When It Comes To Disastrous Trade Policies, Biden, Beto, Delaney, McTurtle Are On One Side, While Bernie Has Been Fighting On The Other Side-- Our Side-- For His Whole Life

Last Friday, former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau interviewed Marianne Williamson on his podcast, Pod Save America. Among other things, Marianne told him that "there are two kinds of Democrats, aren’t there? And that’s being played out in this campaign. There are two categories here. The two categories is the incrementalist who say we can have it both ways. We can take [corporate] money. We can take tens of thousands from some security investment firms. We can take tens of thousand from Big Pharma. We can take tens or even more thousands from oil companies, but we’re going to go and be an instrument of change. Yeah, right. There’s that, and they’re saying well, we’ll make these incremental changes and then there are those of us who say this has got to stop. We need a fundamental pattern disruption of the American political and economic status quo."

A fundamental pattern disruption isn't something you could have a serious talk with candidates like Delaney, Biden or Frackenlooper about. That's not what they're aiming for. Each would like to hold onto a status quo that has worked well for them-- but get it a little better... a very little better. That's why the 3 of them oppose Medicare-For-All and the Green New Deal, for example. It's why the three of them would have opposed the American Revolution and might have suggested that the tax on tea be reduced and that the colonies have a voting member or two sitting in Parliament. And Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto, Kirsten Gillibrand, McKinsey Pete, Amy Klobuchar, Tim Ryan... you don't think any of them are agents of change, do you? Fundamental pattern disruptors? No.

Last week, Common Dreams published a piece by Thom Hartmann, If Democrats Want to Beat Trump, They Better Not Nominate a ‘Free Trade’ Candidate, warning that nominating a candidate like Biden-- let alone dreck like Delaney or Hickenlooper-- would lead to catastrophe. He reminded his readers that when establishment Democrat, Walter Mondale "was nominated by the Democratic Party to take on Ronald Reagan in 1984, he uttered, in his acceptance speech, a single line that did more than anything else that year to lose him the election. He said, 'Mr. Reagan will raise taxes and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.'"

The Republicans turned it into a campaign ad, and it played over and again, dragging Mondale so far down that he lost every state in the country except his home state of Minnesota.

What Mondale said was true, and Reagan did raise taxes on working people-- eleven times-- but that was still the moment when Mondale signed his own political death warrant. Americans had been bitten badly in the previous decade by inflation and the Reagan Recession, and were in no mood to give more of their hard-earned money to the government or anybody else.

In 2020, trade will be as potent an issue as taxes were in 1984.

This election cycle, it’s starting to look like Democrats are about to make the same mistake of not defending the paychecks of working people. Only this time, the Democratic quote will be, “Trump won’t succeed in bringing home your jobs, but neither will I because I support all of the trade agreements that took your jobs in the first place.”

Again, Status Quo Joe Biden, Frackenlooper, Delaney are all for the kinds of horrendous free trade deals that have been so destructive. And they're not the only ones. In 2015, the Senate passed the Trade Act of 2015, which included Trade Promotion Authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 48 Republicans and 14 Democrats. Among the current candidates for president, Michael Bennet voted yes and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand voted no. It passed the House very narrowly-- 219-211-- with 191 Republicans and 28 Democrats voting for it. Delaney and Beto voted yes. Swalwell, Ryan, Tulsi and Moulton voted against it. There was another vote-- which failed-- on TAA, for which just 40 corporate Dems, lead by Hoyer, voted. The culprits included the two ardent "free" traders running for president today who were in the House then, Delaney and Bonnie Beto. biden, of course, has been for almost every bad trade bill ever written, especially favored nation status for China, NAFTA and TPP.

Hartmann concluded by writing that "Progressive Democrats have been pushing for a return to Jefferson-until-Carter protectionist policies ever since Bill Clinton split apart the party over the issue with his advocacy of NAFTA in the 1992 election. If the Democrats want to beat Trump, they need to get with the progressives’ trade program in a big, strong, and fast way. Democrats must point out that Trump is doing protectionism wrong because he’s doing his tariffs by executive order, which only last as long as his administration does; no company is going to build a factory based on that thin assurance. (And the anti-tariff Republican Party will never pass such a policy; Trump is screwed in that regard.) Congress should be negotiating our trade agreements in the open and passing them as solid, long-lasting legislation, so companies have multi-decade horizons of tariff protections; Democrats need to return the party to its past mission of putting American workers and the environment first. But if the Democrats promote 'free trade' in 2020, get ready for four more years of Donald Trump gloating at us all from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. 'I’m for free trade,' if it becomes the party’s mantra, will be the 2020 version of Mondale’s 'I’m going to raise your taxes.'"

Meanwhile, there's another piece to fundamental pattern disruption that we need to keep foremost in our minds this cycle-- Congress. Electing more New Dems and more Blue Dogs, like electing more Republicans, makes things worse, not better. We've talked endlessly about how Cheri Bustos, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi are fighting like mad dogs to protect Dan Lipinski who is anti-immigrant, anti-Choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-worker and pro-NRA. That's your Democratic Establishment. Don't trust them, don't believe them, don't support them and don't give them any money. A contribution to someone like Dan Lipinski is going to do you as much good as a contribution to McTurtle would. Which reminds me... On Sunday, Will Bunch penned an important McTurtle piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mitch McConnell’s Democracy-Crushing Smirk Is Why Just Getting Rid Of Trump Isn’t Enough. Biden never talks about why getting rid of Trump isn't enough-- because it might make someone wonder what he stands for-- but both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are basing their campaigns on it.

What Bunch was writing about is completely in line with hat Blue America is all about. "It’s pointless to ask 'why' about Mitch McConnell," he wrote. "The only question that matters going into 2020 is 'how'-- How can McConnell be stopped? In the long term, his rise and his unholy reign pose hard questions about the very nature of American democracy and its foundation-- whether the constitutional checks and balances of a Senate that gives citizens in Wyoming so much more power than their fellow Americans in California makes sense in today’s world. But McConnell’s assault on democracy can also be stopped in the short run. For starters, the Senate majority leader is up for reelection in 2020, and even if you don’t live or vote in Kentucky, any American can donate or volunteer to help his election opponents. But even if that falls short, Democrats can end McConnell’s reign as leader-- and make sure he’s not thwarting the replacements for aging Supreme Court justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer-- with a net gain of three or four Senate seats."

For anyone who cares about keeping liberty alive, beating McConnell next year is every bit as important as beating Trump. That’s why it’s so frustrating that the elites of the Democratic Party don’t seem to get it. Rather than making a reclamation of the Senate the national moral crusade that it needs to be, the allure of the Trumpian reality show has sucked the top tier of potential candidates-- Beto O’Rourke and Julian Castro of Texas, Steve Bullock of Montana and Stacey Abrams of Georgia-- into the presidential race or related pursuits. Vanity and shortsightedness could leave a President Warren or Harris or Biden one vote short in 2021 of the progress that their voters demanded.

The only good news is that the 2020 general election is still 16 months away-- plenty of time for the Democrats and concerned voters to shift gears, make the Senate a priority, keep liberty alive... and wipe the smirk off Mitch McConnell’s face.

