
The NY Times endorsed a secretive trade agreement that the public can’t read - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/08/the-new-york-times-endorsed-a-secretive-trade-agreement-that-the-public-cant-read/
======
jellicle
Two random comments:

First, the NYT is engaging in the standard Brooksian/Friedmanist technique of
supporting something with apparent qualifications, but actually engaging in
unconditional support. That is, using the Iraq War as an example:

\- I support the Iraq War, if it is done this way (describe reservations)

\- The Iraq War is not done that way in the slightest

\- Given the above, I support the Iraq War

The NYT supports TPP with qualifications; the TPP will not have those
attributes; given the above, the NYT will absolutely support the TPP. It's a
way to deflect criticism - if anyone criticizes your support, you just point
to your expressed reservations.

Second, free trade has proven to be not good for the bulk of the public. Most
HN commenters, having been immersed in right-wing economics, have the belief
that it is somehow scientifically proven that free trade is beneficial for
all, but that's not actually what the science says. The results of decades of
"free trade" agreements have been to overrule local decision-making; they are
profoundly anti-democratic. They've resulted in a massive transfer of wealth
from the bulk of the population to a very few, very wealthy individuals. Free
trade agreements are a substantial cause for the fact that most workers in the
United States are making less money now than they were 30 years ago, even
though their productivity has gone up massively in the meantime.

If an action X takes away $1 from each of nine people, and gives $15 to the
tenth person, the total benefit for society in dollars is theoretically
positive (-$9, +$15) but nine out of ten people have been harmed by it, and
it's not clear that the real benefit is positive at all, because of the
declining marginal utility of money. That's pretty much what "free trade"
represents. Add in the anti-democratic aspects and it's clear to me that
modern "free trade" agreements, negotiated in secret between the Aspen
corporate elite, are something that should be roundly opposed.

~~~
iwwr
Free trade agreements aren't. Really. If they were free-trade, they wouldn't
need thousands of pages of legalese. What it is is "managed trade", an
agreement essentially made to benefit certain large corporations (as you
pointed out), but also to restrict and to make many exceptions. It ends up
being complex enough that only a large entity with a legal department can take
advantage of it, rather than small and medium-sized entreprises.

~~~
jamesbritt
_If they were free-trade, they wouldn 't need thousands of pages of legalese.
What it is is "managed trade", an agreement essentially made to benefit
certain large corporations (as you pointed out), but also to restrict and to
make many exceptions._

Indeed.

These kinds of agreements are like DRM for economics.

------
jkldotio
Executives using treaties to alter domestic law is going to be one of the
defining issues of the 21st century. One take on the problem was starkly put
in antifederalist #75 in 1788 by a person using the name Hampden (who had been
a figure in the English civil wars, of which the American revolution in some
ways was an extention). Well worth taking two minutes of your time to read.[1]

The stakes are highest in the EU at the moment as it is made of treaties and
there are significant forces who see that process as an illegitimate way to
make a federation. The time frame there is 5-10 years where besides the
'muddle through' we often see in Europe, which is very possible, an implosion
of the whole thing, a federation or both are all possibilities with massive
consequences due to the inherent logic of monetary union. Unfortunately
contemporary television and print journalism is not well calibrated to
exploring these issues.

[1][http://www.thevrwc.org/antifederalist/antiFederalist75.html](http://www.thevrwc.org/antifederalist/antiFederalist75.html)

~~~
judk
Treaties are ratified by Congress, so they have a veto.

~~~
Roboprog
But only by the Senate, not the House, as pointed out by the link the other
poster had. (not that I agree with the extreme right-wing views of the linked
site)

~~~
jkldotio
That was not a deliberate choice it was just the first hit on Google for
AF#75, there is an edited compilation in print but you can't link to it.

~~~
Roboprog
Ah, hopefully no hard feelings, then. The article did make some good points,
though, as said.

------
wozniacki
Countries involved:

Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile.

[http://americablog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/TPP_map.pn...](http://americablog.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/TPP_map.png)

Discussion on Bill Moyers

 _A US-led trade deal is currently being negotiated that could increase the
price of prescription drugs, weaken financial regulations and even allow
partner countries to challenge American laws. But few know its substance. The
pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is deliberately shrouded in
secrecy, a trade deal powerful people, including President Obama, don’t want
you to know about. Over 130 Members of Congress have asked the White House for
more transparency about the negotiations and were essentially told to go fly a
kite. While most of us are in the dark about the contents of the deal, which
Obama aims to seal by year end, corporate lobbyists are in the know about what
it contains. And some vigilant independent watchdogs are tracking the
negotiations with sources they trust, including Dean Baker and Yves Smith, who
join Moyers & Company this week. Both have written extensively about the TPP
and tell Bill the pact actually has very little to do with free trade.
Instead, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, “This really is a deal that’s being negotiated by corporations for
corporations and any benefit it provides to the bulk of the population of this
country will be purely incidental.” Yves Smith, an investment banking expert
who runs the Naked Capitalism blog adds: “There would be no reason to keep it
so secret if it was in the interest of the public.”_

