.
The president of Americans for Limited Government agrees about this increasing penalty being a tax increase on small businesses. “There is no question that raising the penalty on small businesses who commit a paperwork error is a tax increase. It is directly intended to raise revenues, so it can’t be considered anything else. For Republican leadership to ask their members to vote to raise taxes on small business to fund a union bailout that Big Labor doesn’t want is both horrific policy and terrible politics,” he said.
This program was so unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans that they removed it from Obamacare. “This is very similar to one of the ways Obamacare was going to be paid for – as Obamacare was enacted they were looking for revenue to pay for it by increasing the penalties on small businesses who failed to file 1099 forms – that was repealed because it was so unpopular,” according to Americans for Limited Government. “Republicans led the charge in repealing it and now they’re the ones leading the charge to once again increase the penalties in already burdensome paperwork for the IRS.”
This means that the Republicans that voted for TAA essentially voted to finance TAA at the expense of increasing small business taxes, a direct violation of the Grover Norquist tax pledge, which many Republican Congressmen took, pledging to the American public not to raise any more taxes. Norquist (a CFR), President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a group for taxpayer advocacy to limit size of government, organized the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The pledge asks all politicians for both federal and state office to sign the pledge, committing themselves to oppose tax increases.
Nearly every elected Republican in America—with rare exception—has signed Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. As such, the 86 Republicans who voted to raise small business taxes through the TAA most likely did as well.
Rep. Ryan had no comment, of course, about the TAA raising taxes.
On June 12, 2015, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued a warning about the TAA that included the following:
It appears there will be another attempt by Tuesday to force through new executive powers for President Obama. A vote for TAA next week is a vote to send fast-track to the President’s desk and to grant him these broad new executive authorities. If that happens, it will empower the President to form a Pacific Union encompassing 40 percent of the world’s economy and 12 nations—each with one equal vote. Once the union is formed, foreign bureaucrats will be required to meet regularly to write the Commission’s rules, regulations, and directives—impacting Americans’ jobs, wages, and sovereignty. The union is chartered with a “Living Agreement,” and there is no doubt it will seek to expand its membership and reach over time.
Fast-track will not only apply to the Pacific Union, but can expedite an unlimited number of yet-unseen international compacts for six years. There are already plans to advance through fast-track the Trade in Services Agreement, the goal of which includes labor mobility among more than 50 nations, further eroding the ability of the American people to control their own affairs.
The same people projecting the benefits of leaping into a colossal new economic union could not even accurately predict the impact of a standalone agreement with South Korea. The latter deal, which promised to boost our exports to them $10 billion, instead only budged them less than $1 billion, while South Korea’s imports to us increased more than $12 billion, nearly doubling our trading deficit. This new agreement will only further increase our trading deficit: opening our markets to foreign imports while allowing our trading partners to continue their non-tariff barriers that close their markets to ours.
If we want a new trade deal with Japan, or with Vietnam, then they should be negotiated bilaterally and sent to Congress under regular order. Under no circumstances should the House authorize, through fast-track, the formation of a new international commission that will regulate not only trade, but immigration, labor, environmental, and all manner of commercial policy.
What American went to the polls in 2014 to vote for fast-track and a new global union? Can anyone honestly say that Congress is trying to ram this deal through because they think their constituents want it?
While elites dream of a world without borders, voters dream of a world where the politicians they elect put this country’s own citizens first.
The movement among Americans toward a decent, honest populism—toward a refocusing on the needs of American citizens and American interests—grows stronger by the day. Every vote to come before Congress, beginning with the next fast-track push, will face this test: does your plan strengthen or weaken the social and economic position of the loyal, everyday working American?
On June 14, 2015, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said the trade legislation can stlll be salvaged, but Obama wil need to work on the Democrats to get enough of them to vote in favor of it.
Ryan also said the trade deal was “about global leadership” and added, “And, surely, a person who was secretary of state (referring to Hillary Clinton) understands something about American leadership.” He’s certainly right about the trade deal being about global leadership, but it won’t be American leadership.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a Socialist and 2016 presidential candidate said, “Finally what you’re seeing in Congress are Democrats and some Republicans beginning to stand up and say, ‘You know what? Maybe we should have a trade policy that represents the working families of this country, that rebuilds our manufacturing base, rather than just representing the CEOs of large multinational corporations’ . . . Corporate America and Wall Street are going to bring that bill back to the House next week,” he said.
Sanders added, “I would hope very much that Secretary Clinton will side with every union in this country, virtually every environmental group and many religious groups and say this TPP policy is a disaster, that it must be defeated and that we need to regroup and come up with a trade policy which demands that corporate America starts investing in this country rather than in countries all over the world. I look forward to working with the secretary on this issue.”
On June 15, 2015, the House Rules Committee attached a provision to a “rule” governing parameters for debate on the intelligence authorization bill that will extend the possibility for the House to vote again on TAA by July 30. The House will consider the rule containing the provision to extend the possible trade re-vote tomorrow afternoon.
On June 16, 2015 the White House said Obama will continue to insist that expanded trade adjustment assistance, which is set to expire at the end of September, be included in any new trade package. The White House proposal would provide up to $450 million per year for six years for workers who lose their jobs due to foreign competition, enough for 100,000 workers per year.
“The president is motivated by the need to ensure that we’re protecting American workers as much as we can from the broader forces of globalization,” according to the White House press secretary. He added that the strategy works, arguing that nearly 77 percent of workers who received the aid in fiscal 2014 found jobs within six months of completing the training program. Six months later, he said, 90 percent of those workers still held the same jobs.
That means those workers were without a paycheck for up to six months because of a trade agreement, and 23 percent of those workers receiving aid never found a job within six months after receiving aid. How many workers never applied for aid and are still out of work because of a trade agreement?
If Obama was genuinely “motivated by the need to ensure that we’re protecting American workers as much as we can from the broader forces of globalization,” he would sign trade agreements that only involved goods and services, not trade agreements that include regulation of visas for foreign workers.
Why do trade agreements include visas for foreign workers to replace American workers in America? In 1994, Congress passed, and the president signed, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The following year GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organization, which then created the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Since that time, all trade agreements have included replacing American workers with foreign workers in America!
Those still serving in Congress that voted for GATT in 1994 include Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R-CA), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). All of the senators listed were bribed to vote for the TPA. Doesn’t term limits sound like a wonderful idea?
Now you can clearly see that the globalists have been working on these trade agreements for a very long time!
On June 16, 2015, it was revealed that Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve Pearce (R-NM), and Trent Franks (R-AZ) had been removed from the whip team after they sided with GOP rebels to vote against a rule governing debate on a trade bill, according to sources close to the team. Lummis, a deputy whip and a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was perhaps the whip team’s highest-ranking bridge to the conference’s most intransigent members. Pearce and Franks also are very close to House conservatives.
Earlier in the year House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) said he would not tolerate members voting against rules and already has removed two other members close to the conservative movement.
President Barack Obama isn’t going to support a strategy that gives him half a loaf on his trade agenda, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on June 17, 2015.