Analyzing the New NAFTA Deal — Better, But Not by Much

Donald Trump on NAFTA. That was then; this is now.

by Gaius Publius

NAFTA 2.0 is on the horizon, and I wanted to offer an update courtesy of Public Citizen's Trade Watch, the best go-to source on trade agreement issues. Their infographic is here. Click here for their full analysis. I'm excerpting the relevant details below.

Bottom line: The NAFTA 2.0 draft is a mixed bag and will need fixing. It does improve the original agreement, but not by much.

Public Citizen begins this way (emphasis mine):

NAFTA 2.0 Text Analysis

How does NAFTA 2.0 text measure up against the essential changes we have demanded to stop NAFTA’s ongoing damage?

After a year of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations, the September 30 publication of a revised text revealed some improvements that progressives have long demanded, damaging terms we have long opposed and important unfinished business.

This NAFTA 2.0 text is not the transformational replacement of the corporate-rigged trade-pact model that we have demanded. But if we fight to get swift and certain enforcement of the pact’s new labor standards — and achieve some other key improvements — then the final package Congress will vote on early next year could stop some of NAFTA’s continuing, serious damage to people across North America.

Phase II of the battle to replace NAFTA and stop its ongoing job-killing, wage-crushing, environment-trashing destruction starts now!

Congress will vote on this agreement next year, providing Democrats with one more opportunity to show millennials that the Democratic Party is worth supporting in 2020. (Nancy Pelosi, take note: you'll want to oppose this deal.)

"Investor-State Dispute Settlement" Clauses

I've written quite a bit about investor-state dispute settlement clauses in trade agreements. These provisions give "investors" (corporations) the right to sue "states" (sovereign nations) for lost future profits in special trade tribunals, whose decisions cannot be appealed in any nation's court system. In effect, thanks to ISDS clauses, NAFTA court decisions trump the U.S. Supreme Court — a clear and obvious corporate attack on national sovereignty itself. ISDS clauses must be eliminated in their entirety.

Where does the current NAFTA draft agreement stand with respect to ISDS tribunals?

Corporate Powers and Privileges

We demanded an end to NAFTA’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) regime that grants corporations rights to attack our laws and demand unlimited taxpayer compensation.

So, some good, some bad. This is a critical issue; again, what's at stake is national sovereignty versus corporate control. (Full Public Citizen analysis of this issue here.)

Job Outsourcing

Public Citizen wants an agreement that completely eliminates incentives to send jobs to other countries — in NAFTA's case, to low-wage Mexico. How does the revised draft agreement measure up?

All those question marks above relate to provisions that are good but not enforceable. I'd make them X's if I were doing the chart, but Public Citizen may be more hopeful than I am of getting them changed for the better. (More analysis of these items here.)

Climate Change and the Environment

The current NAFTA agreement was as terrible for the environment as it was for jobs. Using NAFTA tribunals, corporations could punish (or threaten to punish) nations, states, counties and municipalities for passing and enforcing environmental regulations that cut into corporate profits.

In the new agreement, some of that has changed — but only some:

As you may have noticed, there's nothing here about climate change.

Access to Affordable Medicine, Food Safety, Consumer Protection

On the issues of access to affordable medicine and food safety, the new agreement is terrible. About medicine, the new agreement:

• Grants Big Pharma new monopolies that lock in bad U.S. policies keep prescription drug prices high and imposes those policies on Mexico and Canada.
   
• Adds a new 10-year monopoly period for biologic medicines that could deny consumers affordable access to live-saving medicines.
   
• Grants additional Big Pharma handouts that block access to cheaper generic drugs.
   
• Includes rules for pharmaceutical firms to participate in government healthcare programs’ drug pricing and listing decision processes — but these terms are not enforceable.

A gift to Big Pharma, or a big wet kiss, depending on your degree of frustration. (More on the medicine clauses here.)

About food safety, same thing. The draft agreement:

• Maintains NAFTA terms that undermine domestic food safety and inspection policies and adds new limits.
   
• Maintains NAFTA rules that require the U.S. to accept food imports that do not meet U.S. safety or inspection standards.
   
• Maintains NAFTA’s limits on border food inspection and adds new rules limiting audits of NAFTA countries’ food safety programs.
   
• Fails to fix roll backs of U.S. food labeling policies that previously were trade-challenged by Canada and Mexico, including country-of-origin labels for meat and dolphin-safe labels for tuna. New terms could threaten GMO labeling.

Another wet kiss. (More on the food safety clauses here.)

About consumer protection from imported goods — in other words, can you trust imported products to meet the same standards for safety as domestic ones — there's very little good to report. The draft agreement:

• Maintains old NAFTA rules that undermine consumer safeguards and adds more.
   
• Fixes a longstanding problem related to environmental and safety concerns with Mexico-domiciled trucks.
   
• Fails to include a new exception protecting public interest policies that are challenged as “illegal trade barriers.”

The second item above is a plus, but it's minor compared to the rest. (More on the consumer protection clauses here.)

And of course, this agreement has no meaningful sunset clause.

All in all this is a very bad deal, though slightly better than the truly horrible deal the previous agreement represented. Anyone who thought that for all his flaws, Trump would at least come through on trade ... was mistaken.

GP
 

Trump and Trade Policy — Why He Will Fail

by Gaius Publius

The clip above is an interview Thom Hartmann did with Forbes writer and commentor Eamonn Fingleton, whom the headline touts as "The Man Who Predicted Trump," a true statement, by the way. That prediction came in February 2016, as noted at the start of the conversation in the clip.

Here Fingleton and Hartmann discuss Trump, U.S. trade and industrial policy, why Trump won, and why he will now fail, at least with respect to changing American trade practices.

The following is taken from the transcript, with just a little editing to clean up typos. My excerpts will make just a few points, but they're worth keeping in mind as Trump rolls out his trade policies — which may or may not, by the way, correspond to his trade promises. Read on to see why.

For 200 Years, American Manufacturing Was Built by Protectionism

The first point they make after discussing the last 30 years of neoliberal trade policies, called by the right "Milton Friedman free trade," is to look at how America became a manufacturing giant in the first place. Consider that in its earliest years, the new nation was a fragile place economically, just 13 colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, vulnerable to the manufacturing and trade giants in Europe, especially Great Britain. George Washington's problem — how to jump-start American manufacturing in that environment.

From the transcript:

Eamonn Fingleton: ... [H]ow the hell is Trump going to get the economy moving again? Because he wants to get manufacturing back but you can't get blood out of a stone. All of these key industries have migrated. The more advanced of them gone to Japan or to Korea or to Germany and then the middling level ones are in, of course, China. ...

Thom Hartmann: ... [W]hat should we be doing in the United States to bring, first of all, should we bring manufacturing back home? I mean, you know, the position of the Third Way Democrats and the entire Republican Party for 35 years has been, you know, manufacturing jobs are crappy jobs. Who wants those kind of jobs? We need information industry jobs, right? So should we bring manufacturing back, and if we should, how do we do it?

Eamonn Fingleton: ... Absolutely, the manufacturing sector has to be strengthened. You have to bring back the serious manufacturing industries, meaning the capital-intensive ones, the [inaudible] intensive industries. But how do you do that? It seems to me that tariffs are the solution, but they're going to be very unpopular if he really goes at it in a serious way. He would have to apply essentially a tariff to the entire world because if he doesn't, if he applies tariffs simply to China then the manufacturing for the American market will move to Vietnam, it will move to Brazil, it will move to Mexico, Canada, wherever. So, if he wants, seriously wants to get manufacturing back he has to use tariffs right across the board.

