Someone Finally Read Obama's Secret Trade Deal And Admits The TPP “WILL Damage This Nation”
The article shows that even advisors
qualified to give advice on TPP cannot read the text of the TPP agreement.
According to the article, advisors can ready “not actual underlying text but
carefully edited summaries” and even if anyone who is familiar with its text
could be jailed for disclosing its contents.” Such being the case, the American
people cannot read the specific contents of the agreement.
Reportedly, when Senator Warren criticized
Obama, he complained to her, saying “You should point out what is wrong with
this trade agreement.” This is a good example of how dirty Obama is.
I can’t understand at all what convinces us
that Obama belongs to Light, who apparently speaks for the shareholders of
America’s multinational corporations. So I gave my comments on this question in
articles dated May 10 and 12 on this blog.
This is apparently a question to SaLuSa.
Reading the messages from SaLuSa dated April 10 and March 22, you
can see why I have doubts about him. The messages say: “a leader such as
President Obama ------ to carry you
forward further into the Light” and “be assured he is of the Light.”
According to SaLuSa, it appears that it is
a way to carry us forward further into the Light to have us promote the TPP
negotiations and have people all over the world eat genetically modified foods
produced by Monsanto. It is totally beyond my understanding. I wanted to
examine SaLuSa’s real intentions and I asked him to answer my question properly.
I even though about the possibility that I
would personally summon him if he should not answer my question. However, I didn’t need to do so. It was
revealed that he had committed unforgivable crime, namely, treason against the
Galactic Federation. SaLuSa, including not only his soul but physical body, has
totally disappeared. I’m going to explain about it in detail at a later date.
Masatoshi
Takeshita
May
28, 2015
Someone
Finally Read Obama7s Secret Trade Deal And Admits The TPP “WILL Damage This
Nation”
Source:
(Excerpt)
There is a huge paradox surrounding what is supposed to be the crowning
achievement of Obama's second term, the Trans
Pacific Partnership (TPP), a bill whose contents virtually nobody is familiar
with or will be before it passes into law.
Or to
paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, "we have to pass the bill so that you can find
out what is in it."
And yet while
everyone seems to have an opinion on the final formulation of the TPP bill,
especially Elizabeth Warren and her circle of progressive democrats who have
emerged as the bill's most vocal critics, the truth is that none have
actually read it for the simple reason that anyone who is familiar with its text could be jailed for disclosing its
contents.
Most
transparent administration indeed.
In fact the only ones
who are intimately familiar with the TPP's contents are those who drafted it: America's
multinational corporations whose shareholders will be the biggest beneficiaries of
the TPP.
And yet
someone appears to have finally read Obama's TPP: that someone is Michael
Wessel, a cleared liaison to two statutory advisory committees and a
commissioner on the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, as well as the
international trade co-chair for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign.
Earlier
today, Wessel wrote an article in Politico titled "I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is
Right to Be Concerned" which
we agree with wholeheartedly because while one may or may not disgree whether
the US economy will benefit from a trade agreement which anecdotally benefits
large multinationals, it should be unanimous that America's transformation into
a secretive, klepto-fascist state controlled by corporations is catastrophic
for not only the republic but America's people, or at least those who are not
among the 0.001% who stand to benefit from the TPP.
* * *
From Michael Wessel, first posted in Politico:
I’ve Read Obama’s Secret Trade Deal. Elizabeth Warren Is Right to Be
Concerned.
"You need
to tell me what’s wrong with this trade agreement, not one that was passed 25 years ago,” a frustrated President Barack Obama recently complained about criticisms of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). He’s right. The
public criticisms of the TPP have been vague. That’s by design—anyone who has read the text of the agreement could be
jailed for disclosing its contents. I’ve actually read the TPP text provided to the government’s own advisors, and I’ve
given the president an earful about how this trade deal will damage this nation.
But I can’t share my criticisms with you.
I can tell
you that Elizabeth Warren is right about her
criticism of the trade deal. We should be very concerned about what's hidden in
this trade deal—and
particularly how the Obama
administration is keeping information secret even from those of us who are supposed to provide advice.
So-called
“cleared advisors” like me are prohibited from sharing publicly the criticisms
we’ve lodged about specific proposals and approaches. The government has created a perfect Catch 22: The law prohibits us from talking about the specifics of what we’ve seen,
allowing the president to criticize us for not being specific.
To the
administration, everyone who questions their approach is branded as a
protectionist—or worse—dishonest. And they dismiss individuals like me who
believe that, first and foremost, a trade agreement should promote the
interests of domestic producers and their employees.
The text of the TPP, like all trade deals, is a closely guarded secret. That fact makes a genuine public debate impossible
and should make robust debate behind closed doors all the more essential.