Capitol Hill leaders are working on a plan that would split Trade Promotion Authority from Trade Adjustment Assistance, Earnest made clear Obama will demand both. “The only legislative strategy that the president will support is a strategy that results in both TPA and TAA coming to his desk,” he said.
Earnest did acknowledge that the two measures could move separately, and TPA could come first. That would require a clear “path” for TAA to follow. He declined to say several times that Obama would veto TPA if TAA was not also on his desk, saying he didn’t think it would come to that.
As has been stated several times, once Obama has TPA, he can sign any trade agreement he wants to, and Congress can’t stop him, and they don’t even need to see the agreement before he signs it. At that point, would he even care about TAA?
On June 17, 2015, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued a final warning to the House ahead of their revote to try and pass the Trade Provision Authority bill they failed to pass last week. The House will also ” vote again tomorrow on providing fast-track executive authority to the President. If adopted, it will be sent immediately to the Senate for final consideration,” Sessions said in a statement.
Sessions’ statement continued, “It is essential that there be no misunderstanding: fast-track preapproves the formation of not only the unprecedentedly large Trans-Pacific Partnership, but an unlimited number of such agreements over the next six years. Those pacts include three of the most ambitious ever contemplated. After TPP comes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, followed by the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), seeking as one its goals labor mobility among more than 50 nations. Together, these three international compacts encompass three-fourths of the world’s GDP. Including the nations whose membership is being courted for after enactment, the countries involved would encompass nearly 90 percent of global GDP. Yet, through fast-track, Congress will have authorized the President to ink these deals before a page of them has been made public. Then, the Executive sends Congress ‘implementing’ legislation to change U.S. law—legislation which cannot be amended, cannot be filibustered, and will not be subjected to the Constitutional requirement for a two-thirds treaty vote.”
In addition, “According to the European Commission, the TiSA agreement—which most House and Senate members did not know about when they voted—will follow in the footsteps of the WTO’s Trade in Services Provisions, which has already inhibited the U.S. from making needed immigration changes. The European Commission says the EU ‘wants as many countries as possible to join the agreement.’ We have already seen how the EU has curtailed sovereignty in Europe; we do not want to follow in its footsteps.”
“Such a historic international regulatory Commission should never be fast-tracked, and should never be put on a path to passage until every word has been publicly scrutinized, every question answered, and every last power understood by Congress and the American people,” the statement concluded.
On June 17, 2015, Obama spent the day trying to get votes for the TPA bill, so it would pass the House the next day. Later that day at a White House picnic, Obama didn’t discuss the trade bills Congress would vote on, but urged lawmakers to stand for America.
“Obviously, democracy can be contentious,” Obama said. “There are times when people have deep, principled disagreements. But I hope that events like today remind us that ultimately we’re all on the same team, and that’s the American team.”
A “no” vote on the trade bills would be standing for America. Obama said “democracy can be contentious.” He must have meant to say treason can be contentious, since that’s what the trade bills are. He also must have meant that he and Congress are all on the Amerikan team.
On June 18, 2015, the House voted to give Obama fast-track authority to sign trade agreements. As has been mentioned in this article, the fast-track authority gives Obama the ability to sign a trade agreement before Congress even sees the agreement, so their vote on a trade agreement is unnecessary. When the House voted to give Obama fast-track authority, they were voting to end the sovereignty of the United States, which is treason. Therefore, any Congressman that voted for the legislation is a traitor to the American Republic.
The bill was sent to the Senate for them to vote on.
On June 21, 2015, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued a final warning to the Senate about how destructive passage of the TPA would be. His statement included the following:
“More than four weeks have passed since the Senate first voted on whether to grant the Executive six years of fast-track authority. In that time, an enormous amount has been discovered about how the President plans to use this authority – information that was either not known or understood when the vote was held. This includes the Administration’s pledge to use the agreement to impose “environmental governance.”
It has become increasingly clear that the President’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is far more than a trade deal. It forms an enduring, self-governing political entity with vast regulatory power. Yet fast-track – which has led without fail to the adoption of every covered agreement since its inception – would rush it through with less legislative scrutiny than a Post Office reform bill.
Second chances do not come often. We now have new information and a new vote. Which means the Senate has a second chance to slow down and demand answers about the President’s plans before agreeing to fast-track their adoption.
The President has refused to answer the most simple but crucial questions about how he plans to use fast-track powers. He will not even answer whether he believes his plan will increase or reduce the trade deficit, increase or reduce manufacturing jobs, or increase or reduce wages. Concerns raised about how this new Pacific Union will impact our sovereignty have been met with only a continued unwillingness to reply to any questions about the limits of its reach and power.
And the TPP is only the first agreement that would be fast-tracked. Not fully understood at the time of the prior Senate vote is that there are already three international pacts that would be put on a fast-track to adoption. In addition to the TPP are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Together they encompass three-fourths of the world economy, and up to ninety percent of the world economy when including countries whose membership is being courted. The same individuals encouraging us to leap into these binding global commitments could not even come close to predicting the outcome of our standalone agreement with South Korea which, contrary to promises, nearly doubled the trading deficit between our country and theirs.
The texts of TTIP and TiSA remain completely secret –unreviewable by lawmakers themselves – yet fast-track would authorize the Executive to sign them before Congress votes. Then the President would send Congress legislation to change U.S. law to comport with these new agreements, legislation which cannot be amended, which Senators cannot filibuster, cannot receive a two-thirds treaty vote, and cannot be debated for more than 20 hours. Again: no fast-tracked deal has ever been blocked.
We have recently discovered that the President’s trade representative, Michael Froman, has pledged no agreement will proceed without “environmental governance” provisions:
“…we will insist on a robust, fully enforceable environment chapter in the TPP or we will not come to agreement…our proposals would enhance international cooperation and create new opportunities for public participation in environmental governance and enforcement…the United States reiterated our bedrock position on enforceability of the entire environment chapter…”
The Ways and Means Committee has also now conceded that, as an unprecedented “Living Agreement,” the union could change its structure, rules, regulations and enforcement mechanisms after final ratification – a dangerous and unjustifiable power. This international union would be able to make determinations impacting U.S. workers in not only trade but environmental, labor, immigration and commercial policy.
TTIP, about which very little is known, could form a new economic council involving the United States and the European Union.
TiSA would seek foreign worker mobility among 50 nations, including between the United States, Turkey and Pakistan.
These massive agreements, endlessly complex, with permanent ramifications for American workers and sovereignty, should not be rushed through under fast-track procedure. Fast-track was envisioned for addressing matters like tariffs, not forming a political and economic union.
Congress must retain its powers of amendment and review, as well as its treaty powers, for agreements that clearly extend far beyond trade. And Congress must protect the power of the individual citizen to control those who would seek to control them.
Will the senate approve TPA as they did a month ago? Will any 2016 presidential candidates vote for it like they did a few weeks ago (Sens. Cruz, Graham, and Rubio)? Will the senators that were bribed to vote for it the first time vote for it again? As with the House vote, any Senator voting for the fast-track trade authority is a traitor to the American Republic!