Thom Hartmann: But we had tariffs against the entire world for 200 years. It worked, didn't it?

Eamonn Fingleton: Absolutely, it did. You're well-informed on the history of the United States. That story has been very much suppressed in the last 50 years. But yes, America was for its most successful decades very protectionist.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, the George Washington administration at the behest of Alexander Hamilton, 1791, he presented is his 11 point plan on trade, his Report on Manufactures, most of it was adopted by 1793. The entire federal government from the George Washington administration to the Abraham Lincoln administration was funded by tariffs a hundred percent. From the Lincoln administration to World War One, two thirds of the government was funded by tariffs. World War One to World War Two, one third of the government was funded by tariffs. And now, you know, our tariffs are pretty much non-existent.

It seems to me like we should be able to just look back and say "Gee, what worked?" ...

So that's the first piece. As Hartmann said, "It seems to me like we should be able to just look back and say 'Gee, what worked?'"

Tariffs worked, and as they note as the conversation continues, tariff-like restrictions continue to work for nations with positive balances of trade, like Japan and Germany. As Hartmann says, "[T]hey do it with VAT taxes and domestic content requirements and regulations and that kind of thing." Fingleton adds that in Japan, you see mainly Japanese cars, and in Germany, you see mainly German cars.

Eamonn Fingleton: ... I mean, Volkswagen is a match for Toyota everywhere else in the world but not in Japan. It has about one percent of the market in Japan. Worldwide, it has about twenty-five, thirty percent.

So tariffs and protectionism work, if the goal is really to restore core manufacturing and worker wealth to the United States.

Why Trump Will Fail: "The rot has gone too far"

The current goal of U.S. trade policy is not, however, to restore manufacturing to America and wealth to workers. The goal, of both parties' leadership cliques, is to keep each party's wealthy donor class in position to grow even wealthier. I wrote this in 2013 about our real "industrial policy":

I am not optimistic about either jobs in general or good jobs going forward, since the current U.S. industrial policy is to ship our industries out of the country and hand the (untaxed) savings to billionaires, using corporations as a pass-through. (I’m not joking.) And I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

I think as a literal description of "U.S. industrial policy," it hits the mark squarely.

Which is why Trump will fail. Here's Hartmann and Fingleton on that:

Thom Hartmann: ... [S]o, if we brought back tariffs, every country that we have a trade agreement with would say that we are in violation of the trade agreement, it would go to investor state dispute settlement, we would be found guilty, we would be fined, we would get nailed, so the president should simply get us out of those agreements?

Eamonn Fingleton: I think that it's in character for Trump really to sort of bulldoze his way through and frankly that's what he's going to need in this instance. I think that if he goes the legal route as it were and tries to comply with all sorts of international agreements, he's going get nowhere. So he has to take the law into his own hands, frankly.

Thom Hartmann: Yeah, which is basically what Bernie Sanders was suggesting doing, too.

So far, so good. Trump could simply violate all of our trade agreements, then get us out of them by "bulldoz[ing] his way through." But there's a problem with that. After discussing the question of "what if Trump succeeds and gets a big fat political victory?" (my phrasing), Fingleton says, in effect, "Don't worry, he won't succeed."

Eamonn Fingleton: I think there's a big "if" there. I have a feeling that for all Trump's nationalistic fervor he's not going to succeed. That's very unfortunately my analysis, that he has the right ideas for trade and manufacturing but the problem, the rot has just gone too far.

Thom Hartmann: And his own party is by and large opposed to all this stuff. I mean, you've got all these Republican members of Congress who are bought and paid for by industries that are manufacturing overseas.

Eamonn Fingleton: Yeah, absolutely. That was the point I was going to make and also the lobbyists are just moving in and there's evidence that some of them are going to be inside his administration.

Thom Hartmann: Right. Yeah, and you've got Reince Priebus as his Chief of Staff. You know the old saying, 'personnel is policy'. It looks like policy is going to be Republican policy with populist rhetoric and I think that's a prescription, that's dynamite. That's a prescription for disaster, for an explosion.

Eamonn Fingleton: I checked on Priebus today with a very well-placed source in Washington and yes, the news I have is that he's a trade ideologue, free-trade ideologue.

Hartmann adds, "It's going to be real interesting when the people in Indiana who Trump promised he was going to stop their Carrier factory from going to China [actually, Mexico], when he doesn't stop it." Indeed. Or save only some of the jobs he promised to save all of. We wrote about that problem earlier. There are certainly ways to turn Trump's bad fortune to our benefit.  

Yes, the rot may have gone too far. But we'll see. Again, the whole clip is good and it's not that long. Give it a listen if you can.

Bottom Lines

Keep your eye on Priebus, the "free trade" acolyte, and the bought Republican Congress. And be sure to notice which bought Democrats show their loyalty to their own billionaire donor class when (or if) these votes come up.

But two bottom lines for now: The good news is, Trump will probably fail to correct U.S. trade and industrial policy, so good for us that he failed. The bad news is, Trump will probably fail to correct U.S. trade and industrial policy, so bad for us that he failed. Pick your poison, I guess, then pick up the political pieces.

GP
 

TPP Is a Monopoly Protection Scheme, the Exact Opposite of a "Free Trade" Deal

A little confusing, but follow the gray lines. The above figure illustrates how the duration of the copyright that the Walt Disney company claims in Steamboat Willie — marked by the solid gray line — has twice approached expiration — by the dashed gray line. In both instances, federal lawmakers amended the Copyright Act to extend the duration, both of copyrighted works generally and works, such as Steamboat Willie, that predated the amendments (source; click to enlarge). In 2023, expect copyright protection in general to be extended again. This law is colloquially called "The Mouse Protection Act."

by Gaius Publius

Normally when we think of "free trade," us lay people, we think of removing barriers to the exchange of goods and services. Removing barriers is the "free" part of "free trade." Of course, there really is no such thing as a "no barriers" market, since even the simplest of markets always has rules, and those who write the rules are "picking winners and losers" by definition.

Consider, for example, a flea market held in the parking lot of a local fairground on a Saturday. To participate, you have to register for a space with the organizers (the parking lot isn't infinitely long or wide), set up an approved tent or table, and usually, if your goods are sold by weight or volume, have your weights and measuring devices certified by the organizers as honest.

All of the restrictions above place limits on the "market" — put it under control of the organizers — but consider for a minute just the last one, certified weights and measures. How is that not "picking winners and losers"? Winners — Vendors with honest scales. Losers — Vendors who cheat their customers.

Or consider a flea market without that requirement. Winners — Vendors who cheat their customers. Losers — Vendors with honest scales.

A lot has been written, in fact, about the non-existence, by definition, of anything resembling a "free market," including much by the writer Masaccio (main site here).

Monopolies and "Free Trade"

But that point aside, let's consider TPP from another standpoint. Monopolies are the enemies of so-called "free trade" since, by definition, they destroy competition and invert the usual assumptions about pricing power. In a well-supplied market, a market with much available product, pricing power is with the buyers, the customers, since it is they who, in the aggregate, set the limits of "what the market will bear."

