Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) hand control over trade to the world’s wealthiest
Sujata Dey, Trade campaigner at the Council of Canadians, has published a fantastic blog post in The Huffington Post about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, that is bound to be signed – but that can still be stopped, for example by the newly elected Canadian government, whose international trade minister Chrystia Freehand once wrote a book called “Plutocrats: the Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else”.
Sujata Dey examines how TPPA is set to hand over power to the wealthiest people in the world and investigates whether Minister Freehand is living up to the lessons of her own book, or not.
We recommend reading her article, and share one excerpt:
The TPP sounds like the type of plutocratic agreement she would oppose: carved out in secret between the corporations of the world. In the U.S., more than 600 corporate lobbyists had access to the text during the negotiations, for example, while the U.S. Congress and Canadian Parliament did not. Advocacy group Open Media obtained a non-disclosure agreement for a group of people consulted in secret by the Canadian government on the TPP. Environmental groups were not consulted, nor were labour unions or citizens’ groups. In fact, those who did have access to the agreement could be arrested for revealing the information.
As Stiglitz says about the TPP, “Obama has sought to perpetuate business as usual, whereby the rules governing global trade and investment are written by U.S. corporations for U.S. corporations. This should be unacceptable to anyone committed to democratic principles.”