On June 24, 2015, the Senate passed the TPA legislation, giving Obama fast track authority to sign trade agreements without Congress even seeing them first. The legislation was forwarded to Obama for his signature. After the TPA was passed, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said in a statement, “When ordinary Americans who never asked for the plan, who don’t want the plan, who want no part of the plan, resist, they are scorned, mocked, and heaped with condescension. It is remarkable that so much energy has been expended on advancing the things Americans oppose, and preventing the things Americans want.”
On June 29, 2015, Obama signed the TPA fast track legislation, and the TAA employment assistance legislation to help American workers that will lose their jobs because of all the jobs the trade legislation will create for American workers. There was bipartisan attendance at the bill-signing ceremony. Conspicuously absent were House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) (a member of the TPN), and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (married to a CFR).
In a statement, because he was leading a congressional delegation in Lithuania, Boehner said the TPA “will strengthen the hand of U.S. negotiators, allowing them to secure the best deal for American workers while maintaining new, rigorous standards of transparency and accountability . . . This bill is a big win for American jobs and leadership, and I hope the president will continue to work with us to get more bipartisan, House-passed jobs bills signed into law.”
McConnell, who was speaking at a Sons of the American Revolution conference, said the U.S. will benefit from the trade legislation, and the deal is an example of how partisan divides can be overcome to resolve a major issue. The lies come easy when you have been paid more than $8.2 million by special interests to destroy the sovereignty of your country.
Obama said, “This legislation will help turn global trade — which can often be a race to the bottom — into a race to the top . . . It will reinforce America’s leadership role in the world — in Asia, and in Europe and beyond. If I didn’t believe it, I wouldn’t have fought so hard to get these things done. ” Sometimes pathological liars are unaware they are lying.
On July 23, 2015, the House passed the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, which creates a federal standard for voluntary labeling of GMOs. This legislation would prevent states from passing labeling laws for foods that contain genetically modified ingredients, which have already passed in Vermont, Connecticut and Maine.
Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), who authored the bill, called mandatory labeling laws unnecessarily costly given that GMOs have been proven to be safe. “Precisely zero pieces of credible evidence have been presented that foods produced with biotechnology pose any risk to our health and safety,” Pompeo said. “We should not raise prices on consumers based on the wishes of a handful of activists.” Maybe Pompeo forgot he voted for the Monsanto Protection Act, or perhaps he’s never heard of the World Health Organization (WHO).
The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) released a report on the herbicide glyphosate being carcinogenic. Glyphosate is the main ingredient in Monsanto’s (a NWO corp) Roundup. Since more than 80% of the GMO crops in the world were manufactured to be used with glyphosate, it’s logical to assume that the majority of our food supply is now contaminated by a cancer-causing agent. There is a correlation between rising cancer rates in the U. S. and glyphosate. The FDA even came up with a list of “safe” levels of glyphosate contamination in crops and water.
Remember, in 2013, Congress passed the Monsanto Protection Act which prevents federal courts from stopping the sale or planting of genetically modified crops and seeds no matter what health consequences from their consumption may occur in the future. Sounds like they knew there was a problem with GMO crops. Who could possibly have written the Monsanto Protection Act?
Opponents have pushed back against the legislation, saying it will keep consumers from knowing what’s in their food and stop the FDA from crafting a national GMO-labeling solution. Consumer groups, backed by Democrats including Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), are instead calling the bill the Denying Americans the Right to Know Act.
Citing a study from a Cornell University professor, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (a NWO corp) said state-level GMO labeling mandates would increase grocery prices for a family of four by as much as $500 per year and cost food and beverage manufacturers millions of dollars to change food labels and supply chain systems.
No GMO labeling is part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. The TPP has not been finalized by the 12 countries involved. After that happens, the agreement is submitted to Congress for a 60-day review period before they vote on it. Since the agreement hasn’t been finalized yet, why is the U. S., as well as other countries, beginning to change GMO labeling laws?
On July 31, 2015, negotiators for the 12 nations involved failed to reach a deal on the TPP agreement, but were confident an agreement was within reach. The sticking points were automobile trade, dairy trade, and monopoly periods for drugs.
According to the Australian trade minister, the problem was with the “big four” economies of the United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico. “The sad thing is, 98 percent is concluded,” he said.
Ministers remained apart on how long to protect data used to develop biologic drugs. U.S. drugmakers want 12 years protection, but Australia has only five and Chile has none at all. “For us it’s vital to have an agreement that balances public policy goals for intellectual property in medicines,” said Chilean vice minister for trade.
According to a source from a non-U.S. negotiation nation, “The U.S. was on one side of the issue, while practically every other country were on the other side. Neither side was prepared to move and all claimed it as a red line issue.”
Japan and the U. S. had largely agreed on the rules of origin for cars, which determine when a product is designated as coming from within the free trade zone and therefore not subject to duties. Problems arose when trying to get buy-in from Canada and Mexico, which are closely tied in to the U.S. auto industry. Japanese automakers source many car parts from Thailand, which is not a member of the TPP, and strict rules would upset existing supply chains.
Failure to complete the agreement is seen as a setback for Obama, and had been billed as the last chance to get a deal in time to pass the U.S. Congress this year, before 2016 presidential election campaigning takes center stage.
Even though progress was made, issues that were problems at the beginning of the talks remained problems, blocking a deal after four days of discussions. No date was set for ministers to meet again.
On August 4, 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry (a CFR) flew to Singapore to try and finalize the TPP agreement by meeting with ASEAN members to convince Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, to agree with the TPP, as well as corporate-sponsored limitations on generic drug production in those countries. Having admitted the agreement is facing stumbling blocks, Kerry said its completion would be a major economic milestone and an essential move in safeguarding U.S. interests in the world’s fastest growing economic area.
In an interview, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and a 2016 presidential candidate said, “These trade agreements have ended up devastating working families and enriching large corporations . . . We have lost over 60,000 factories in the United States . . . Companies think: why should we pay an American worker $15 an hour, when the minimum wage in Vietnam is 28 cents an hour? Why should we give jobs here when we could go to Vietnam?”
Kerry has argued that such an agreement is inevitable and, like it or not, a necessity in today’s economic reality. Citing observations about growing income inequality and lower living conditions in the U.S., Kerry said protectionism is not the answer. “The remedy is not to pull back from trade agreements themselves or attempt to stop globalization, because that’s not possible. Globalization has no reverse gear.”
More elitist propaganda from someone that helped create our current economic reality of “growing income inequality and lower living conditions in the U.S.,” as well as being a traitor to the American Republic.
The TPP is the executive enforcement of a totalitarian wish list of corporate evil to dominate and enslave humankind.
THE TRANSATLANTIC TRADE AND INVESTMENT PARTNERSHIP —
The long-standing agenda of the Bilderberg Group has been to centralize power into a one-world political federation, which would be advanced with the passage of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
A prior attempt at a transatlantic partnership began eight years ago.
On April 30, 2007, it was announced that the United States and European Union had signed a new transatlantic economic partnership. The pact was designed to boost trade and investment by harmonizing regulatory standards, laying the basis for a U. S.-EU single market.