But in a market in which the supply of something essential for life — water, food, life-saving medical supplies and care, even apartment housing in an old-style "company town" — is not "well-supplied," but is instead controlled and constrained by a single supplier or a small cartel of non-competing suppliers, that's just the opposite of a "free market." It's in fact the least free a market can get.

Thus it is with TPP. Very little actual trade will be freed up if TPP is passed, since barriers to "trade" among the many of the potential signing nations are nearly non-existent.

On the other hand, one of the most important outcomes of  theTPP will be the destruction of a competitive market, the one for life-saving drugs and other "intellecual property." For these products, the TPP raises barriers as surely as tariffs would do.

Economist Dean Baker calls the TPP a "protectionist" agreement. Baker (my emphasis):

The TPP And Free Trade: Time To Retake The English Language

The proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are planning to do a full court press in the lame duck session of Congress following the election. We will be bombarded with speeches and columns from President Obama and other illustrious figures telling us how it is important to approve the TPP for a variety of reasons.

We can be certain that one of the reasons will be the inherent virtues of free trade. They will not be telling the truth.

The TPP is not about free trade. It does little to reduce tariffs and quotas for the simple reason that these barriers are already very low. In fact, the United States already has trade deals with six of the other eleven countries in the TPP. This is why the non-partisan United States International Trade Commission (ITC) estimated that when the full gains from the TPP are realized in 2032, they will come to just 0.23 percent of GDP. This is a bit more than a normal month’s growth.

Again, the full gains from the TPP will come to just 0.23% of GDP — one month's growth. So what is going on with the TPP? Why do people like Barack Obama (and Pfizer, etc.) want it to pass so badly? Among the reasons is this one:

[T]he TPP goes far in the opposite direction, increasing protectionism in the form of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection. These forms of protection for prescription drugs, software, and other products, often raise the price by a factor of a hundred or more above the free market price. This makes them equivalent to tariffs of several thousand percent.

These forms of protection do serve a purpose in promoting innovation and creative work, but we have other more efficient mechanisms to accomplish this goal. Furthermore, the fact that they serve a purpose doesn’t mean they are not protectionist. 

Tilting the playing field toward Money, a scheme that protects the holders of intellectual property ... forever, if they can get away with it. For example, consider this:

Copyright Length And The Life Of Mickey Mouse

Last week, we reported on Rep. Zoe Lofgren's statement that copyright law has become equal to the life of Mickey Mouse. Tom Bell has a couple of recent posts exploring issues related to Mickey Mouse and copyright, that seem worth exploring, given Rep. Lofgren's recognition of this fact. While he notes (as we have) that there's ample evidence to suggest that the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons really are in the public domain, he first explores how the length of copyright has followed the age of Mickey Mouse:

Bottom line: Until the current, neo-liberal capital-protecting political regime falls or is taken over, Mickey Mouse will never be in the public domain.

What About a "Free Market" for Doctors Too?

Baker finds something else significant about our so-called "free trade" agreements — they're very selective about which markets are "freed." Consider, for example, the market for relatively powerless manufacturing labor and the market for much more powerful (and wealthy) doctors.

Baker:

The other point to be made about free trade and protectionism is that our push for free trade has always been very selective. NAFTA and other trade deals were explicitly designed to make it as easy as possible for U.S. corporations to manufacture goods in the developing world and ship them back to the United States. ...

But [while] manufacturing workers in the developing world are willing to work for much lower pay than manufacturing workers in the United States, so are doctors in the developing world.

Unlike manufacturing workers, doctors are powerful enough to get protection. It is not generally possible for a doctor trained in another country to practice medicine in the United States unless they pass a U.S. residency program — for which there is a strict quota on foreign trained students. As a result of this restriction, doctors in the United States earn on average twice as much as doctors in Canada, Germany, and other wealthy countries. This protectionism costs the United States roughly $100 billion a year (around $700 per family) in higher health care costs.

If our trade negotiators actually were interested in “free trade,” they would have constructed a system whereby foreign trained doctors could be certified as meeting U.S. standards. They would then have the same freedom to practice as any doctor born and trained in the United States.

Again, a straight-up wealth protection scheme. Baker goes on to note that the "market for doctors" really is a trade issue, not an immigration one, since many German, Canadian, French and Indian doctors could most like get into the U.S. and get jobs — as waiters, for example — they just couldn't work as doctors.

Baker's conclusion is exactly right, that calling a deal like the TPP a "free trade agreement" is just propaganda: "When reporters call the TPP a 'free trade' deal, they are acting as advocates, not reporters. The TPP is a protectionist pact for those at the top who are worried that free trade will undermine their income — like it did for those at the middle and bottom."

There's No "Free Market" for Political Parties Either

I think if Democrats think that the Trumpist revolt against "free trade" deals is just an expression of anti-immigrant racism — and that they can pass TPP in the lame duck session without consequences — there may be a surprise in store for them. After all, there's no "free market" for U.S. political parties either — we have a carefully protected two-party monopoly — and there are only two ways to disrupt and revolt against it that I can think of. Neither is pretty, neither is orderly, and neither will be good for Democrats.

Forewarned? Let's hope so. The lame duck session is just weeks away.

GP
 

Does Cruz Exit Help Sanders? Will Hillary Appoint Bill Her "Minister of Jobs and Trade"?

Clinton wants to bring her husband "out of retirement."

by Gaius Publius

The two topics in the headline are related.

We're in the next phase of the campaign, with an uncontested candidate in the Republican Party (who knew that would happen first?) and a still-contested race on the Democratic side. How much does this change the dynamic?

For one thing, if Sanders continues to battle to the convention, as he's promised again and again to do — and also to combat Clinton regarding the culture of corruption (my phrase) in the Democratic Party — Clinton will have to fight on two fronts, Sanders and Trump. Whether she will fight on two fronts, or whether she'll just "pivot" to the right, battle Trump, and try to attract those "mythical centrist moderates," is anyone's guess.

Does she think she's such a shoo-in that she needn't bother further with Sanders voters and their issues, that they're going to along for the ride anyway? There are some indications of that, like this...

Two Clinton Advisors Support TPP "Adjusted on the Margins"

From a recent report sourced to the AP (my emphasis):

Laura Rosenberger, foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign, said Clinton still supports the goal of a TPP that advances US interests in the region. However, she said, the pact in its current form doesn’t meet three conditions needed for a trade deal: to create good jobs in the US, raise wages at home, and advance US national security.

Kurt Campbell, who was Clinton’s top lieutenant on East Asia at the State Department and is now advising her campaign, describes TPP as a “strategic commitment” to engage in Asia. The 12 participating nations account for about 40 per cent of global GDP, and other Asian nations are interested in joining.

Campbell said that a full-scale renegotiation would be “very difficult”, but that adjustments could make it more politically palatable in the US[.]

“There are always opportunities to adjust on the margins and figure out how to ensure that we’ve got an agreement which legislators can sell back home,” Campbell told the Truman Centre think tank last week, without giving specifics.

