Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Trans Pacific Partnership

I Am So Happy About Gay Marriage Being Legal in the US

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On June 26, 2015

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But, yeah, sorry, but, can we talk Obama for a moment?

Rainbow White House

Obama did not support gay rights until after he was subjected to IMMENSE pressure, including public heckling and a gay donor strike.

Now, I appreciate a politician who will cave to interests I believe in, but let’s be clear, this is a case of caving.

My friends, above all things, supporting, trusting, and giving credit to people who do not actually have your interests in heart is what hurts you, again and again. Until you learn who you can actually trust (and for what), you are going to continue to get hurt.

Among the other news of the week was the passage of “Fast Track” legislation for the TPP trade deal. That is going to cost many of you your jobs, and it is going to make many of the rest of you poorer, even if you keep a job. People I trust on the Hill tell me that Obama has NEVER lobbied harder for anything (not even Obamacare) than he did for TPP.

Obama, as a rule, is happy to give you things that the oligarchy doesn’t mind. They don’t, overall, mind gay rights. A large chunk of the oligarchy wanted Obamacare (it was and is a huge subsidy to insurance and pharma companies, among others). There is a reason the public option was never seriously considered by Obama; it was a potential threat to insurance companies.

None of this is to say Obama is all bad, he certainly isn’t. But he is not your friend if you want widespread economic prosperity, and he never has been. Nor will he ever be. Nor, to point out what should be obvious, is Hilary Clinton (also not always for marriage equality).

You set yourself up for immense hurt when you trust the wrong people with political power and it is important not to engage in revisionism about what is, after all, very recent history.

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Obama Tries to Make His Bones Again with the Trans-Pacific Partnership

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On April 24, 2015

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Apparently Obama is angry at progressives for attacking the Trans-Pacific Partnership. 

“What I am averse to is a bunch of ad hominem attacks and misinformation that stirs up the base but ultimately doesn’t serve them well. And I’m going to be pushing back very hard if I keep hearing that stuff,” Obama told a small group of reporters on the call.

Of all the criticisms, “The one that gets on my nerves the most is the notion that this is a secret deal,” he said. “Every single one of the critics saying this is a secret deal, or sent out e-mails to their fundraising base that they’re working to stop a secret deal, could walk over and see the text of the agreement.”

No: Every critic doesn’t have access. Only a partial version of the deal is available to the public, and only because it was leaked.  The very idea that these deals should be done in secret is fundamentally anti-democratic. They do it because they know people would object if they knew what was in them.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a good summary of what’s wrong, in terms of copyright enforcement. 

In short, countries would have to abandon any efforts to learn from the mistakes of the US and its experience with the DMCA over the last 12 years, and adopt many of the most controversial aspects of US copyright law in their entirety. At the same time, the US IP chapter does not export the limitations and exceptions in the US copyright regime like fair use, which have enabled freedom of expression and technological innovation to flourish in the US. It includes only a placeholder for exceptions and limitations. This raises serious concerns about other countries’ sovereignty and the ability of national governments to set laws and policies to meet their domestic priorities.

Go read the rest if you want to be sick to your stomach.

The bill also includes takings tribunals, in which firms would be able to sue governments for violating the terms of the deal. (In the past, such tribunals have been used successfully to sue for such things as banning additives which cause cancer, since the lost sales are a loss for the company involved.)

Obama made his bones by completing the Wall Street bailout. Now, before he finishes his term, he wants to give the people who can make him filthy rich after he’s no longer President a big, fat, slobbery kiss that will make them billions. This may well be, to him, the most important thing he’s done in his entire presidency:

In a meeting with reporters in the US Capitol, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio said his caucus has been “talked to, approached, lobbied, and maybe cajoled by more cabinet members on this issue than any [other] issue since Barack Obama has been president. And that’s just sad.”

Brown continued: “I wish they had put the same effort into the minimum wage. I wish they had put the same effort into Medicare at [age] fifty-five. I wish they had put the same effort into some consumer strengthening on Dodd-Frank.”

Like all Presidents, even George W Bush, Obama has done both good and evil. But the TPP, from what we know, is almost entirely bad and no one should trust a deal like this that is largely secret.

As usual, the TPP is about constraining Democracy, not just internally, but by locking countries in to laws which they then can’t change without abrogating the trade deal.

I covered this in “Free Trade is Elites Betraying Their Own Population“.  You should read it.

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Japan refuses to eliminate agricultural tariffs, and spikes the TPP (Take 2)

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On October 13, 2014

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The Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement in in trouble, and one of the reasons is Japan has refused to eliminate agricultural tariffs.  Japan is entirely correct in this.

Japan’s agriculture is not efficient: it costs more to grow food in Japan than it does in many other nations.  If Japan removed its tariffs, its agricultural sector would either be eliminated or forced to consolidate and specialize in crops it has a comparative advantage in.  Whatever these are (perhaps silk), they wouldn’t be staple food crops.  Japan would thus lose what ability it has to feed itself and would have to buy even more food on world markets than it does today.

Regular readers will recognize this pattern from the article on why the third world is even more impoverished today than it was 40 years ago. Now Japan is by no means a third world country, and money would be loaned to it to buy said food, but Japan is not a healthy economy either.  The Japanese recently lowered the value of the Yen significantly, and  their exports didn’t increase.

Contrary to economic dogma that sort of thing happens fairly often: people simply are already buying as much of what Japan makes as they want.

Japan is not what it was 30 years ago, or even 10.  It runs an export deficit and it is barely running a current account surplus any more . Even when the economy was healthy, having to buy much of its energy was painful, having to buy its food would be even more so.

But more importantly, it would make Japan vulnerable to anyone who controlled foreign currency loans they need to buy the food, and to the major food producers.  Japan can print money, to be sure, and has, but there comes a point where you can’t, where people won’t take it.  Japan isn’t there yet, but they risk being there someday soon.  And bear in mind that as global warming bites, food will become more and more scarce. Right now we have a huge food surplus, that will not remain the case.

Countries which cannot produce what the rest of the world needs, nor produce what they need, are always in great danger from other nations which can cut them off.  They give up power over their own fate, and others will take advantage of it to force them to do as they wish, including opening up their markets to allow the commanding heights of the economy to be purchased.

Japan has been badly run for decades, and made the same mistake the US did when its bubble collapsed: they did not wipe the debts off the books, but instead extended and pretended.  That lead to the long “bright depression”, but it is now leading them into a much worse period.

They are, however, doing something right in refusing to remove their tariffs.  To be sure, they are doing so for domestic political reasons (the small rural farmers are politically powerful), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the correct thing to do.

Since the TPP is, overall, a terrible trade agreement (they virtually all are) let us hope the Japanese stick to their guns and that it does scupper the agreement.  It’ll be best for them, and for us.

(An earlier article on the same topic disappeared except for the title.  This is a rewrite, but with additional detail.)

(Article changed to indicate that Japan is still (barely) running a current account surplus, not a deficit.) -10/14/2014)

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