The two sides agreed to set up an “economic council” to push ahead with regulatory convergence in nearly 40 areas, including intellectual property, financial services, business takeovers and the motor industry. Some reports suggested that incompatible regulations in the world’s two richest regions added 10% to the cost of developing and producing new cars.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country held the EU’s rotating presidency at the time, said previously that if the U. S. and EU could set business norms today, they would “secure the markets of tomorrow”.
The Open Skies agreement took effect on March 30, 2008, and allowed EU carriers to fly anywhere in the U. S. and vice versa. The deal promised to lower airfares and widen choices for passengers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The EU hoped to go further and create an “Open Aviation Area” between the two sides “in which investment can flow freely and in which European and U. S. airlines can provide air services without any restriction,” an EU statement said.
The EU also hoped that the U. S. would agree to withdraw its visa requirement for travellers from a number of EU states.
The TTIP represents an integral component of Bilderberg’s attempt to rescue the unipolar world by creating a “world company,” initially a free trade area, which would connect the United States with Europe. Just as the European Union started as a mere free trade area and was eventually transformed into a political federation which controls upwards of 50 per cent of its member states’ laws and regulations with total contempt for national sovereignty and democracy, TTIP is designed to accomplish the same goal, only on a bigger scale.
The agreement is being spearheaded by Obama’s U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, a Wall Street insider and a CFR member, Bilderberg’s sister organization. Froman is simultaneously helping to build another block of this global government, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a similar project involving Asian countries.
The first time Obama mentioned the TTIP was during his State of the Union address on February 12, 2013, in which he stated, “And tonight, I’m announcing that we will launch talks on a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the European Union — because trade that is fair and free across the Atlantic supports millions of good-paying American jobs.”
The following day, Obama joined European Council President Herman Van Rompuy (a BB) and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (a BB) to announce the initiation of TTIP negotiations.
At the G8 Summit on June 17, 2015, Obama joined British Prime Minister David Cameron (a BB, CFR) and Mr. Barroso and Mr. Van Rompuy to again pitch the jobs-and-prosperity promise in a press conference to boost the TTIP.
Van Rompuy, however, hinted that the proposed EU-U.S. partnership was more involved than it seemed. “The positive ramifications will even go beyond the economy as such,” he said. “We are making our economies all over the world more interdependent.”
For those familiar with globospeak, “interdependent” and “interdependence” are instantly recognized as favorite terms of one-world activists who abhor national independence and sovereignty. It is the basis of “The Project” — which is how EU insiders refer to their burgeoning superstate. Although it was originally sold to the public of the six original member nations merely as a coal and steel collective, the architects had planned from the beginning to keep “widening” (adding more member states) and “deepening” (usurping more and more national powers). The deepening process involves “integration” and “harmonization,” which means completely intertwining the economies, political structures, policies, laws and regulations, and bringing them all under the authority of the EU institutions.
Barroso also stated that the TTIP is “a powerful demonstration of our determination to shape an open and rules-based world.” Yes, but many observers would point out that if we are to go by the “rules-based” model imposed on the EU by Barroso and his confreres, we are talking about arbitrary international rules that will be fashioned by faceless, unaccountable international rule-makers, and enforced by international bureaucrats, regulators, and tribunals.
Václav Klaus, the Czech economist and president of the Czech Republic from 2003 to 2013, has repeatedly blasted the EU for fastening a new form of the Soviet system onto Europe. “Instead of dismantling socialism,” he said in a 2002 speech, “we have got … more sophisticated, more hidden and more intensive methods of government intervention and regulation, the ever-increasing size and scope of the welfare state, multiculturalism and political correctness. This is not a great victory.”
What was begun under the pretext of facilitating the free movement of goods and people, President Klaus noted, “has been — slowly but surely — convened into the formation of a supranational European state aiming at centralization of power in Brussels, at elimination of European nation states and at socializing Europe.”
Was President Klaus exaggerating? Not at all. Even former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev agrees, but, unlike Klaus, Gorbachev approves of the integration and socializing of Europe. In a speech in London in 2000, Gorbachev referred to the evolving EU as “the new European Soviet.”
There is no question that the deepening integration of the European Union has brought about huge centralization of power in Brussels — and a corresponding diminution of the powers of national, state, and local governments over what they once governed.
There is little question that the European Parliament, the European Commission, the European Council, and other EU institutions are dominated by socialists, Greens, and other “progressives” — and have been from the start. The Socialist Group was one of the first political party groupings to form in 1953 in the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which evolved into the European Economic Community (EEC), which evolved into the European Community (EC), which evolved into the European Union (EU). The Common Assembly evolved into the European Parliament. The Socialist Group, which has gone through multiple name changes, has been the largest bloc in the European Parliament throughout most of that history. It is currently the second largest; together with the Greens and collectivists in the other parties, they still represent the dominant ideology, regardless of the labels.
Tariffs on trade between the United States and the EU now averages a mere four percent, which is small compared to the double-digit tariffs that were applied into the 1940s. So, why is it now such a supposedly urgent necessity to put the TTIP on the fast track? The Obama administration and its TTIP allies tell us that it is not the tariffs but the differences in regulations, standards, and laws that are impeding EU-U. S. trade and the jobs and prosperity that an increase in transatlantic trade would bring.
The unaccountable, unelected Brussels eurocracts have repeatedly stirred outrage with ludicrous mandates and prosecutions on the most trivial and arcane of matters, such as banning bent cucumbers (EU Regulation No 1677/88 specified that cucumbers must be “reasonably well shaped and practically straight” with a maximum height of the arc being “10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber”) and bent bananas; mandating the size of cigarette packages (down to the millimeter); defining marmalades and jams and how they may be packaged; banning olive oil cruets on restaurant tables; ordering children to be restricted to car seats until age 12; prosecuting U.K. street vendors and grocers (the “Metric Martyrs”) for using traditional Imperial weights and measures instead of metric; regulating the width of tractor seats; and on and on.
These untold thousands of EU regulations on minutiae are complemented by Brussels’ usurpation of authority over national fisheries, energy policy, taxation, and many other “big ticket” items — items such as freedom of speech. The EU’s Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia infamously has defined opposition to the European single currency as “monetary xenophobia.” An even more notorious attack on freedom of expression came from the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) Advocate General Dámaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer, who charged, in 2001, that British economist Bernard Connolly’s critique of the euro and the EU’s monetary integration was akin to “blasphemy,” and therefore not protected speech. The ECJ ruled in the Connolly case that the European Commission could restrict dissent and punish individuals who “damaged the institution’s image and reputation.” The European Court of Human Rights has overturned the British ban on homosexuals in the armed forces and ordered crucifixes removed from all public school classrooms in Italy.
According to the U.S. trade representative’s website, the areas that are being negotiated in the current round of TTIP talks are as follows: Agricultural Market Access, Competition, Cross-Border Services, Customs and Trade Facilitation, Electronic Commerce and Telecommunications, Energy and Raw Materials, Environment Financial Services, Government Procurement, Intellectual Property Rights, Investment, Labor, … Rules of Origin, Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures, Sectoral Annexes/Regulatory Cooperation, Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises, State-Owned Enterprises, Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), Textiles, Trade Remedies.