So Clinton plans to "adjust TPP on the margins" so legislators can "sell [it] back home." Does that sound like a firm commitment to "good jobs" and "raising wages"? Or a commitment to making things simply look that way? This certainly sends a TPP signal to Sanders voters. It also sends a TPP signal to her big-money campaign contributors.

And then there's this...

Bill Clinton's Role in the Next Clinton Administration

In the clip at the top, the reporters frame Hillary Clinton's comment regarding Bill's role as being about "jobs," but as you can hear in this longer, though still edited, clip, the context of the discussion is trade. Here's one interpretation of the session:

During a campaign event this week, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton capitalized on the nostalgic popularity of Bill Clinton when she told a room full of supporters that she plans to put Bill to work because he has so many “good ideas.”

Clinton was talking extensively about trade, an issue that she has gotten a fair amount of push-back on from opponent Bernie Sanders.

Clinton is clearly pivoting to the right on TPP, though only the readers of the first piece above — and now you — know that yet. And she plans to make "NAFTA" Bill Clinton her virtual "minister of trade"? Before the primary is even over?

That's quite a pivot. Just the optics alone are horrible, even if Bill just works to create a "manufacturing renaissance," as asserted here. The man is still, in most eyes, Mr. NAFTA. That was the core of his 1992 campaign against Ross Perot. Is this Ms. Clinton's new message, that "the guy who got killed your last job, will now get you your next one"?

... or question their agents as well.

I hope Bernie Sanders is all over this, from now until the last vote is cast. Because...

Will Pivoting to the Right Hurt Clinton Badly in the Primary?

Yes, in the primary. Remember, Ted Cruz has now dropped out, and we're still in the primary on the Democratic side, not the general election. In a piece called "5 Reasons Bernie Sanders Wins Big With Cruz Dropout" writer Seth Abramson includes these as the second and third reasons (bolded emphasis mine):

2. Sanders will pick up a huge number of what would otherwise be Trump votes in states where voters are still able to register for upcoming Democratic primaries, or are able to cross over and vote in the Democratic primary due to being a registered independent.

Sanders’ vote share in nearly every upcoming primary and caucus just increased, though we don’t know by how much. In some instances, it could be a substantial bump, given that there’s no strategic reason to cast a vote for Donald Trump anymore — now that the Republican National Committee has officially declared him the presumptive nominee and a John Kasich dropout is likely imminent.

3. Clinton will have to start spending a great deal of money to fight a two-front war against Donald Trump, who’ll begin his ultra-negative primary campaign against Clinton immediately, and [against] Bernie Sanders, who will avoid attacking Clinton directly but has nevertheless vowed to take the Democratic primary to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

This is the worst imaginable scenario for Clinton, as her negatives have always gone up when she’s in the midst of a campaign — and now she’s in the middle of two at once. With Clinton’s attention divided, her ability to respond to any Bernie Sanders surge in upcoming states will be limited.

And by ignoring Sanders completely in order to deal with Trump — as it certainly looks like she's doing — she risks even further the loss of (a) independent and Democratic voters in the primary, and (b) Sanders voters in the general election.

Sanders Can Still Win the Nomination with Pledged Delegates

Yes, the path is narrow, but not impossibly so. After his win in Indiana — and hopefully, after Clinton's betrayal (that's the word) of her implied, though heavily parsed, objection to TPP — Sanders starts the fourth quarter of this four-quarter game very strong. As I have it calculated, he could fairly easily enter the convention less than 50 pledged delegates down. And with a string of very good wins in the many states favorable to him, he could even overtake her by something like 5-10 delegates.

In other words, not over. As Abramson wrote in the same piece:

Sanders was already looking strong in Oregon, West Virginia, Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, North Dakota, and California, but given that he’s within single digits in New Jersey (where Trump is very popular) and performed incredibly well with nonwhite voters in Indiana (meaning New Mexico could be in play), it’s not unthinkable that Hillary Clinton could lose all of the remaining primaries and caucuses and therefore as many as thirteen or fourteen contests in a row to finish the Democratic primary season.

It's not out of range that Clinton loses every remaining contest but New Jersey and DC. If that's the case, losing by how much will tell the tale. And even if she wins the pledged delegate total — just one of the three simultaneous races being run — that's how she enters the convention, a loser in almost all of the fourth-quarter contests.

What will the nation think as they watch her nominated, if they do get that sight?

This isn't over. As I've been recommending for a while now — Block to the whistle. Tackle to the ground. Play till the end of the game. It's the only way you win the tough ones.

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you'd like to help out, now is the time. Please go here. If you'd like to "phone-bank for Bernie," go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!)

GP
 

When Trump Talks Trade, Voters Listen

Donald Trump talking about trade during his March 8 victory speech

by Gaius Publius

Shorter Thomas Frank: It's easier for liberals to blame Trump voters for racism than to blame themselves for the job-loss and pain of the working class.

I want to share a piece about Donald Trump, racism and working class voters. It's long enough (and good enough) to ask you to read the whole thing. It's by Thomas Frank, the What's the Matter with Kansas writer, looking at the Trump phenomenon and asking why.

Before you read, though, take a moment to watch less than two minutes of Donald Trump above, from his victory speech after winning in Michigan and Mississippi. I've cued it up to start at the remarks I want to highlight, Trump discussing our trade deficit.

Now Thomas Frank, writing in The Guardian. He starts by noting the utter invisibility of real working Americans to our elite class, including our media elites, and especially our liberal media elites (my emphasis throughout):

Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why

When he isn’t spewing insults, the Republican frontrunner is hammering home a powerful message about free trade and its victims

Let us now address the greatest American mystery at the moment: what motivates the supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump?

I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar” is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter last week, he made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.

When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement, they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry. Only racism, they tell us, is capable of powering a movement like Trump’s, which is blowing through the inherited structure of the Republican party like a tornado through a cluster of McMansions.

The conclusion of these writers is this:

The Trump movement is a one-note phenomenon, a vast surge of race-hate. Its partisans are not only incomprehensible, they are not really worth comprehending.

And yet...

A lot of people are racists, including those not supporting Trump. But people have other concerns as well, especially working people. They are dying faster than they used to, from drugs and despair, and they fear for their jobs and their families, for very good reasons. This economy is failing them.

They also hate — and understand — "free trade."

Trump Also Talks Trade

Donald Trump talks about more than just race and immigration. He talks about trade and the trade deficit, an issue that powered Bernie Sanders to his Michigan victory as well. From the New York Times:

Trade and Jobs Key to Victory for Bernie Sanders

No Democratic presidential candidate had campaigned in Traverse City, Mich., in decades until Senator Bernie Sanders pulled up to the concert hall near the Sears store on Friday. Some 2,000 people mobbed him when he arrived, roaring in approval as he called the country’s trade policies, and Hillary Clinton’s support for them, “disastrous.”

“If the people of Michigan want to make a decision about which candidate stood with workers against corporate America and against these disastrous trade agreements, that candidate is Bernie Sanders,” Mr. Sanders said in Traverse City, about 250 miles north of Detroit.

Mr. Sanders pulled off a startling upset in Michigan on Tuesday by traveling to communities far from Detroit and by hammering Mrs. Clinton on an issue that resonated in this still-struggling state: her past support for trade deals that workers here believe robbed them of manufacturing jobs. Almost three-fifths of voters said that trade with other countries was more likely to take away jobs, according to exit polls by Edison Research, and those voters favored Mr. Sanders by a margin of more than 10 points.

