Robert B graciously provided this to us. The source Japanese document is here:
http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/tpp/pdf/2015/10/151005_tpp_gaiyou.pdf
Reader Clive had read it and translated sections of it as a basis for Lambert’s post earlier today, but it’s always good to have more eyes on important documents.
I’m sure we’ll have more to say about this once we’ve digested it, but we wanted the public to have acces to it as soon as possible.
Overview-of-the-TPP
Overview of the TPP
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Open Office told me this was a corrupt file and couldn’t be repaired. Could someone possibly put this in PDF format, please?
Sorry! Should have made it a PDF in the first place. My bad. The post now has a PDF embedded.
Nice work team naked capitalism!
As usual, the sound bites are aimed at low-information voters:
Obama makes pitch to win support for Pacific trade pact
Shame on NC for going all fact-based and raining on his parade.
“Shame on NC” ;-) ;-) :-)
Ah, Cargill, ADM, and Monsanto, to name but a few, will pass higher prices and lower costs on to the farmers?
When?
It’s not only Obama. Senator Ron Wyden issued a statement breath-taking in the number of lies packed into one paragraph, claiming there are safeguards for labor rights, currency manipulation, human trafficking and tobacco regulations. There are none of these things, only meaningless boilerplate that will be swiftly overridden. Similar language in NAFTA and other trade deals have always been subordinate to corporate assertions to profits, and the TPP’s language, from what we’ve seen from WikiLeaks’ publications, is even more draconian than NAFTA.
Interesting. Strange way of combining thoughts. I noticed that on pg. 29, chapter 17, they discuss state owned enterprises – their own and those in Southeast Asia and Indonesia. The participation of SOEs was the big excuse we here in the US were given for excluding China and at the time China proposed SOEs were/should be acceptable participants if they did not dump or otherwiwse monopolize or undercut the other contracts. This seems to be the exact position of the Japanese; they seem to be saying that the rules of competition will be adhered to by their energy, electricity, telecom and other SOEs and will be limited to some percentage (35% ?) of Japan’s economy, etc. So even tho’ Japan and China are saying the same thing only China is excluded. That’s pretty revealing, no?
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Please define:
1. freedom,
2. democracy,
3. human rights,
4. law (whose body of law)?
5. A new standard of future world trade
6. Investment rules
1. freedom: freedom to buy anything if you have the clout (see “principle of egalitarian aristocracy”),
2. democracy (see “principle of egalitarian aristocrasy”),
3. human rights (ibid, ”),
4. law (whose body of law)?, (law???, ibid, ”),
5. A new standard of future world trade (lulz)
6. Investment rules (vini, vidi, vici)
Yup.
take1: obedience and submission (that is how the powers that be use the term)
take2: freedom is Malaysian slavery
take 3: that’s the unenforceable preamble I think
Can’t we just make our own stuff? We certainly have the resources and productive capacity for most of what we need. Any additional costs attendant upon paying our fellow citizens a decent wage could be recovered on the savings in military spending and fairer taxation to mention but two things that come immediately to mind. This passion for global trade for a country such as our own has little to do with basic material well-being of the general populace and is more about madness in high places.
Why everyone thinks trade is a good thing is beyond me. I agree with your comment.
Only economists believe that dependency on long long indefensible supply chains is a good thing. Economists live in an alternate universe with different laws of physics than everybody else.
Not different laws of physics, different sources of pay checks…
It has to do with maximizing corporate profits, which isn’t really “madness” in the context of corporate bottom lines although of course it is madness in the context of human development. The movement of production to the low-wage countries with poor regulation is forced by the competition of capitalism — if one enterprise does it, and gives itself a boost to profitability, then its competitors will be compelled to do the same thing. The proliferation of these trade deals reflects the corporate desire to have a freer hand to do this and reflects the power concentrated in corporate hands. So, yes, “madness” in any ordinary sense of the word but unfortunately logical in the context of neoliberal capitalism.
Difficult reading for me. I look forward to the release of the TPP agreement for public review and comment.
A couple of “Hot Button” items did stand out to me on reading Page -18-:
— Appears no GMO labeling requirements can subsequently be imposed.
— Appears a specific exclusion has been made for Malaysia regarding human rights violations.
Noticed that the current Secretary of Defense and Christine Lagarde of the IMF both formally congratulated US Trade Representative Froman today on concluding negotiation of this “Agreement”, and am wondering Why?
Seems to me practically the entire world is up to its eyeballs in private sector debt and is begging for monetary system reform. But new rules governing global investments and trade that further favor large banks and transnational corporations?… For some reason I am reminded of the old story of King Canute forbidding the incoming tide.
Just to add that’s a “Google Translate” or similar computer / automatic translation so it is, in places, erm, a bit approximate.
When I first saw the original Japanese language version of the text, I didn’t know where to start as there was so much interesting stuff, I picked beef (see the feature http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/why-japan-did-americas-dirty-work-in-the-tpp-ustr-gave-away-the-agricultural-store.html from earlier in NC archives) as it was a good general guide to who gained and who lost in the TPP outline agreement. The automated translation is okay as a guide but shouldn’t be taken as definitive as you can tell if you compare that automated translation version in the section on beef with mine in the article on the above link.
Translation of this sort of dense, specialist subject material is very tricky and time consuming if it is to be 100% accurate — and anything less that 100% accurate can give rise to pretty fundamental misunderstanding, which is unfortunate if you then rely on it to make an argument.
If any Naked Capitalism readers are particularly interested in specific sections and aren’t able to get a good comprehension from the automated translation which has been provided here, drop a suggestion in a reply to this comment and I’ll know what people want to be prioritised.
Obama was featured on the NPR “business” show last night talking trade(I know: shoot me, but I was in the car channel-hopping when it came on and had too listen). Didn’t catch if the interview was fresh or retread but it was nauseating regardless. One particular egregious claim (of many), O said that all the employers who were interested in low wages had already moved overseas but that the higher wage manufacturers wouldn’t do that. Hello Boeing?
Here in Wisco, virtually all of the high-skill, higher wage manufacturing outside defense is gone. (Harley Davidson and some mining equipment mfrs still do some skilled work.) All that is left is low-wage sheet metal and plastic, where presumably bulk makes importing less cost effective.