Although the TTIP document is being kept secret from the public, we can guess what to expect in the final product by looking at who is crafting this new transatlantic “relationship.” In addition to government officials (led by the U .S. trade representative and the State, Treasury, and Commerce Departments for the United States), an assortment of corporate, industry, trade association, and NGO activist “stakeholders” have been assigned special rights at the negotiating table. These include the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, AFL-CIO, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program, and Center for Science in the Public Interest. These Left/Progressive activist groups are heavily funded by grants from governments, corporations, and the major tax-exempt foundations, such as Rockefeller (a NWO org), Ford (a NWO org), Soros, Gates, and Carnegie.
These left-tilting groups are supposedly balanced at the TTIP table by organizations that are usually described as “pro-market,” such as the U. S. Chamber of Commerce (a NWO org), National Manufacturing Association, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, Grocery Manufacturers Association (a NWO org), and the American Association of Exporters & Importers. However, as the history of the EU, NAFTA, and other so-called free trade agreements (FTAs) demonstrates, many of these so-called pro-market groupings are actually more concerned about carving out special arrangements for themselves and initiating “public-private partnerships” (PPPs) that provide them with subsidies and tax benefits.
One of the few things these groups seem to agree on is EU-U.S. integration, followed by global integration and global governance, which is merely a euphemism for global government. One side wants to see a global regime that would enforce global environmental and social policy, while the other seeks the alleged benefits of a global regime that would make regulations uniform and easier for business to navigate. Both are willing to sacrifice national sovereignty and all that goes with it — the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, checks and balances, states’ rights — to obtain their goals.
The real force for the TTIP comes from a cadre of think tanks and their associated multi-national banking and corporate cohorts, such as the Transatlantic Business Council, Business Coalition for Transatlantic Trade, Business Alliance for TTIP, Transatlantic Policy Network, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (a NWO org), Brookings Institution (a NWO org), Atlantic Council (a NWO org) (an offshoot of the Bilderberg Group), Centre for Economic and Policy Research, and Peterson Institute for International Economics (a NWO org).
Above these high-powered academic and corporate lobbies is yet another brain trust and guiding hand that has been leading the movement for the EU since the founding days of the ECSC in the 1950s, while also leading the movement for global government for much of the past century: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR receives assistance from its sister affiliates, particularly the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and the CFR’s recent creation, the Council of Councils (CoC), which coordinates its affiliates in two dozen key countries.
The CFR’s importance in the creation of the EU, the EU’s progressive integration and expansion, and the current campaign to bring the United States into this “widening and deepening” process, can hardly be exaggerated. In fact, the EU would not even exist without the machinations of CFR members, operating both in capacities as government officials and private individuals. The same holds true today with regard to the TTIP.
Leading Obama’s official TTIP effort is U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman (CFR), who is described in his official USTR bio as “President Obama’s principal advisor, negotiator and spokesperson on international trade and investment issues.” Froman’s chief deputy at USTR is Miriam Sapiro (CFR). Working with Froman is Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment (and longtime Washington insider) Robert D. Hormats (CFR). Froman and Hormats have spent months coordinating top-level support for TTIP in speeches before business, banking, and industry groups. They are both Wall Street insiders. Froman was a managing director at Citigroup (a NWO corp), and also served as president and chief executive officer of CitiInsurance before joining the Obama administration. Hormats was vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International (a NWO corp). Both men were principals in massive corruption scandals (Froman in the bailout of Citigroup, Hormats in PetroChina’s takeover of Sudan’s oil).
The CFR hands in the TTIP lobby are everywhere. Serving as co-chairman of the Transatlantic Business Council is Stuart Eizenstat (CFR), President Jimmy Carter’s chief domestic policy advisor and President Clinton’s ambassador to the EU. Chairman of the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board is Brent Scowcroft (CFR), former national security advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford (CFR) and George H.W. Bush (CFR). Frederick S. Kempe (CFR) is president and CEO of the Atlantic Council (a NWO org).
At the Center for Transatlantic Relations, Daniel Hamilton (CFR) serves as executive director. At Brookings, former Clinton advisor Strobe Talbott (CFR) is president and John L. Thornton (CFR) is chairman of the Board of Trustees. The chairman of the Board of the Peterson Institute (a NWO org) is Peter G. Peterson (CFR director and former CFR chairman), and many of the institute’s scholars and directors are also CFR members. The president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is Thomas J. Donohue (CFR). Bruce Stokes (CFR) is director of Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Center and a transatlantic fellow for economics at the German Marshall Fund (a NWO org).
As a ploy to gain support for the passage of the TTIP, the globalists are using Vladimir Putin’s name. A November 19, 2014 op-ed by U. S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis (ret.) (a CFR) at foreignpolicy.com, the website of the establishment journal Foreign Policy, was titled, “Vladimir Putin Hates the TTIP: Which is exactly why Europe and America need to get it done.”
The op-ed went on to say, “Indeed, a negotiated and eventually ratified TTIP would be a powerful signal to Putin’s Russia that Europe and the United States stand together in all dimensions — values, politics, security, and trade. And if Putin hates it, TTIP probably makes sense.” Unfortunately for the globalists, Putin is on record as favoring Russia’s eventual convergence with the EU. In fact, recent developments of Putin’s newly formed Eurasian Union are following his proposals for a regional approach to world government that closely parallels the regionalist strategy as detailed by Henry Kissinger (a BB, CFR, TC) , Zbigniew Brzezinski, (CFR, co-founder TC) and other globalists.
The op-ed is a clear indication that the global government advocates at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and their corporate-banking cronies at the Transatlantic Business Council, the Business Alliance for TTIP, and the Atlantic Council, are doing whatever they can think of to convince Americans to support the dangerous Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
In the case of Putin and TTIP, however, there is an added twist: Putin isn’t fooling the CFR globalists with his fake opposition to the TTIP; he is actually working hand in hand with them to fool the real target — the American public, and more specifically, American conservatives who constitute the major opposition to the TTIP.
The TTIP would actually benefit both Putin and the CFR globalists in multiple ways. Putin is playing the TTIP issue for his own political advantage, both to his domestic Russian audience as well as the global anti-American audience. Putin’s saber-rattling over Ukraine and his military excursion there stirred up Russian nationalism and further boosted his domestic popularity. It has also paid off economically. The U.S.-EU sanctions imposed on Russia have been offset by the IMF/U.S./EU bailout of Ukraine, which ended up transferring billions of dollars to the Kremlin to pay off Ukraine’s debts and energy bills to Russia.
The globalists have certainly benefited from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as the head of the editorial team for the Deutsche Welle newspaper, a leading globalist mouthpiece in Germany, said in an op-ed mockingly entitled “Thank You, Mr. Putin.” The op-ed said, “Your power play does what we couldn’t: revive our two key projects. With your annexation of the Crimea you have thrown a much-needed lifeline to two fundamental Western projects: European integration and the transatlantic partnership.”