There is no question — America's billionaire-friendly, job-destroying trade policy is toxic — again, literally. That's why Obama and his bipartisan "free trade" enablers in Congress have to pass TPP, if they can, in post-election lame duck session. TPP is also toxic to political careers, and only lame ducks and the recently-elected can vote for it.

Frank again on Trump:

Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called left-wing.

Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about ... trade.

It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.

On the subject more generally, Frank adds:

Trade is an issue that polarizes Americans by socio-economic status. To the professional class, which encompasses the vast majority of our media figures, economists, Washington officials and Democratic power brokers, what they call “free trade” is something so obviously good and noble it doesn’t require explanation or inquiry or even thought. Republican and Democratic leaders alike agree on this, and no amount of facts can move them from their Econ 101 dream.

To the remaining 80 or 90% of America, trade means something very different. There’s a video going around on the internet these days that shows a room full of workers at a Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana being told by an officer of the company that the factory is being moved to Monterrey, Mexico and that they’re all going to lose their jobs.

As I watched it, I thought of all the arguments over trade that we’ve had in this country since the early 1990s, all the sweet words from our economists about the scientifically proven benevolence of free trade, all the ways in which our newspapers mock people who say that treaties like the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement allow companies to move jobs to Mexico.

Well, here is a video of a company moving its jobs to Mexico, courtesy of Nafta. This is what it looks like. The Carrier executive talks in that familiar and highly professional HR language about the need to “stay competitive” and “the extremely price-sensitive marketplace.” A worker shouts “Fuck you!” at the executive. The executive asks people to please be quiet so he can “share” his “information”. His information about all of them losing their jobs.

Frank goes to greater length, and again, please click through. But you get the idea. This is what Trump is speaking to, whether he means what he says or not, and this is what his voters are responding to, whether they like his racism or not. After all, haven't you, at least once, voted for someone with qualities you dislike because of policies you do like?

Whose Fault Is This? Both Parties, But Especially the Democratic Elites

One final point. Frank takes on the issue of responsibility:

Trump’s words articulate the populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly for decades ... Yet still we cannot bring ourselves to look the thing in the eyes. We cannot admit that we liberals bear some [or most] of the blame for its emergence, for the frustration of the working-class millions, for their blighted cities and their downward spiraling lives. So much easier to scold them for their twisted racist souls, to close our eyes to the obvious reality of which Trumpism is just a crude and ugly expression: that neoliberalism has well and truly failed.

I am certain, if this comes up in a general election debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, she could very likely get her clock cleaned; not certainly, but certainly very likely. First, she can only equivocate, and Trump will have none of it. (Trump: "Let me understand. You were for this before you were against it? So ... will you be for it again next year? I'm just trying to understand.")

Second, this is a change election, Trump is one of only two change candidates in the race, and Clinton is not the other one.

Here's that Carrier Air Conditioning "we're moving to Mexico" video that Frank mentioned above. Take a look, but prepare to feel some pain as you watch:

Are all of these people racists, the man walking past the camera at the 30-second mark, for example? Of course not. What these people do have in common is hopelessness, powerlessness, and creeping despair. If you were any of those people, would your response be different than theirs? And if you were any of these people, is your candidate Hillary Clinton?

My view: In a Trump–Sanders contest, Sanders gets at least half of these voters. In a Trump–Clinton contest, Trump gets them all.

Something for the "free"-trading leaders of the Democratic Party to consider as they move toward the convention and the 2016 fate that awaits them.

Support Your Progressive Candidates

Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you'd like to help out, go here. If you'd like to "phone-bank for Bernie," go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here.

In addition, Blue America is proud to endorse P.G. Sittenfeld as senator from Ohio, running in the Democratic primary against an agent of all that neo-liberals like Clinton stand for, Ted Strickland. Help put Sittenfeld in the general election by clicking here.

Then vote!

GP
 

TPP: Yeah, As Bad-- If Not Even Worse-- Than We Expected

Wednesday, the White House finally released the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership dealand, as many of us expected, it's what we feared-- another crappy corporate trade deal like NAFTA. The first Member of Congress I heard from after the text came out was Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards, whose been fighting to make this monstrosity better for working families and better for the environment. "I remember," she wrote yesterday, "what happens when we don’t think of the American worker first. My North Carolina family grew up and survived working at the local mills-- making a good living and thriving in the middle class. But those mills closed, and because of bad trade deals like the TPP, the mill workers lost their jobs. To this day, they’ve never fully recovered. That devastation is what keeps me fighting against bad trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP, which ship our good-paying jobs overseas. I fight, even if it means taking on my own party, to show that we need fearless leaders who will stand for what’s right. I’m sick of the promises of good-paying jobs and economic growth that never materialize. And I’m tired of our workers watching their livelihoods disappear. Trade is one of the issues that defines us as Democrats. Progressives like you and me need to speak up now to show we’re not giving up the fight against TPP-- against unfair trade deals that don't respect workers' rights and environmental protections and ship jobs overseas."

Mark Pocan (D-WI) was on the exact same page as Donna. "The release of the Trans-Pacific Partnership text confirms our fears about how bad this trade deal will be for American workers. This deal, which encompasses 40 percent of the global economy, will send more American jobs overseas and lower wages. Our workers will now have to directly compete with workers making pocket change in countries like Vietnam. We should not be surprised that a trade deal negotiated in secret by 600 corporate advisors gives huge sweetheart deals to multinational corporations while producing disastrous results for the middle class. Not only would this deal ship jobs overseas, destroying our communities and local economies in the process, but the deal will also have a widespread effect on issues ranging from drug prices to environmental protections to food safety. It will also almost double the number of corporations with access to special non-judicial courts to challenge state and local laws. In the end the TPP was worse than we thought it would be."

One of the most determined congressional voices against the TPP in the House has been Orlando Rep. Alan Grayson. Yesterday he told his constituents that "It comes as little surprise that a trade deal negotiated in secret has provisions protecting large corporations and banks, but no protection for American workers. Companies like General Electric and Caterpillar are expected to reap millions from TPP, while more American jobs are shipped overseas. This deal will hurt American wages, as our workers will be forced to compete with those from countries who pay as little as $0.65 an hour. It will remove important food safety regulations, endangering everyone. The only winners from this deal will be American corporations and foreign workers-- not the American workers whose lives we should be working to improve. Our trade debt currently stands at $11 trillion. This is money that we owe to other countries. The TPP will just make this worse. This trade imbalance is one of the biggest contributors to wage stagnation, income inequality, and the disappearance of the American middle class. We cannot have a true, and full, economic recovery until everyone is fully benefitting. Deals like TPP are counter to what we as a country should be pursuing."

It's an agreement that Obama is going to pass with Republicans and the Wall Street owned New Dems. That's why it's so dangerous for progressives to back the garbage candidates the DCCC recommends, almost all of whom are corrupt conservative New Dems and Blue Dogs.