But the ability of TPP critics like me to point out the deal’s many failings is
limited by the government’s surprising and unprecedented refusal to make
revisions to the language in the TPP fully available to cleared advisors.
Bill Clinton
didn’t operate like this. During the debate on NAFTA, as a cleared advisor for
the Democratic leadership, I had a copy of the entire text in a safe next to my
desk and regularly was briefed on the specifics of the negotiations, including
counterproposals made by Mexico and Canada. During the TPP negotiations, the
United States Trade Representative (USTR) has never shared proposals being
advanced by other TPP partners. Today’s consultations are, in many ways, much
more restrictive than those under past administrations.
All advisors,
and any liaisons, are required to have security clearances, which entail
extensive paperwork and background investigations, before they are able to
review text and participate in briefings. But, despite clearances, and a
statutory duty to provide advice, advisors do not have access to all the
materials that a reasonable person would need to do the job. The negotiators
provide us with “proposals” but those are merely initial proposals to trading
partners. We are not allowed to see counter-proposals from our trading
partners. Often, advisors are provided with updates indicating that the final
text will balance all appropriate stakeholder interests but we frequently
receive few additional details beyond that flimsy assurance.
Those details
have enormous repercussions. For instance, rules of origin specify how much of
a product must originate within the TPP countries for the resulting product to
be eligible for duty-free treatment. These are complex rules that decide where
a company will manufacture its products and where is will purchase raw
materials. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 62.5 percent
of a car needed to originate within NAFTA countries. In the US-Australia Free
Trade Agreement, it was lowered to 50 percent. It further dropped to 35 percent
in the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS). In essence, under our agreement
with Korea, 65 percent of a car from South Korea could be made from Chinese
parts and still qualify for duty-free treatment when exported to the U.S.
That fact is politically toxic, and for that reason, we should expect the
TPP agreement to have higher standards. But will it reach the 62.5 percent NAFTA requirement? Or will it be only
a slight improvement over KORUS? Without access to the final text of the
agreement, it’s impossible to say.
State-owned
enterprises may, for the first time, be addressed in the TPP. But, once again,
the details are not clear. Will exemptions be provided to countries like
Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, all of which could be heavily impacted by such
a rule? What will be the test to determine what is or is not acceptable
behavior? Will injury be required to occur over a substantial period of time,
or will individual acts of non-commercial, damaging trade practices be
actionable? Again, it’s impossible to say for sure.
Advisors are almost flying blind on these questions and others.
Only portions of the text have been provided, to be read under the watchful
eye of a USTR official. [[[Access, up until recently, was provided on secure
web sites. But the government-run website does not contain the most-up-to-date
information for cleared advisors.]]] To get
that information, we have to travel to certain government facilities and sign
in to read the materials. Even then, the administration determines what we can and cannot review and, often, they provide carefully
edited summaries rather than the actual underlying text, which is critical to really understanding the
consequences of the agreement.
Cleared
advisors were created by statute to advise our nation’s trade negotiators. There is a hierarchal
structure, starting with the USTR’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy &
Negotiations at the top—a committee that
includes people like Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, Mastercard CEO Ajay
Banga, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson and Jill Appell, co-owner of Appell’s Pork
Farms. Then there are specific Committees
covering subjects like labor, the environment and agriculture that make up the next tier. The last tier consists of
the Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITACS), which focus on individual
sectors such as steel and aerospace. At last count, there were more than 600 cleared advisors. The vast majority of them represent
business interests.
In an effort
to diminish criticism, USTR is now letting cleared advisors review summaries of
what the negotiators have done.
How can we properly advise, without knowing the details?
Questions
pervade virtually every chapter of the proposed agreement, including labor and
the environment, investor-state, intellectual property and others. The answers
to these questions affect the sourcing and investment decisions of our
companies and resulting jobs for our people. Our elected representatives would
be abdicating their Constitutional duty if they failed to raise questions.
Senator Warren
should be commended for her courage in standing up to the President, and Secretary Clinton for raising a note of caution,
and I encourage all elected officials to raise these important questions.
Working Americans can’t afford more failed trade agreements and trade policies.
Congress should refuse to pass fast track trade negotiating authority until the partnership between the branches, and the trust of the American people is restored. That will require a lot
of fence mending and disclosure of exactly what the TPP will do. That begins by
sharing the final text of the TPP with those of us who won’t simply
rubber-stamp it.
* * *
And then,
moments ago: OBAMA SAYS HE'S `PLEASED' WITH DEAL IN CONGRESS ON TRADE
It almost
makes one wonder just whom does "elected" government represent...