There is abundant evidence demonstrating that Putin is actually fully on board with the globalist plans for world government, including giving the UN, IMF, and WTO vast new powers. Speaking at an economic conference in Germany in 2010, Putin said: “Can it be supposed that one day Russia will be in some joint currency zone with Europe? Yes, quite possible.” In 2011, Putin stated that his newly formed Eurasian Union was modeled on the European Union and “will be based on universal integration principles as an essential part of Greater Europe. We suggest a powerful supranational association capable of becoming one of the poles in the modern world and serving as an efficient bridge between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. Alongside other key players and regional structures, such as the European Union, the United States, China and APEC, the Eurasian Union will help ensure global sustainable development.” The sustainable development to which he refers, of course, means UN-supervised, centralized global control over all human activity and micromanagement of the entire planet.
A key objection to the TTIP, as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other “trade” pacts, is the hermetically sealed environment in which they are negotiated, with the process and the texts being inaccessible to the American public, or even to their elected members of Congress. Meanwhile, select, privileged representatives of the approved corporate, banking, labor, and environmental lobbies are given access and participation rights.
According to the European Commission and the White House, the TTIP would make the United States and much of Europe a free trade zone, potentially increasing trade by up to 50 percent. The new rules and regulations required for the TTIP would be on top of the incredible $1.8 trillion annually that ObamaCare and the hundreds of thousands of federal regulations are already costing American businesses.
This idea of a “living” and “evolving” governance is much beloved by Big Government advocates who abhor clearly defined checks and balances that restrict their schemes of usurpation. They recognize the convenience of the “European model” and have used the EU as a pattern for the TPP/TTIP features and processes.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is a chief proponent of the “living agreement” concept. The Berlin-based ECFR is a sister organization of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA, more commonly known as Chatham House), two of the premier organizational champions of world government for nearly a century.
In February 2015, the ECFR issued a report entitled “A Fresh Start for TTIP,” promoting the “living agreement” theme. In its online summary of the report, the ECFR website says: “The [TTIP] negotiators should agree on standard harmonisation where it can be easily achieved (e.g. technical standards for cars) and should set up an inclusive process of regulatory convergence to allow TTIP to become a living agreement which harmonises further standards later on (e.g. chemicals and pharmaceuticals).”
The ECFR trio argues that negotiators “should seek to make TTIP a ‘living agreement’ scheme to gradually harmonise norms and standards.” They allow, however, that “the character of TTIP as a ‘living agreement’ will have to be defined in better terms, particularly on how to construct, manage, and control processes of regulatory convergence.”
European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who is an ardent EU-U.S. integrationist, has also repeatedly addressed this issue of regulatory convergence as a keystone of the “living” TTIP agreement. In his October 10, 2013 address to the Aspen Institute (a NWO org) Prague Annual Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, Commissioner De Gucht stated:
I therefore propose that the TTIP establishes a new Regulatory Cooperation Council that brings together the heads of the most important EU and US regulatory agencies.
The council would monitor the implementation of commitments made and consider new priorities for regulatory cooperation — also in response to proposals from stakeholders. In some cases it could also ask regulators or standards bodies to develop regulations jointly that could then have a good chance of becoming international standards.
Strong institutions like this will be key to making the TTIP a living agreement that promotes greater compatibility of our regimes and accelerates the development of global approaches.
And strengthening global approaches is one of the primary strategic objectives of this agreement.
In an October 4, 2014 op-ed entitled “A reality check of TTIP: beyond the popular account,” an EU law professor wrote that “unlike any previous trade arrangement, TTIP is set to become a ‘living agreement’, whose obligations will continuously be added without the need to re-open the initial international treaty nor to modify each others’ institutional frameworks. Thus, should the regulators identify areas for convergence (such as marketing authorizations for pharmaceuticals or technical standards for car headlights), their agreed commitments — be it in terms of mutual recognition, equivalence or best practices — will become legally binding through a sectoral annex.” (Emphasis added.)
According to a former director-general of the World Trade Organization, “Authorities in Europe and America have given the impression that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is just another trade agreement of that kind. In fact, the proposed agreement is a different beast.” He also noted that, “Eighty per cent of these negotiations deal with a realm of regulatory convergence.” But this is not entirely different from the NAFTA and the WTO agreements, which also deal with regulatory convergence, and which have already proven to be subversive attacks on American sovereignty, claiming to override our state and federal laws, our state and federal court rulings, and even our state and federal constitutions.
The entire TTIP document is secret, but as with the TPP document, bits of it do get out.
Changes to copyright laws are supposedly not a part of the TTIP, but, since it’s secret, who knows? Are other so-called intellectual property rights going to be included in the TTIP?
Patent law remains an option. While the EU and U. S. already have similar substantive patent laws, if the existing form of these laws is included in a binding trade agreement, much needed substantial reforms in this area could become very difficult.
As previously mentioned, there will almost certainly be new protections of “trade secrets.” Trade secrets are different from both copyrights and patents, in that they only protect information that is disclosed in confidence and kept secret for a potentially infinite length of time. They are otherwise broader in what they protect, potentially including any economically valuable information, whether or not it is creative or inventive. As an example:
- In one recent case, a computer security expert was sued under trade secrets law by Microsoft (a NWO corp) for supplying unreleased security patches (“hotfixes”) for the Windows 8 operating system to a tech blogger.
- In another, one online dating service sued another for $6 million for allegedly copying its system for organizing speed dating events.
Any agreement in the TTIP on trade secret laws, and how they might effect U. S. law is unclear. Based on the examples sited above, it’s obvious how trade secrets law could be misused to limit access to security information and stifle technological innovation. The inclusion of new provisions on trade secrets in the TTIP is alarming.
One of the most controversial aspects of TTIP is the investor-state provisions. Under investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), if a regulation gets in the way of a foreign investor’s ability to profit from their investment, the investor can sue a country for monetary damages based on both alleged lost profits and “expected future profits.” Investor-state provisions therefore require the creation of a new court system, because national courts apparently can’t be trusted to administer this kind of lawsuit.
There is a similar ISDS provision in the TPP.
The construction of these investor-state courts hardly allow for impartial rulemaking. In existing ISDS courts, they are comprised of three private-sector attorneys who take turns being judge and/or corporate advocate. Corporate plaintiffs in ISDS cases can demand hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars in damages against countries. Even a threat of an ISDS case can be enough for nations to strike down whatever policy a corporation doesn’t like, because they simply cannot afford to lose and be forced to pay such exorbitant penalties.
Since these supposed lost “investments” can even include intellectual property, big media companies could use ISDS to undermine pro-user policies. For example, even fair use in the United States could be challenged using ISDS. Under the broad powers that this system affords to corporations, big media companies could use ISDS to claim that some law or court ruling that expands fair use in the U. S. poses a threat to their copyright protection, and therefore their future profits. Or what’s more likely to happen is that they could use the threat of an ISDS lawsuit to squash the pro-user policy before it even passes.
Indications are that the U. S. negotiators will continue to propose provisions that impact on the free flow of data across borders, as part of the agreement’s e-commerce chapter. Most likely these may mirror those being discussed in the equally secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership, which in turn shares language with the US–South Korea trade agreement.