I know the corporate candidate the Democratic Establishment hopes to run for president next year says she's now opposed to the TPP (which she once called "the gold standard of trade agreements." I haven't seen a statement from her on the specifics yet. This is what Bernie released Thursday:

Now that the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership has finally been released, it is even worse than I thought. It is clear to me that the proposed agreement is not, nor has it ever been, the gold standard of trade agreements.

"This trade deal would make it easier for corporations to shut down more factories in the U.S. and ship more jobs to Vietnam and Malaysia where workers are paid pennies an hour. The TPP is a continuation of our disastrous trade policies that have devastated manufacturing cities and towns all over this country from Newton, Iowa, to Cleveland, Ohio. We need to rebuild the disappearing middle class, not tear it down.

"The TPP would allow foreign corporations to sue federal, state and local governments in an international tribunal for passing an increase in the minimum wage or any other law that could hurt expected future profits.

"The agreement would threaten American laws that protect the safety of the drugs we take, the seafood we feed our families and the toys our kids play with every day.

"At a time when prescription drug prices are skyrocketing, the TPP would make a bad situation even worse by granting new monopoly rights to big pharmaceutical companies to deny access to lower cost generic drugs to millions of people.

"Outrageously, the proposed agreement includes violators of international human rights, like Brunei, where gays and single mothers can be stoned to death and Malaysia where tens of thousands of immigrant workers in the electronics industry are working as modern day slaves.

"I will do everything I can to defeat the TPP. We need trade policies in this country that work for the working families of our nation and not just the CEOs of large, multi-national corporations.”

Even the U.S. Business and Industry Council called the TPP a "very bad deal for America" and Council President Kevin Kearns said it "is full of special deals for various U.S. trading partners, foreign corporations, and multinational U.S. businesses, with little to promote domestic job growth in the United States... The TPP is anything but the free trade agreement it purports to be. The use of the term 'free trade' is simply a codeword designed to attract the support of Congressional Republicans who lurch zombie-like to support anything so labeled, without examining the fine print. A real free-trade deal could be written on a single sheet of paper, with commitments to remove all tariffs and non-tariff barriers of any kind."

These were some of his organization's specific objections:

1. Lax rules on importation of foreign-made autos and auto parts into the United States. TPP lowers the already too low NAFTA parts content standard, and permits Toyota and other Japanese automakers to export vehicles to the United States that contain a large percentage of parts produced in non-TPP countries. And so, other Asian countries such as China, who are not even TPP partners are beneficiaries.

2. False expectations for labor and environmental enforcement among trading partners. The TPP contains labor and environmental chapters hailed by President Obama as the "most progressive ever... These chapters are completely unenforceable. Are we really going to have a fleet of labor rights and environmental inspectors cruising around Vietnam, checking to make sure that every last factory is being fair to its workers and not polluting? Or tramping through the jungles of Malaysia to make sure that the government has put an end to the human trafficking and forced labor camps? No, it's just not humanly possible."

3. A failure to address Value Added Taxes (VAT). All of the other TPP countries except Brunei utilize a VAT taxation system. This is a major trade barrier that imposes a direct tax on U.S. exports, but it is completely unaddressed in the TPP.

4. A complete disregard by President Obama of bipartisan Congressional instructions to address currency manipulation on the part of America's trading partners. While the dollar is the world's reserve currency and is freely traded in markets throughout the world, a significant number of TPP countries manipulate their currencies to give their goods a competitive advantage over American products. "In the TPP, there are only side agreements to discuss currency manipulation via reporting requirements and consultative mechanisms. What these side deals mean is that a country can continue to intervene in currency markets, and then the U.S. can discuss the matter-- without the ability to do anything about it. More chit-chat currency diplomacy."

5. The TPP offers no real benefit for the U.S. economy. A Peterson Institute study shows a minimal 0.4 percent gain for the American economy by 2025. That's hardly enough to start reducing America's immense and growing $18 trillion national debt. And two U.S. Department of Agriculture studies show no net gain whatsoever in agriculture from the TPP. "Why sign the agreement if it doesn't expand the American economy and help reduce the national debt? Two words: Special Interests."

6. The TPP's complex series of rules and regulations serve to benefit each country's 'national champion' companies and industries, with the big winners in the U.S. being the major Wall Street banks, insurance companies, and multinational manufacturer-outsourcers. The TPP has, in addition to 30 main chapters, a total of 58 side agreements (called "side letters.") And Japan alone possesses 14 of these side letters, with each one laying out special conditions for Japanese participation and special deals for Japanese economic sectors. "Free trade? Hardly. Congress should vote a resounding 'no' on this poorly negotiated deal."

Public Citizen detailed some of the aspects of the TPP that are worse than what anyone was expecting and worse than past trade pacts:

• The TPP Intellectual Property Chapter would roll back the “May 2007” reforms for access to medicines.
• The TPP Environment Chapter would roll back the “May 2007” reforms by eliminating most of the seven Multilateral Environmental Agreements that past pacts have enforced.
• The TPP Investment Chapter would expand the scope of policies that can be challenged and the basis for such challenges, including for the first time ever allowing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) enforcement of World Trade Organization intellectual property terms and new challenges to financial regulations.
• With Japanese, Australian and other firms newly empowered to launch ISDS attacks against the United States, the TPP would double U.S. ISDS exposure with more than 9,200 additional subsidiaries operating here of corporations from TPP nations newly empowered to launch ISDS cases against the U.S. government. (About 9,500 U.S. subsidiaries have ISDS rights under ALL existing U.S. investor-state-enforced pacts.)
• The TPP E-Commerce chapter wouldundermine consumer privacy protections for sensitive personal health, financial and other data when it crosses borders by exposing such policies to challenge as a violation of the TPP limits on regulation of data flows.
• TPP “Sanitary and Phytosanitary” chapter terms would impose new limits on imported food safety relative to past pacts. This includes new challenges to U.S. border inspection systems that can be launched based on extremely subjective requirements that inspections must “limited to what is reasonable and necessary” as determine by a TPP tribunal. New language that replicates the industry demand for a so-called Rapid Response Mechanism that requires border inspectors to notify exporters for every food safety check that finds a problem and give the exporter the right to bring a challenge to that port inspection determinations-- meaning new rights to bring a trade challenge to individual border inspection decisions (including, potentially, laboratory or other testing) that second-guesses U.S. inspectors and creates a chilling effect that would deter rigorous oversight of imported foods.

And Chris Hedges calls it "a global corporate coup d’état. Corporations will become more powerful than countries. Corporations will force democratic systems to serve their interests. Civil courts around the world will be replaced with corporate courts or so-called trade tribunals. This is a massive expansion that builds on the worst of NAFTA rather than what Barack Obama promised…"

You can contribute to the crusaders against the TPP mentioned above on their ActBlue pages:

• Donna Edwards and Alan Grayson

• Mark Pocan

• Bernie Sanders

Do Democrats Trust Obama Not to Sign TPA Without TAA?

Why Washington State senators need the Export-Import Bank to be reauthorized

by Gaius Publius

House Democrats, 28 of them, handed Obama and House Republicans a win by passing Fast Track, called Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA, as a stand-alone bill. The bill yoked to it by the Senate — an "assistance for workers" bill called TAA — was cut loose. Fast Track now goes back to the Senate for consideration by itself.

You'll see much analysis of the various ways this could play out. But the bottom line in the Senate is, do Democrats, who passed TPA when TAA was part of the package, pass TPA as a stand-alone?

