There was a local angle in recent news about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
It has to do with Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley of Chicago. Quigley was the only House Democrat from Illinois to vote for authorization of Fast Track authority, also known as Trade Promotion Authority, regarding the TPP.
Most of the reporting we've seen for and against the TPP—including Quigley's own newspaper op-ed piece—focuses on how many U.S. jobs the TPP will create or destroy. Not as widely reported are other, potentially more insidious aspects of the TPP—which we know about thanks to leaks of TPP documents from Wikileaks and others.
According to the leaks, the TPP would:
- Empower foreign firms to sue U.S. governments if regulations interfere with the firms' "expected future profits." Foreign corporations could bypass domestic courts and sue U.S. governments before a tribunal of private lawyers not answerable to the U.S. legal system. This so-called investor-state dispute settlement process could thwart our protections against environmental, food safety, banking, and manufacturing misdeeds, and award our tax dollars to corporations for violating laws that interfere with their profits.
- Require the U.S. to let foreign countries import foods that violate U.S. food safety laws. Foreign entities could challenge U.S. safety rules on pesticides, labeling, or additives as "illegal trade barriers"—forcing the U.S. to allow the import of unsafe food.
- Undermine efforts to re-regulate the financial sector. The TPP would (a) keep countries from outlawing particularly risky financial products; (b) prohibit policies that keep banks from growing "too big to fail;" (c) make it easier for banks to make hedge-fund-style bets with depositors' savings; and (d) prohibit financial transaction taxes, which provide significant revenues in dozens of countries world-wide.
- Force the U.S. to waive "Buy American" procurement policies for all firms operating in TPP countries, offshoring our tax dollars to create jobs abroad.
Interestingly, it seems that not even Congressional opponents to Fast Track press these arguments.