A U. S.-based tech trade association, the Internet Association, has also suggested the inclusion of new provisions on intermediary liability in trade negotiations such as the TTIP. Such provisions would seek to export CDA 230 of United States law, which protects Internet intermediaries from liability for the speech of their users, and in turn makes those intermediaries more likely to be willing to host that speech online. This law has played a very important role in creating an enabling environment for creativity and innovation on the Internet in this country, and thereby in other countries which access content on U. S.-based content services. It’s important to note that CDA 230 was passed by democratically elected representatives in Congress. The extension of this important Internet law into trade agreements means unelected officials could negotiate changes to the law behind closed doors.
On May 22, 2015, documents were released showing how corporations will use the TTIP to control countries, no matter how dangerous the consequences are for the citizens.
The documents obtained by Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe, reveal that the EU’s actions to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility were shelved following pressure from U. S. trade officials over the TTIP free trade agreement. Draft EU criteria could have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Those important actions were stopped amid fears of a trade backlash stoked by an aggressive U. S. lobby push.
According to the documents, on July 2, 2013, a high-level delegation from the U. S. Mission to Europe and the American Chambers of Commerce (AmCham) visited EU trade officials to insist that the bloc drop its planned criteria for identifying EDCs in favor of a new impact study. By the end of the day, the EU had done so. Minutes of the meeting show commission officials pleading that “although they want the TTIP to be successful, they would not like to be seen as lowering the EU standards”. Responding to the EU officials, AmCham representatives “complained about the uselessness of creating categories and thus, lists” of prohibited substances, the minutes show.
The U. S. trade representatives insisted that a risk-based approach be taken to regulation, and “emphasised the need for an impact assessment” instead. On the afternoon of July 2, 2013, the secretary-general of the commission, Catherine Day, sent a letter to the environment department’s director Karl Falkenberg, telling him to stand down the draft criteria. “We suggest that as other DGs [directorate-generals] have done, you consider making a joint single impact assessment to cover all the proposals,” Day wrote. “We do not think it is necessary to prepare a commission recommendation on the criteria to identify endocrine disrupting substances.”
The result was that legislation planned for 2014 was kicked back until at least 2016, despite estimated health costs of €150bn per year in Europe from endocrine-related illnesses such as IQ loss, obesity and cryptorchidism – a condition affecting the genitals of baby boys.
In a high-level internal note sent to the health commissioner, Tonio Borg, shortly afterwards, his departmental director-general warned that the EU’s endocrines policy “will have substantial impacts for the economy, agriculture and trade”. The heavily redacted letter, sent a week before the EU’s plans were scrapped continued: “The US, Canada, and Brazil [have] already voiced concerns on the criteria which might lead to important repercussions on trade.”
The series of events was described as “incredible” by the Green MEP Bas Eickhout. “These documents offer convincing evidence that TTIP not only presents a danger for the future lowering of European standards, but that this is happening as we speak,” he told the Guardian.
Just weeks before the regulations were dropped there had been a barrage of lobbying from big European firms such as Dupont (a NWO corp), Bayer (a NWO corp) and BASF (a NWO corp) over EDCs. The chemical industry association Cefic warned that the endocrines issue “could become an issue that impairs the forthcoming EU-US trade negotiations”. The German chemicals giant BASF also complained that bans on pesticide substances “will restrict the free trade with agricultural products on the global level”.
Around this time, the commission’s more industry-friendly agriculture department weighed into the internal EU debate after being “informed by representatives of the U. S. chemical industry” about it.
A common theme in the lobby missives was the need to set thresholds for safe exposure to endocrines, even though a growing body of scientific results suggests that linear threshold models – in which higher doses create greater effects – do not apply to endocrine disruptors. “The human endocrine system is regulated by hormones and the hormone receptors are sensitive to low doses,” said Hans Muilerman, PAN Europe’s chemicals coordinator. “In animal toxicity studies, effects are seen from low doses [of endocrines] that disappear with higher ones. But in the regulatory arena, lower doses are not tested for.”
A commission spokesperson insisted that health and environmental concerns would be fully addressed, despite pressure from industry or trade groups. “The ongoing EU impact assessment procedure is not linked in any way to the TTIP negotiations,” the official said. “The EU will proceed to the adoption of definitive criteria to identify endocrine disruptors, independently from the further course of our TTIP negotiations with the U.S.”
An EU-TTIP position paper on chemicals published in May 2014, cited endocrine disruptors as one of the “new and emerging scientific issues” which the EU and the U. S. could consider for “enhanced regulatory cooperations” in a future TTIP deal. “However, given the fact that a possible future TTIP Agreement will most likely not enter into force before the adoption of definitive EU criteria to identify endocrine disruptors, it is clear that the EU’s ongoing impact assessment and adoption of definitive criteria will not be dealt with in the TTIP negotiations,” the spokesperson said.
Still think your government has your best interests in mind? Government officials only care about making money, not what’s in the best interests of their citizens.
HAVE YOU HEARD OF THE TRADE IN SERVICES AGREEMENT (TISA)?
On June 3, 2015, Wikileaks released 17 documents relating to the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), currently under negotiation between the U. S., the European Union and 23 other nations, including Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan and Israel, which together comprise two-thirds of the global GDP. “Services” now account for nearly 80 per cent of the US and EU economies, and even in developing countries like Pakistan account for 53 per cent of the economy. While the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has become well known in recent months in the United States, the TISA is the larger component of the strategic TPP-TISA-TTIP ‘T-treaty trinity’. All parts of the trinity notably exclude the ‘BRICS’ countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These negotiating texts are supposed to remain secret for five years after TISA is finalized and brought into force.
One of the clauses in the TISA would prevent the U. S., European Union and 23 other nations from controlling both where your data is stored, as well as whether or not it’s accessible from outside of the country. Germany, for example, couldn’t demand that Facebook (a NWO corp) and Google (a NWO corp) store residents’ account information on local servers. “No Party may require a service supplier, as a condition for supplying a service or investing in its territory, to: (a) use computing facilities located in the Party’s territory,” the leaked draft stipulates. Germany is currently discussing the idea.
Another article would ban countries from requiring access to the code of “mass-market” software in order to provide services related to that software. A TISA partner could still use Linux, OpenOffice and other software with easy-to-dissect code, but it couldn’t require that kind of software.
The restrictions on exports of open source programs would prevent Russia-like control over data that makes it easier to censor and snoop on your communications, but they’d also make it hard to stop your info from traveling overseas. In addition, while the open source clause would allow for more flexibility in software, it also risks weakening security by making it harder to check for spy agency back doors. As a whole, the agreement’s tech-related elements favor businesses over privacy rights and transparency.
The TISA documents show Obamatrade will unilaterally alter current U.S. immigration law. TISA, like TPP or TTIP, are international trade agreements that Obama is trying to force through to final approval. The way he can do so is by getting Congress to give him fast-track authority through TPA.
The TISA is even more secretive than TPP. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill can review the text of TPP in a secret, secured room inside the Capitol—and in some cases can bring staffers who have high enough security clearances—but with TISA, no such draft text is available.
Voting for TPA, of course, would essentially ensure the final passage of each TPP, TTIP, and TISA by Congress, since in the history of fast-track any deal that’s ever started on fast-track has been approved.
