Right now this trade agreement smells like a corporate agenda pretending to be free trade. That is not a free trade agreement but a treaty of convenience that will cause no end of problems for lack of free trade flexibility.
Worse we see debate clearly stifled and that means that real mistakes will slide through and really good trade offs never entertained.
It will be still fast tracked and that bodes even less oversight.
There are real trade imbalances that need to be properly addressed and not protected or brushed under the mat as the deadlines close in.
There is also excellent chance that this will make the agreement itself very difficult to pass.
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I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be Concerned.
“You need to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agreement, not one
that was passed 25 years ago,” a frustrated President Barack Obama
recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP). He’s right. The public criticisms of the TPP have been vague.
That’s by design—anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be
jailed for disclosing its contents. I’ve actually read the TPP text
provided to the government’s own advisors, and I’ve given the president
an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation. But I can’t
share my criticisms with you.
I can tell you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her
criticism of the trade deal. We should be very concerned about what's
hidden in this trade deal—and particularly how the Obama administration
is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to
provide advice.
So-called “cleared advisors” like me are
prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms we’ve lodged about
specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect
Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what
we’ve seen, allowing the president to criticize us for not being
specific. Instead of simply admitting that he disagrees with me—and with
many other cleared advisors—about the merits of the TPP, the president
instead pretends that our specific, pointed criticisms don’t exist.
What I can tell you is that the administration is being unfair
to those who are raising proper questions about the harms the TPP would
do. To the administration, everyone who questions their approach is
branded as a protectionist—or worse—dishonest. They broadly criticize
organized labor, despite the fact that unions have been the primary
force in America pushing for strong rules to promote opportunity and
jobs. And they dismiss individuals like me who believe that, first and
foremost, a trade agreement should promote the interests of domestic
producers and their employees.
I’ve been deeply involved in trade
policy for almost four decades. For 21 years, I worked for former
Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt and handled all trade policy issues
including “fast track,” the North American Free Trade Agreement and the
World Trade Organization’s Uruguay Round, which is the largest trade
agreement in history. I am also a consultant to various domestic
producers and the United Steelworkers union, for whom I serve as a
cleared advisor on two trade advisory committees. To top it off, I was a
publicly acknowledged advisor to the Obama campaign in 2008.
Obama
may no longer be listening to my advice, but Hillary Clinton and
Elizabeth Warren might as well be. Warren, of course, has been perhaps
the deal’s most vocal critic, but even the more cautious Clinton has
raised the right questions on what a good TPP would look like. Her
spokesman, Nick Merrill, said: “She will be watching closely to see what
is being done to crack down on currency manipulation, improve labor
rights, protect the environment and health, promote transparency and
open new opportunities for our small businesses to export overseas. As
she warned in her book Hard Choices, we shouldn’t be giving special rights to corporations at the expense of workers and consumers.”
On
this count, the current TPP doesn’t measure up. And nothing being
considered by Congress right now would ensure that the TPP meets the
goal of promoting domestic production and job creation.
The text
of the TPP, like all trade deals, is a closely guarded secret. That fact
makes a genuine public debate impossible and should make robust debate
behind closed doors all the more essential. But the ability of TPP
critics like me to point out the deal’s many failings is limited by the
government’s surprising and unprecedented refusal to make revisions to
the language in the TPP fully available to cleared advisors.
Bill
Clinton didn’t operate like this. During the debate on NAFTA, as a
cleared advisor for the Democratic leadership, I had a copy of the
entire text in a safe next to my desk and regularly was briefed on the
specifics of the negotiations, including counterproposals made by Mexico
and Canada. During the TPP negotiations, the United States Trade
Representative (USTR) has never shared proposals being advanced by other
TPP partners. Today’s consultations are, in many ways, much more
restrictive than those under past administrations.
All advisors,
and any liaisons, are required to have security clearances, which entail
extensive paperwork and background investigations, before they are able
to review text and participate in briefings. But, despite clearances,
and a statutory duty to provide advice, advisors do not have access to
all the materials that a reasonable person would need to do the job. The
negotiators provide us with “proposals” but those are merely initial
proposals to trading partners. We are not allowed to see
counter-proposals from our trading partners. Often, advisors are
provided with updates indicating that the final text will balance all
appropriate stakeholder interests but we frequently receive few
additional details beyond that flimsy assurance.
Those details
have enormous repercussions. For instance, rules of origin specify how
much of a product must originate within the TPP countries for the
resulting product to be eligible for duty-free treatment. These are
complex rules that decide where a company will manufacture its products
and where is will purchase raw materials. Under the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 62.5 percent of a car needed to originate
within NAFTA countries. In the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement, it was
lowered to 50 percent. It further dropped to 35 percent in the US-Korea
Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). In essence, under our agreement with
Korea, 65 percent of a car from South Korea could be made from Chinese
parts and still qualify for duty-free treatment when exported to the
U.S.
That fact is politically toxic, and for that reason, we
should expect the TPP agreement to have higher standards. But will it
reach the 62.5 percent NAFTA requirement? Or will it be only a slight
improvement over KORUS? Without access to the final text of the
agreement, it’s impossible to say.
State-owned enterprises may,
for the first time, be addressed in the TPP. But, once again, the
details are not clear. Will exemptions be provided to countries like
Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, all of which could be heavily impacted
by such a rule? What will be the test to determine what is or is not
acceptable behavior? Will injury be required to occur over a substantial
period of time, or will individual acts of non-commercial, damaging
trade practices be actionable? Again, it’s impossible to say for sure.
Advisors are almost flying blind on these questions and others.
Only
portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful
eye of a USTR official. Access, up until recently, was provided on
secure web sites. But the government-run website does not contain the
most-up-to-date information for cleared advisors. To get that
information, we have to travel to certain government facilities and sign
in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what
we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully edited
summaries rather than the actual underlying text, which is critical to
really understanding the consequences of the agreement.
Cleared advisors were created by statute to advise our nation’s trade
negotiators. There is a hierarchal structure, starting with the USTR’s
Advisory Committee on Trade Policy & Negotiations at the top—a
committee that includes people like Steelworkers President Leo Gerard,
Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson and Jill Appell,
co-owner of Appell’s Pork Farms. Then there are specific Committees
covering subjects like labor, the environment and agriculture that make
up the next tier. The last tier consists of the Industry Trade Advisory
Committees (ITACS), which focus on individual sectors such as steel and
aerospace. At last count, there were more than 600 cleared advisors. The
vast majority of them represent business interests.
In an effort
to diminish criticism, USTR is now letting cleared advisors review
summaries of what the negotiators have done. In response to a question
about when the full updated text will be made available, we’ve been
told, “We are working on making them available as soon as possible.”
That’s not the case overseas: Our trading partners have this text, but
the government’s own cleared advisors, serving on statutorily-created
advisory committees, are kept in the dark.
How can we properly advise, without knowing the details?
Questions
pervade virtually every chapter of the proposed agreement, including
labor and the environment, investor-state, intellectual property and
others. The answers to these questions affect the sourcing and
investment decisions of our companies and resulting jobs for our people.
Our elected representatives would be abdicating their Constitutional
duty if they failed to raise questions.
Senator Warren should be
commended for her courage in standing up to the President, and Secretary
Clinton for raising a note of caution, and I encourage all elected
officials to raise these important questions. Working Americans can’t
afford more failed trade agreements and trade policies.
Congress
should refuse to pass fast track trade negotiating authority until the
partnership between the branches, and the trust of the American people
is restored. That will require a lot of fence mending and disclosure of
exactly what the TPP will do. That begins by sharing the final text of
the TPP with those of us who won’t simply rubber-stamp it.
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