[http://vimeo.com/78324869](http://vimeo.com/78324869)

Edit: Missed Brunei (fact it is slightly smaller than Delaware,
notwithstanding)

~~~
thaumasiotes
This is fairly worrisome, but I have to disagree in a minor way with this
particular bit:

 _There would be no reason to keep it so secret if it was in the interest of
the public._

The public generally hates free trade, but free trade is in the public
interest. It's one of those things.

~~~
mtviewdave
_The public generally hates free trade, but free trade is in the public
interest. It 's one of those things._

In a representative government, the public should decide what's in the public
interest.

~~~
topynate
Then why have representatives? You're describing direct, not representative,
democracy.

~~~
Roboprog
Maybe it's time for a hybrid form of government, then. Replace the Senate with
direct democracy to ratify or reject bills and such, and use the
representatives in the House as specialists to write legislation.

Of course, there might be some issues with having weekly ballot referendums,
but look at the mess we have now.

------
grandalf
The nice thing about the NY Times is that its reporting offers a general
indication of what powerful interests in the US want.

------
thirteenfingers
Previous discussion regarding the original EFF article:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692833)

------
danso
Is anyone else reminded of "Network", near the end (spoilers, for a 40 year
old film), in which the Howard Beale character goes off on a rant about a
secretive global merger, causing the public to flood the government with
protest, which then earns Beale a meeting with the company CEO and a lecture
on free trade and the insignificance of humanity?

If you haven't seen "Network", it's the movie from which, "I'm mad as hell and
I'm not going to take it anymore" comes from. However, the movie is not really
about standing up for your rights, it's more about modern American media, and
of all the satirical movies I've ever seen, it's the one that comes closest to
predicting what has come to pass. It's a brilliant, brilliant movie...the only
one, I believe, to have nominees in all four Oscar acting categories (it won 3
of them).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(film)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_\(film\))

~~~
arrrg
It’s fucking free trade. Done even only semi-competently it brings about
wealth, freedom and peace. It’s quite harmless, actually.

~~~
triangleman
How has the average American worker done since NAFTA was passed? There used to
be a time when an autoworker could support a wife and two kids on a single
income.

Free trade is great when it's fair. What we have today is free movement of
capital, semi-free movement of goods, and non-free movement of people. Not the
best combination.

~~~
CamperBob2
Well, we don't have free movement of capital, as any American citizen who has
recently tried to open or maintain a foreign bank account can tell you. My US-
based commercial bank account no longer even supports outgoing wires. So
whatever's going on doesn't involve increasing economic freedom across
borders.

 _How has the average American worker done since NAFTA was passed?_

No complaints here. But NAFTA was ratified a long time ago. TPP is not NAFTA.

------
rayiner
One of the most worrying trends of the last century has been the President
abusing his treaty powers to end-run around the democratic process
domestically. It's a surrendering of our sovereignty to internationalist
interests.

~~~
akjj
How so? Treaties only take effect once they've been ratified by Congress. How
are treaties less democratically legitimate than any other legislative act of
Congress?

~~~
rayiner
The major difference is that treaties aren't subject to the Presentment
Clause. Ordinary legislative acts originate in one of the houses of Congress
and must be approved by both houses before being presented to the President.
Some congressman or senator is on the hook for having written and sponsored
that bill. International treaties are given to the Senate on a take it or
leave it basis, and do not require any approval from the most democratic
chamber of Congress: the House.

Treaties are undemocratic by design. The framers worried that a democratic
republic would not be able to present a unified front internationally. But the
purpose of treaties was to govern international relations, not submarine
domestic legislation under the guise of international relations.

~~~
cpleppert
>>The major difference is that treaties aren't subject to the Presentment
Clause.

Most treaties are CEA agreements that are subject to the presentment clause.

>>International treaties are given to the Senate on a take it or leave it
basis,

Regular Treaties can certainly be amended by the senate that then makes
ratification conditional.

>>and do not require any approval from the most democratic chamber of
Congress: the House.

Hence the two thirds voting requirement for an international agreement that
governs foreign relations.

------
jpollock
It's secretive because politicians can't have discussions and make deals if
everything they say is picked over by their constituents and enemies. While
they may end up at a trade deal that people want, they won't necessarily like
how it ends up there.

