Obama Tries to Enlist Environmentalists for TPP Free Trade Deal

President Barack Obama released a report Wednesday in an attempt to convince lawmakers opposed to Trans-Pacific Trade Pact, especially from his own Democratic Party, that such free trade deals are part of his administration’s efforts to protect the environment.

The 64-page report argues that these trade agreements can improve the enforcement of global rules on the environment as they will “provide unprecedented leverage to press for improved environmental standards.” Trade would also help improving global cooperation on issues such as wildlife trafficking and illegal logging and fishing, the report claimed.

The legislators’ approval of the TPP is crucial for its implementation. If they vote for the fast track legislation, as it seems they will, Obama will be granted extensive powers with limited congressional oversight to negotiate the agreement without any amendments with his 11 TPP trade partners.

The report also cited Peru to illustrate the trade's positive impacts on environment, which immediately provoked sharp criticisms from environmentalists.

“And to make the ridiculous absurd, this report praises the U.S.-Peru trade pact as a success story even as the U.S. Trade Representative has yet to hold Peru accountable for its blatant violations of the deal’s environment chapter,” the Sierra Club said in a statement.

“Multinational corporations, including some of the planet's biggest polluters, could use the TPP to sue governments in private trade tribunals, over laws and policies that they claimed would reduce their profits,” warned the Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune wrote in a recent blog post – which actually happened in a previous free-trade agreement with Peru. 

As Wikileaks revealed, one of the most controversial provision that leaked from the TPP negotiations consists in allowing transnational firms to sue sovereign states if their national laws, such as labor and environmental protections, are viewed as impediments to potential company profits. In Peru for instance, the U.S. based Renco company tried to use the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement to avoid paying compensations to the families affected by annormally high pollution levels in the area of La Oroya. Instead, Renco filed a lawsuit against Peru demanding US$800,000 in compensation, using the “investor state” regime of the trade agreement – a similar provision to the one included in TPP. 

Earlier in May, a coalition of Peruvian civil society organizations also warned that the TPP limits the power of the state to sell necessary generic medicines, as well as to take actions concerning environmental safety, health and labor rights. 

The TPP treaty is currently being negotiated in secret between the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Mexico, Chile, and Peru. Over 600 corporate advisers are also participating in the negotiations, including representatives of Halliburton and Caterpillar.