Leaked TPP Texts Reveal a Bonanza of Special Rights for Corporations
All who care about preserving Earth for future Earthlings like us should call their representatives in the U.S. Congress and strongly recommend they object to the fast tracking this Pact for President Obama’s signature.
Environmental groups slammed leaked text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP’s) draft environment chapter, published by Wikileaks on January 15, saying it is completely inadequate to protecting the planet’s oceans, forests or wildlife.
“If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama’s environmental trade record would be worse that George W. Bush’s,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
“Environmental protections are only as effective as their enforcement provisions, and a trade agreement with week enforcement language will do little or nothing to protect our communities and wildlife,” said Peter Lehner, executive director of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
The environment chapter leak follows a line of leaked texts revealing a bonanza of special rights for corporations proposed for the TPP.
In December 2013, HuffingtonPost published leaked documents revealing that the United States was bullying other nations into accepting some of the worst expansions of corporate power proposed in any international agreement. A heavily-redacted memo summarizing countries’ negotiating positions on a variety of TPP chapters heading into the December 7-to-10, 2013 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ministerial in Singapore showed that the U.S. was behind pushes for new powers for corporations in the investment chapter, financial services chapter, intellectual property chapter and others.
An earlier “cheat sheet”-style chart from prior to the November 2013 Salt Lake City Round of negotiations contained additional information about countries’ positions.
Leaked text of the TPP investment, intellectual property, regulatory coherence and drug formularies chapters, as well as annexes to the Technical Barriers to Trade chapter, first published by Citizens Trade Campaign in 2011 and 2012, had already revealed the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) pushing for a bevy of special rights for transnational corporations that would come at the expense of environmental protection, consumer safety and access to medicine.
An updated copy of the Intellectual Property chapter published by Wikileaks in November 2013 further helped to shine a light on this secretive pact.
Draft texts are said to exist for some 29 separate TPP chapters, but despite approximately four years of steady negotiations, none have ever been officially released for public scrutiny.
“Americans deserve the right to know what U.S. negotiators are proposing in our names,” said Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of Citizens Trade Campaign. ”In the absence of transparency on the part of our government, we have a responsibility to share what information we receive about the TPP with the public.”
Recent Comments