Roughly 10 pages of this TISA agreement document leak are specifically about immigration. The immigration provisions of TISA deals with 24 separate parties, mostly different nations, but also the European Union. It’s focused on increasing the free flow of services worldwide—and with that, comes labor. Labor means immigration and guestworkers.
“This Trade and Services Agreement is specifically mentioned in TPA as being covered by fast-track authority, so why would Congress be passing a Trade Promotion Authority Act that covers this agreement, if the U.S. weren’t intended to be a party to this agreement – so at the very least, there should be specific places where the U. S. exempts itself from these provisions and there are not,” according to NumbersUSA. “Certainly the implication is that the U. S. intends to be a party to all or some of the provisions of this agreement. There is nothing in there that says otherwise, and there is no question that some of the provisions in this Trade and Services Agreement would require the United States to change its immigration laws,” even though it is still a draft at this point.
In 2003, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that said no immigration provision should be in trade agreements. The existence of these 10 pages is in clear violation of that earlier unanimous decision, and also in violation of the statements made by the U. S. Trade Representative. “He has told members of Congress very specifically the U. S. is not negotiating immigration – or at least is not negotiating any immigration provisions that would require us to change our laws. So, unless major changes are made to the Trade and Services Agreement – that is not true,” said NumbersUSA.
Remember, as mentioned earlier in this article, the office of U. S. Trade Representative was created in order to permit corporations to write law that serves only their interests. This fraud on the Constitution and the people is covered up by calling trade laws “treaties.”
There are several examples within the 10 pages of areas where the U .S. would have to alter current immigration law.
The first issue with the agreement is that approximately 40 industries are listed where potentially the U .S. visa processes would have to change to accommodate the requirements within the agreement. According to NumbersUSA, under the agreement, the terms don’t have an economic needs based test, which currently U. S. law requires for some types of visa applications in order to show there aren’t American workers available to fill positions.
Secondly, the agreement suggests, “The period of processing applications may not exceed 30 days.” This would be a significant problem for the U. S. because most visa applications take longer than 30 days. “We will not be able to meet those requirements without essentially our government becoming a rubber stamp because it very often takes more than 30 days to process a temporary worker visa,” NumbersUSA said.
NumbersUSA identified another issue with the application process. “The fact that there’s a footnote in this agreement that says that face to face interviews are too burdensome … we’re supposed to be doing face to face interviews with applicants for temporary visas. According to the State Department Consular Officer, it’s the in person interviews that really gives the Consular Officer an opportunity to determine – is this person a criminal, is this person a terrorist … all of those things are more easily determined when you’re sitting face to face with someone and asking those questions.”
Another identified issue with the agreement is that it only provides an “[X]” where the number of years would be filled in for the entry or temporary stay. For example, with L-visas under current U. S. immigration law, the time limit is seven years – so if the agreement were to go beyond seven years, it would change current U. S. law. This wouldn’t be unconstitutional if Obama had fast-track authority under TPA, as Congress would essentially have given him the power to finalize all aspects of the negotiations, including altering immigration law.
“I think this whole thing makes it very clear that this administration is negotiating immigration – intends to make immigration changes if they can get away with it, and I think it’s that much more critical that Congress ensure that the administration does not have the authority to negotiate immigration,” according to NumbersUSA.
According to WikiLeaks, an amendment to TISA would standardize regulation of telecoms across member countries. Other leaked documents relate to e-commerce, transportation of living people and regulation of financial services corporations.
The U. S. trade representative’s press secretary said, “While the U. S. does not comment on alleged leaked negotiating information, it is important to underscore that American services exports are at all-time high of $710.6bn, and those exports support 4.6m well-paying jobs all over the country. That is why President Obama has made opening markets for U. S. services exporters a chief priority of his middle-class economics agenda.” How will massive job losses as a result of the TISA and the two other trade agreements improve the middle-class economy?
Unions, which fear heavy job losses once long-standing trade protections are dismantled, have plenty to fear if these trade agreements are enacted. Public sector unions have sought protections for state funded services that could be threatened by increased competition.
As an example, according to the leaked documents, Turkey is proposing the endorsement of health tourism across all the countries covered by the deal. Under the Turkish plan, people with health problems in the U. S. and Europe would be encouraged to visit neighboring countries for cheaper treatment, with the cost being reimbursed by their own health service or insurance provider. The plan implied that Turkey hopes to become a major provider of health services to Europe’s aging population, paid for by European taxpayers.
According to the director of the charity Global Justice Now, formerly the World Development Movement, “These leaks reinforce the concerns of campaigners about the threat that TISA poses to vital public services. There is no mandate for such a far-reaching programme of liberalisation in services. It’s a dark day for democracy when we are dependent on leaks like this for the general public to be informed of the radical restructuring of regulatory frameworks that our governments are proposing.”
The campaign director for Fight for the Future, said: “Internet users have become increasingly aware that seemingly obscure and complex policies that impact technology can have profound impacts on our most basic rights to communicate and express ourselves freely. Based on the latest leaks, it’s clear that TISA is not only unacceptably secretive, it contains provisions that could threaten internet freedom, privacy, and even global net neutrality.”
The agreement has been under discussion in secret since early 2013, and is intended to remove barriers to trade in services. TISA is a companion piece to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which cover trade in goods – but potentially far bigger, with Wikileaks claiming that ‘services’ now account for nearly 80 per cent of the U. S. and EU economies, and the three trade agreements together will completely eliminate the sovereignty of the U.S., and any other member countries in the agreements.
However, there are clear implications for privacy – as well as security from hacking. EU privacy regulations currently require companies to store EU citizens’ personal data locally, to make sure they comply with the region’s strict legal requirements for data processing. Tech companies like Facebook (a NWO corp), Google (a NWO corp), and internet advertising networks would be delighted to see such rules relaxed.
Wikileaks has warned that governments negotiating a far-reaching global service agreement are ‘surrendering a large part of their global sovereignty‘ and exacerbating the social inequality of poorer countries in the process.
If a country like China wanted to join, it would have to scrap all discriminatory practices against foreign firms, so discrimination against a foreign firm opening a hospital in China would be banned, for example. Under the agreement, retailers like Zara or Marks & Spencers would have the right to open stores in any of the signing countries and be treated like domestic companies. A nationalized service, such as the British telecoms industry in the eighties, would have to ensure it was not harming competition under these terms.
The extra liberalizations for telecoms and finance are reminiscent of the World Trade Organization agreement, which opened those sectors up for globalization.
Wikileaks says that corporations would be able to use the law in its current form to hold sway over governments, deciding whether laws promoting culture, protecting the environment or ensuring equal access to services were ‘unnecessarily burdensome’, or whether knowledge of indigenous culture or public services was essential to achieve ‘parity’.
“In other words, unaccountable private ‘trade’ tribunals would decide how countries could regulate activities that are fundamental to social well-being,” Wikileaks said.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “TISA’s language reflects the concerns of the internet industry, and not necessarily the interests of internet users as a whole.”
Source Materials —
Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (Vintage Books, 1989)