Headlines like this really say it all:
Republicans push Barack Obama to rally Democrats for TPP vote
Yes, the same Party whose economic philosophy led to the meltdown of the economy in 2007-2008 and created the staggering levels of wealth disparity we see today is frantically urging President Obama to drum up more Democratic votes for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the mammoth trade deal hatched in secret among the world's largest corporations for the purpose of maximizing their shareholder value and profits. Covering 40 percent of the global economy, the TPP represents one of those exceedingly rare occasions during his entire Presidency when top Republicans have actively encouraged the President on any policy matter.
Robert Reich explains why that is, in terms which are depressingly familiar:
In fact, it’s just more trickle-down economics.
The biggest beneficiaries would be giant American-based global corporations, along with their executives and major shareholders.
Those giant corporations initiated the deal in the first place, their lobbyists helped craft it behind closed doors, and they’re the ones who have been pushing hard for it in Congress – dangling campaign contributions in front of congressional supporters and threatening to cut off funding to opponents.
Two weeks ago the Economic Policy Institute
concluded the TPP was unlikely to be a good deal for American workers. Calling arguments in its favor "economically incoherent," the EPI wondered aloud as to why we would want to enter into such an agreement. Reich cites the EPI's work and finds that the arguments in favor of the agreement are hollow and disingenuous.
The arguments in favor of the deal aren’t credible. The notion that the Trans Pacific Partnership will spark American exports doesn’t hold because the deal does nothing to prevent other nations from manipulating their currencies in order to boost their own exports.
This point is elaborated at length in the EPI analysis, as is the effect of the secret agreement on wages and inequality:
As regards wages and inequality, if the TPP leads to a reshuffling of domestic production toward exportable sectors that are capital-intensive and away from importable sectors that are labor-intensive, then it will exacerbate inequality. If it does not lead to such a reshuffling, then wage effects will be modest, but this begs the question of why would we bother to sign a trade agreement that did not lead to such a reshuffling of production? That is, after all, the entire point of trying to expand trade opportunities, and is the source of estimated net national gains from trade. Assurances that the TPP will be all gain, no pain are deeply disingenuous in this regard.
This is of, course, on top of the provisions requiring a "cost-benefit" analysis to be incorporated into labor, health, safety and environmental regulations, itself a hallmark of Republican -style regulation from the time of Ronald Reagan:
It would require that when the potential cost of a new health, safety, environment, or labor protection is weighed against its potential benefits, the cost of reimbursing corporations for lost profits is added in.
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch has expressed "bafflement" at Democratic Opposition to the TPP, raising the ominous specter of a resurgent China:
“We’ve lost so much prestige in this world that the Chinese are really taking advantage of it,” he said.
Reich suggests that this argument deliberately ignores the self-interest of corporations and the fact that they no longer possess any national loyalty, particularly with the prospects of a billion-consumer market dangling in front of them:
Does anyone seriously believe American-based corporations will put the interest of the United States above the interests of their own shareholders when it comes to doing whatever China demands to gain access to that lucrative market?
Big American-based corporations have been cozying up to China for years – giving China whatever American technology China wants, letting China “partner” with them in designing new generations of technology, and allowing China to censor their software and digital platforms – all in exchange for a crack at Chinese consumers.
Republicans are demonstrable abject failures on
all matters economic. Ultimately the fact that top Republicans are for it should be the best argument against the TPP. As Reich puts it:
What we should have learned by now about trickle-down economics is that nothing trickles down.
If the Trans Pacific Partnership is enacted, big corporations, Wall Street, and their top executives and shareholders will make out like bandits. Who will the bandits be stealing from? The rest of us.
From "
The Worst Trade Deal You've Never Heard Of:"