For example, there may be a version 0.5 of the document where New Zealand must
give up their single-buyer drug plan (Pharmac). This is, I believe, FATAL to
the treaty in New Zealand. However, the US demands that it is there. They've
got several drug companies who are able to see the agreement and they want it
in. It will be gone by 1.0, but to do that some horse trading needs to happen.

So, everyone throws their wish list into the pot and then they negotiate to
see what is on a requires list.

Now imagine what would happen if all that happened in front of the voters.
Imagine if the first thing that you heard about the agreement was that Pharmac
(the drug buyer) was going to be made illegal, and your drug costs were going
to go up by a factor of 10.

Yeah, it'd be dead right out of the gate. New Zealand definitely doesn't want
that, they want to ship food (milk solids) to the US. The US doesn't want that
either... China has a free trade agreement with NZ, and since signing has
become NZ's second largest export market, bigger than the US by 50%.

~~~
rayiner
The basic premise of this sort of argument is that "the people don't like free
trade, we couldn't have free trade if the people had input into the process."
Well we shouldn't have free trade if the people don't want it.

Democracy >> economic theories.

~~~
snowwrestler
It's not that people don't like free trade, it's that everyone wants something
different out of trade, and so there needs to be some process for working out
a compromise.

Every multiparty negotiation starts this way. Corporate mergers are negotiated
by management and then jointly presented to stockholders. Union contracts are
negotiated by union and business leaders and then presented to union members
for ratification. Domestic legislation is heavily negotiated by staff before
it is introduced as a bill in Congress. Etc.

------
iambateman
Is it common to have keep the contents of a trade agreement under wraps until
it ships? I can't understand why anyone would want to hide the deal. If it's
going to get that much backlash before it's signed, wouldn't there be similar
amounts of angry response after it was inked?

~~~
snowwrestler
Yes, it is the way trade deals are negotiated almost all the time.

The TPP would not "ship" until Congress passes it; the text would be public,
and most likely amendable, at that point.

The Korea FTA, for example, was negotiated in private at first, but then spent
more than 3 years working its way through Congress.

~~~
beagle3
Except there's effort by the Obama administration to do this "fast track",
which means Congress gets it as a "take-it-or-leave-it" deal, without the
possibility to amend anything.

And you can mostly rely on republicans to NOT obstruct the process, because it
serves their donors well to pass this ASAP.

(Not being partisan here - I think all congresscritters are equally bad here,
it's just that right now it's the dems turn to hold the "make this into law"
stamp)

~~~
Roboprog
Alas, it does increasingly seem that the biggest difference between the two
parties is which corporations they favor. Neither gives a rip about the 99% of
the non-billionaire population. One side occasionally gives a nod to the fact
that even the rich need non-toxic air and water, but that's about as far as it
goes.

------
cercle
There are thirteen other multilateral free trade agreements like the TPP. And
twenty-four others that have been proposed.

The word "integration" seems rarely used in the US. These agreements represent
the 2nd stage of a seven stage process known as economic integration. The
seventh stage is 'Complete Economic Integration', some type of federalized
supranational political union; the EU2050.

North American integration is promoted in order for the US to be economically
competitive with the EU, China etc. Whether or not these are the right
policies, I don't know. More interesting is that globalization seems solely
defined by them without any alternatives.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_integration#Stages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_integration#Stages)

~~~
Roboprog
My God, that's creepy.

 _If_ and when economical space travel (i.e. - portable fusion) is ever
developed, I can only imagine the brain drain that will commence to get the
Hell out of this New World Odor.

Otherwise, I guess I for one should welcome our (not so) new Multinational
Corporate Overlords.

------
unethical_ban
I wonder how the EFF and many readers here would feel about the secret
convention that created the Constitution of the United States. There were
arguably good reasons for having it done in such a manner.

~~~
judk
Did anyone endorse the Constitution before they read it?

~~~
dreamdu5t
Yes, but not the people for whom its used as a justification of law. Nobody
alive today has consented to the constitution if you simply use the same
standard of consent as used in common contract law.

------
joliv
This isn't an endorsement, if anything it's just positive coverage of this
agreement. Take your EFF fear-mongering back to when this was posted
yesterday.

~~~
ash
> it's just positive coverage of this agreement

As the article mentions, it's very likely that New York Times hasn't seen the
agreement. Otherwise they could just leak it to the public. So _what_ do they
endorse?

~~~
snowwrestler
The concept of a trade agreement with these nations.

However one might feel about IP enforcement, reducing tariffs and aligning
similar but slightly different regulations can help economic growth in all the
nations.

