The Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) would combine the European Union with the North American Union of Canada, the United States and Mexico into one gigantic trade union where you will have absolutely no rights at all. Obama combined TAFTA with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and had it introduced it into the Senate as SB-1900, the Trading Prioritization Act (TPA). It is also known as the
Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014. It was introduced by Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus who cannot stand for re-election in November of 2014 because he was the man whose aide wrote the highly unpopular Obamacare Act. The TPA is co-sponsored by Republican in Name Only Orin Hatch.
The TPA is a fast track bill as was NAFTA which helped to close 56,000 American manufacturing plants. Fast tracking means that your Senator might vote on this bill before the voters back home get to read its final version. You might remember Nancy Pelosi telling the House of Representatives they would have to vote for Obamacare so they could find out what was in it. The Constitution provides that the president “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur” (Article II, section 2). Fast track lowers the number of votes required to pass it to a simple majority with Vice-President casting the deciding vote as President of the Senate. As a treaty NAFTA became the law of the land requiring us to change our laws to conform to its dictates. We might not know what is in the TPA until after it is passed but we can get a glimpse of its parts which are the TPP and TAFTA.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been called NAFTA on steroids. Only 2 of the 26 chapters in the TPP cover traditional trade matters. The other 24 chapters are a corporate wish list. Not all of the TPP has been leaked. But we do know some of the elements.
1) TPP would expand the parallel legal system included in NAFTA. Called Investor-State Dispute Resolution, it empowers corporations to sue governments—outside their domestic court systems—over any action the corporations believe undermines their expected future profits or rights under the pact. Three-person international tribunals of attorneys from the private sector would hear these cases. The lawyers rotate between serving as “judges”—empowered to order governments to pay corporations unlimited amounts in fines—and representing the corporations that use this system to raid government treasuries. The NAFTA version of this scheme has forced governments to pay more than $350 million to corporations after suits against toxic bans, land-use policies, forestry rules and more. (Source: Common Dream article)
2) It eases job offshoring and asserts control over natural resources.
3) TPP severely limits the regulation of financial services, land use, food safety, natural resources, energy, tobacco, healthcare and more. Nobody knows but we can assume that Monsanto will be safe to promote GMO food. Monsanto is attempting to do just that in TAFTA.
4) US negotiators want to protect Big Pharma from regulation by individual sovereign nations.
5) US negotiators inserted into the text of TPP aspects of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would limit Internet freedom, despite the derailing of SOPA in Congress. If you are a Hollywood copyright attorney, you might think there is No need for sovereignty and the Bill of Rights.
6) The TPP treaty is open-ended. If it is passed, any nation could join and extend this enhanced trade status to nations all over the world.
7) There will be no more sovereignty. Member states would have to make their laws including environmental, safety, health and labor conform to TPP demands from foreign corporations.
8) Any Buy America campaign could be outlawed. Any movement to boycott sweat shop goods from Third World Nations or slave labor goods from prison camps could also be banned. That would include nations known to use forced prison labor.
9) Unlike domestic laws there is no expiration to the TPP.
10) The TPP is not about trade. The US has already negotiated trade agreements and low tariffs with all of the TPP member states. It is about corporate control of your government.
Let’s take a look at TAFTA.
1) European-based corporations own more than 24,000 subsidiaries in the United States. They could bypass U.S. courts and directly challenge the U.S. government before foreign tribunals.
2) These foreign tribunals are identical to those described above in the TPP treaty. Three private attorneys on the extrajudicial tribunal would be authorized to order taxpayer compensation for public interest policies that European corporations claim undermine their TAFTA investor rights. The lawyers are paid for by the corporations. And the lawyers can rotate through as judges from one tribunal to the next.
3) European firms and American subsidiaries in Europe could roll back financial regulations passed in the US. America has few regulations on its banks and brokerage houses. But no future laws could be passed without the approval of the corporations we had intended to regulate. Gone would be a return of Glass Steagall which would prohibit banks from taking risky speculative bets with depositors money. And forget regulating Credit Default Swaps.
4) European firms have already taken aim at American Grade A milk standards. America already has some of the lowest food safety regulations and enforcement anywhere in the industrialized world. I cannot imagine lowering our food safety but that is what they said they will do.
5) European firms have asked that American subsidies for alternative energy be reduced or eliminated. Gone would be any attempt to regulate fracking in either America or Europe.
6) The Europeans want to force the US to accept any drug European authorities have deemed safe. This is a two way street. Just wait until the Europeans are poisoned by drugs approved by the US.
7) Also on a two way street would be online privacy laws. American citizens have gone all the way to the Netherlands to use corporate services immune to NSA spying. No more. TAFTA would let NSA compliant corporations take European countries into those 3 lawyer tribunals to gouge them for billions of dollars in compensation for potential losses over customer data privacy concerns.
8) TAFTA also bans Buy local campaigns as did TPP.
9) Monsanto is pushing for TAFTA to ban GMO labeling.
10) Big Pharma wants to ban the US government from reducing drug prices through its Medicare and Veterans purchasing programs.
11) The European toy industry wants America to automatically accept toys that might not meet US standards for safety.
Any Senator or Congressman who supports this legislation should be put on the Enemies of Mankind list. They took an oath to protect and to defend the US Constitution. These trade agreements are nothing but an attack on our rights and sovereignty.
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology did a study which concluded that 20% of all world trade is controlled by 147 corporations. These companies own each other’s stock and share Board of Director members. Included in these 147 corporations are the 16 banks that rig markets and own governments. They work with the other firms to pass the TPP, TAFTA and Obamacare. Their shared goal is to reduce you to debt slavery.
I will conclude with this quote from a previous essay:
The Fundamental Fact of Your Existence as a modern man or woman is that the bankers of New York and London want to reduce you to Debt Slavery.
Accept that fact and move on to the solution.
That is their plan for you.
What is your plan for them?
http://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/tpp-tafta-tpa-treason/