If they do, TPA, Fast Track, goes to Obama for signature — in other words, he gets his win.

What's to prevent that outcome? There are several hostages that have to be rescued first.

Hostage One: the Export-Import Bank

One problem is that several senators, notably the Senators from Boeing, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, made renewal of the Export-Import Bank a condition of their Yes on TPA vote. Will that happen? McConnell promised a vote on the "Ex-Im Bank" but now it looks like he's waffling. If he allows such a vote, will it pass? And if that gets to the House, will it pass there, where the Ex-Im Bank is hated by many Republicans? Stay tuned.

Hostage Two: The Trade Adjustment Assistance Bill

Then there's the assistance bill itself, TAA. It does almost nothing for workers screwed by "free trade," but it does a little bit. Republicans have called it a "sop to Democrats." Others have called it a "fig leaf" because it allows Democrats to go to their districts and say, "Sure I voted for the Next NAFTA, but I got you this assistance bill, so I'm really on your side after all. Love me?"

Some Democrats really want the assistance bill; some really want to act like they want it; and some just need it to confuse the voters at election time.

The questions: Will these senators settle for a promise from Republicans that TAA will get votes in the House and Senate? If they get these votes and they don't pass, is that enough of a fig leaf, or has it gone so transparent by now as to be invisible?

And three, do they trust Obama not to sign TPA the minute he gets it; do they trust him to wait for a TAA bill to reach his desk as well?

Trusting Obama

I heard Nancy Pelosi say in her talk before the TPA vote that she trusts Obama. And Obama spokesman Josh Earnest has said Obama will wait for both bills before signing Fast Track. From a press release by Public Citizen's Lori Wallach after the vote:

Meanwhile, House GOP lawmakers remain strongly opposed to TAA and Ex-Im reauthorization. As House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi stated today, there is no clear path for enactment of TAA. Yet yesterday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that President Obama requires both Fast Track and TAA to come to his desk.

But what if they don't both come to his desk? Or what if TAA doesn't come quickly enough?

Salon's Jim Newell on just those questions:

Here’s how the fast-track fight ends: Why it all comes down to Obama

... The basic idea of the [latest] strategy, as reported elsewhere, will be to separate legislation renewing TAA and TPA: no more logrolling or vote-splitting measures. Each would be faced to fend in the wild itself. First the House would pass TPA, sending it to the Senate. Then the Senate would take up a TAA bill, which it will have attached to another bill, the AGOA — “African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, which boosts trade from some sub-Saharan African countries” — that is popular among Democrats. Once the Senate has passed TAA, that should be enough for the “pro-trade” faction of Senate Democrats to join Republicans in passing TPA, which will thus be sent to the president’s desk. Since TPA will have already passed, House Democrats will have no tactical reason to oppose TAA anymore, and so they’ll pass the Senate-passed AGOA-TAA bill. The idea is to bend House Democrats to the White House’s will by making passage of TPA “a fait accompli,” as one House Republican aide tells the Huffington Post.

Would this plan deny House Democrats all of their leverage? That all depends on one man: President Obama.

Obama has insisted that both TAA and TPA reach his desk before anything gets signed. White House spokesman Josh Earnest reiterated that in his Wednesday press briefing[.]

Which means for Senate Democrats, it's all back to taking Obama at his word:

The president, then, needs to be willing to break his word in order to bring House Democrats to heel. If TPA is on his desk and he won’t sign it without TAA, then House Democrats have a relatively obvious strategy: don’t pass TAA after it’s sent from the Senate as part of whatever legislative vehicle. Then President Obama won’t sign TPA.

If President Obama is willing to sign TPA before TAA reaches his desk, though, then House Democrats will have officially lost on TPA and might as well go along with TAA. But there’s another risk that this entails for the White House: Obama signs TPA and then … John Boehner never calls up TAA, because Republicans don’t like it and they’ve already gotten what they wanted.

And Obama?

You’ve got to ask yourself: What does President Obama really want here? He wants TAA and TPA, but… he wants TPA more, because that will help him to complete his big, beloved, legacy-gilding trade deal. Do you think he’s just going to let House Democrats stick up their noses at him indefinitely while he’s already got fast-track on his desk, gathering dust? Don’t count on it.

Yep. Don't count on it. As badly as Obama has shown he wants this, don't expect him not to eat it the minute it's served up to him.

GP

Suddenly Chris Van Hollen Votes Against A Free Trade Agreement-- First Time In Ten Years-- Primaries Work!

Van Hollen doesn't like having his feet held to the fire

Yesterday, Congressman Chris Van Hollen broke with his New Dem allies and his own legislative record by joining with the vast majority of Democrats to oppose Fast Track authority for the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). Since coming to Congress, Congressman Van Hollen has voted in favor of nine free trade agreements but, in a signal of the growing clout of progressive leaders like Congresswoman Donna Edwards, he opposed a free trade agreement for the first time in a decade. The last ten years have seen Van Hollen support free trade agreements from Peru and Colombia to Korea and Singapore.

Congressman Van Hollen claimed the free trade agreement with Korea would "support at least 70,000 American jobs" and increase exports. The truth is that, since NAFTA, Maryland has actually lost 70,000 manufacturing jobs and since Congressman Van Hollen’s trade agreement with Korea, Maryland's trade deficit in the top 10 products the state exports to Korea has grown 24 percent.

Maryland workers and their families deserve a leader who will stand up for them all the time, regardless of which direction the political winds are blowing. Unfortunately, Congressman Van Hollen’s record adds up to a lost decade for Maryland families.

Back in April, John Fritze at the Baltimore Sun was already reporting that Donna was holding Van Hollen's feet to the fire on the trade legislation working its way through Congress. "Hitting on an issue that is closely followed by the state's politically powerful unions," he wrote, "the Edwards campaign criticized Rep. Chris Van Hollen for his past votes in favor of trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama-- deals that were all opposed by Edwards and a majority of House Democrats."

"In yet another stunning election time conversion, Congressman Van Hollen has changed yet another position," Edwards campaign spokesman Benjamin Gerdes told the Baltimore Sun. "Maryland families deserve a senator with firm convictions, not one who goes whichever way the political winds are blowing or who makes decisions based on the next election."

...Her campaign noted Van Hollen voted for the last three trade deals in 2011 — with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. On the Colombia vote, Van Hollen was one of 31 House Democrats to join a majority of Republicans to support the bill. The rest of the Democratic caucus-- 158 members-- voted against it.

Van Hollen clearly fears that his votes are now in the public spotlight because of the primary between himself and progressive icon Donna Edwards, who fights as tirelessly for working families as Van Hollen does for his Wall Street contributors. 

Similarly, reactionary New Dem and Wall Street puppet Patrick Murphy of Florida-- who has one of the most Republican voting records of any Democrat in Congress-- is battling for a Florida Senate seat against another progressive icon and champion of working families, Alan Grayson. And Murphy is suddenly holding his nose and voting against his GOP and New Dem allies. Normally an easy "get" for the TPP side, Murphy was forced to vote with progressives like Grayson and Edwards. That must have rankled him big time-- just as it did Van Hollen. No wonder conservatives hate primaries so much!