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News > World

Will Pacific Leaders Pass the TPP this Week?

  • Farmers in Japan protesting against the TPP earlier this year. Citizens around the world have been protesting the secret trade deal.

    Farmers in Japan protesting against the TPP earlier this year. Citizens around the world have been protesting the secret trade deal. | Photo: Reuters

Published 1 October 2015
Opinion

The TPP is a “massive corporate giveaway disguised as a trade agreement,” Melinda St. Louis, with the U.S. NGO Public Citizen, told teleSUR. 

Pacific trade ministers have been meeting behind closed doors, this week, once again, to discuss the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, hoping to come to a final decision in the coming days.

The TPP deal is considered controversial by many, since it will involve 40 percent of the global economy and all economic sectors – including agricultural goods, textiles, the automobile industry, internet, healthcare, financial controls etc. – and is being discussed entirely in secret.

The little the public does know about the deal was learned through documents leaked earlier this year. The papers reveal that the TPP will: allow multinationals to sue governments if laws are created that harm business; allow pharmaceutical companies to monopolize world drug prices; undermine internet freedoms; and could force the mass privatization of state-owned enterprises.

RELATED: The Fight Against TPP Proves US Is Not a Corporatocracy

The negotiations have been ongoing for more than five years now, with leaders from the 12 participating Pacific countries unable to reach a final agreement. However, trade ministers have pledged that a final deal will be made in this week's meetings in Atlanta, Georgia.

A decision was expected to be made by Wednesday, however by Thursday morning, trade ministers had yet to announce whether a deal has been made or not.

Some of the sticking points in the negotiations have been agricultural issues relating to dairy, rice and sugar, as well as details in the auto sector, which caused Canada and Mexico to walk away from negotiating tables in Hawaii earlier this year.

According to Canada, the TPP stands to hurt its dairy industry – which is currently protected by high import tariffs – and its automotive industry by opening them up to more foreign competition.

Countries such as Japan, the second largest economy in the bloc next to the U.S., are under pressure to make an agreement and open up its agricultural sector to more imports and get a good deal on its automotive industry.

Trade ministers have also been sparring over some of the more controversial elements of the deal, such as biologics exclusivity. This U.S. proposal will extend marketing exclusivity periods for biologics (medical products derived from living organisms), which would allow major pharmaceutical companies to monopolize certain drugs and increase prices, including many new and forthcoming cancer treatments.

RELATED: Killing US for Profit: Big ‘Pharma’ Out of Control

“The U.S. proposal would give pharmaceutical companies additional monopoly protections at the expense of public budgets and people’s health,” said Public Citizen, a U.S. based non-profit, consumer rights think tank, in a press release Wednesday.

According to Public Citizen, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has been pushing for years for this kind of pharmaceutical deal, what many countries have already rejected due to its harmful impacts on citizens' access to healthcare.

“This is a cynical rebranding of a failed negotiating position,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines program. “It represents the worst of secretive trade deals – a rule that has nothing to do with trade, but will lead to preventable suffering. You can put a suit and tie on this, but it still stinks.”

Melinda St. Louis, international campaigns director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, also emphasized her strong concern for the power that the TPP will grant big pharmaceutical companies. Speaking with teleSUR, St. Louis said the deal is a “massive corporate giveaway disguised as a trade agreement.”

St. Louis added that while Public Citizen had for years been putting out “proposals for alternative models for trade” that would promote citizens' rights, their ideas have been ignored. Meanwhile over 600 multinational corporations were invited to the TPP talks and had input into the deal.

Citizens across the Pacific countries have long been protesting against the TPP, telling governments to “Walk away,” “Enough is Enough,” “People Before Profit” and “Don't trade our needs for corporate greed,” which are among some of the more popular slogans that have appeared at demonstrations.

One protester — a cancer patient — was arrested in Atlanta Wednesday for allegedly “disrupting” the TPP negotiations in a demonstration aimed at maintaining affordable access to cancer medicines and other healthcare.

Zahara Heckscher was joined by a group of other cancer patients and survivors who gathered at the Westin Hotel, where the meetings were taking place, urging leaders not to accept a “death sentence clause.” They wore shirts reading, “I Have Cancer. I Can’t Wait Years” and “TPP: Don’t Cut My IV.”

Certain industries have also raised their voices against the trade deal this week, including dairy farmers in Canada who took dozens of tractors and cattle into the capital city Ottawa Tuesday to protest against the new terms of trade, and the reduction of import tariffs, being discussed in TPP.

Tags

Economy Trade Politics TTIP & TPP

Globe & Mail-CNBC-Mint Press-Farm Futures
by teleSUR / kb-TP-mk
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