It's been touch and go, but it appears that France may save all of us from a very bad trade treaty.
François Hollande said on Tuesday he would reject the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership “at this stage” because France was opposed to unregulated free trade. Earlier, France’s lead trade negotiator had warned that a halt in TTIP talks “is the most probable option”. Matthias Fekl, the minister responsible for representing France in TTIP talks, blamed Washington for the impasse. He said Europe had offered a lot but had received little in return. He added: “There cannot be an agreement without France and much less against France.” All 28 EU member states and the European parliament will have to ratify TTIP before it comes into force.To be fair, the President of France was somewhat forced into this position. You see, the real hero is an anonymous whistleblower who leaks TTIP documents to Greenpeace because of the horrific effects it would have on the environment. Specifically, TTIP, that President Obama has pushed so hard for, would gut the recent Paris Climate Change Accord that was so recently touted as Obama's greatest achievement.
Jorgo Riss, director of Greenpeace EU, said: “These leaked documents confirm what we have been saying for a long time: TTIP would put corporations at the centre of policy-making, to the detriment of environment and public health. We have known that the EU position was bad, now we see the US position is even worse. A compromise between the two would be unacceptable.”
Long standing environmental protection is dropped
The “General Exceptions” rule, enshrined in the GATT agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), is absent from the text. This nearly 70-year-old rule allows nations to restrict trade “to protect human, animal and plant life or health", or for "the conservation of exhaustible natural resources" [2].
No place for climate protection in TTIP
If the goals of the Paris Summit to keep temperatures increase under 1.5 degrees are to be met, trade should not be excluded from CO2 emissions reduction specifications. But nothing about climate protection can be found in the obtained texts.
It would do more than that. It would override parliamentary efforts to block GMO foods into Europe, and open the door to privatizing public health care in Europe. In other words, TTIP is a huge corporate giveaway. So it's no surprise to learn that TTIP opponents were essentially locked out of the negotiations.
I know what some of you are thinking. "Obama wouldn't do this to us. I still trust him. So TTIP must be good for jobs and the economy." Except that every study on the subject says that TTIP would be bad for jobs and the economy.
Three independent economic studies have been done, two of Obama’s TTIP treaty with Europe, and one of his TPP treaty with Asia, and all three independent economic analyses find that the publics in each participating country will suffer, and that the owners of international corporations (especially in the U.S.) will benefit, if the proposed ‘trade’ deal goes into effect.Why haven't you heard about these studies? Because various governments don't want you to know about them.
The latest such study to become available to the public was released due to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the UK, which forced the British Government to release that independently produced study. It was actually the first of the three to have been done, dated three years back, in April 2013. It was titled, COSTS AND BENEFITS OF AN EU-USA INVESTMENT PROTECTION TREATY. Its bottom line was: “we conclude that an EU-US investment treaty that does contain ISDS [Investor State Dispute Resolution, ending national sovereignty] is likely to have few or no benefits to the UK, while having meaningful economic and political costs. Removing ISDS from the treaty would be unlikely to have an appreciable impact on the (already negligible) benefits of a treaty with ISDS, while largely removing the costs of the treaty to the UK. While we have not conducted a full cost-benefit assessment of an EU-US investment treaty [that] does not contain ISDS, such a treaty would likely be a less costly policy option from the perspective of the UK.”That's just for the UK. This next study looks at the entire EU.
titled: The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: European Disintegration, Unemployment and Instability. It found that, “any gains in Trans-Atlantic trade would happen at the expense of intra-EU trade reversing the process of European economic integration. … We project that TTIP will lead to a contraction of GDP, personal incomes and employment. We also project an increase in financial instability and a continuing downward trend in the labor share of GDP.” In other words: investors in international corporations would be gaining at the expense of employees (workers, their wages) in the signatory countries.Of course TTIP is only one of the three huge treaties that Obama is trying to push through. TTP, the one with Asia, is the one he's having more success with.
one independent economic study was done of the proposed TPP treaty with Asia, and it was dated 16 April 2015. Its title was THE TRANS-PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP IS UNLIKELY TO BE A GOOD DEAL FOR AMERICAN WORKERS. This study concluded that the earlier, industry-sponsored, studies of TPP had been based on clearly bogus assumptions, which possessed no empirical foundation. It further concluded: “As regards wages and inequality, if the TPP leads to a reshuffling of domestic production toward exportable sectors that are capital-intensive and away from importable sectors that are labor-intensive, then it will exacerbate inequality. If it does not lead to such a reshuffling, then wage effects will be modest, but this begs the question of why would we bother to sign a trade agreement that did not lead to such a reshuffling of production? That is, after all, the entire point of trying to expand trade opportunities, and is the source of estimated net national gains from trade. Assurances that the TPP will be all gain, no pain are deeply disingenuous.”TISA is the third trade agreement, and you can read part of it here.