February, 20 2014, 01:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Alisa Simmons (202) 454-5111
Lori Wallach (202) 454-5107
Public Citizen Publishes Checklist of Outstanding TPP Issues That Require Resolution for a Deal to Be Made
Familiarity with kabuki theatre may be useful in interpreting the outcomes of the high-level Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) meeting that starts Feb. 22 in Singapore as U.S. officials push for an announcement of a "deal" with the hope of reviving the administration's quest for Fast Track trade authority and setting the stage for President Barack Obama's April 2014 Asia trip, Public Citizen said today.
WASHINGTON
Familiarity with kabuki theatre may be useful in interpreting the outcomes of the high-level Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) meeting that starts Feb. 22 in Singapore as U.S. officials push for an announcement of a "deal" with the hope of reviving the administration's quest for Fast Track trade authority and setting the stage for President Barack Obama's April 2014 Asia trip, Public Citizen said today.
"There is a sense that whether or not any real deal is finalized, there may be an announcement of one, if only to portray the talks as not unraveling despite growing opposition to the TPP in some of the countries involved," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "An announcement also could be a ploy to try to pressure Congress on trade authority and maximize President Obama's leverage when he visits Japan."
A bilateral U.S-Japan ministerial meeting last weekend failed to break a deadlock on sensitive agricultural and auto market access issues. Other TPP nations are loath to consider tradeoffs relating to U.S. demands on medicine patents, copyright, state-owned enterprises, financial regulation and other issues on which they face considerable domestic political liability without knowing what market access gains they may achieve in return. A TPP ministerial slated for January was postponed because of the market access deadlock.
"People who follow the TPP closely are baffled about why this meeting is happening," said Wallach. "Either it is an attempt to improve the optics surrounding the beleaguered talks by announcing some deal, whether or not one is done, or they are afraid that already having postponed this ministers' meeting once, canceling it would signal that the talks were unraveling."
Deal vs. kabuki checklist: To actually have a TPP deal, these issues must be resolved:
Disciplines Against Currency Manipulation
A TPP without binding currency provisions could be dead on arrival in Congress. The other TPP nations know this but still oppose such terms. While 230 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 60 U.S. senators have written to Obama demanding currency manipulation disciplines in the TPP, U.S. negotiators haven't initiated negotiations on this, much less secured terms. Among others, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a prominent supporter of past pacts, announced he would oppose the TPP if it does not include enforceable currency disciplines.
Enforceable Labor and Environmental Standards
As a January text leak revealed, all other TPP nations oppose many TPP Environment Chapter terms that the United States demands. This includes obligations that, if nations fail to enforce certain environmental agreements that they have signed, they will face TPP enforcement and trade sanctions. Other U.S. bottom lines that face unified opposition are a ban on trade in illegally harvested timber and endangered species, with violations subject to trade sanctions, and enforceable disciplines on fisheries subsidies. Among the TPP countries are those that have led unwavering opposition to disciplines on fishery subsidies, including in the context of the World Trade Organization. More broadly, the other countries have to date rejected the U.S. demand that both the environment and labor chapters be enforceable and subject to the same dispute resolution system as other TPP chapters. These are terms that Congress forced President George W. Bush to include in his pacts. If the Obama administration rolls back the labor and environmental terms included in Bush-signed agreements, it will lose almost all Democratic congressional support for the TPP. In addition, if the labor standards were enforceable, it remains unresolved how the TPP could include Vietnam, one of four countries cited by the Department of Labor for using both child and forced labor in apparel production.
State-Owned Enterprises
After years of deadlock during which countries could not even agree on a text from which to negotiate, substantive talks are now under way. However, to complete a deal, either the United States will have to roll back its demands, which would be extremely unpopular in Congress, or a bloc of TPP countries with numerous state-owned enterprises could have to make major concessions.
Intellectual Property Chapter Patent and "Transparency" Text on Medicine Pricing Rules
Most other TPP countries continue to oppose U.S. proposals to expand the scope of patentability, including terms that would promote evergreening, subject surgical procedures to monopoly patents and extend data exclusivity terms that would deliver on Big Pharma's demands for monopoly powers that raise medicine prices. The powerful American pharmaceutical industry has declared that it will oppose the TPP if the pact reverses extreme provisions in past U.S. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). A sizeable bloc in Congress has stated that it will oppose the TPP if such terms are included. Another contested issue is the U.S. proposal for a cynically dubbed "Annex on Transparency and Procedural Fairness for Healthcare Technologies" that would allow drug firms to challenge medicine formulary reimbursement and pricing decisions. The target ostensibly was the national health care systems in New Zealand, Australia and other TPP nations that use formulary lists to reduce health care costs. Grassroots and legislator opposition to the U.S. proposal is virulent, making concessions on this issue politically perilous. Big Pharma insists that these terms must extend beyond those contained in the U.S.-Australia FTA. Meanwhile, an increasing number of U.S. state officials and Democratic congressional supporters of the Affordable Care Act also oppose those terms, which could undermine enhanced use of formularies to reduce U.S. health care costs.
Copyright Extensions
Hollywood- and recording industry-inspired proposals that would greatly extend copyright durations, limit innovation, restrict access to educational materials and force Internet providers to act as "copyright police" by cutting off people's Internet access (think of the SOPA/PIPA debacle) have triggered public outrage in numerous TPP countries, leading to a negotiation stalemate. The United States has continued to demand that the TPP be used to require countries to adopt domestic copyright terms beyond international norms and aggressive copyright and enforcement provisions that would limit the public domain and Internet freedoms. A bloc of countries remains solidly opposed to various elements of these demands. There also is entrenched disagreement about whether copyright should be able to keep works of art and literature out of the public domain for 70 years after death of the author. No resolution is in sight.
Financial Regulation and Capital Controls
With the International Monetary Fund endorsing the use of capital controls to avoid floods of speculative capital that cause financial crises, it's no surprise that there is united opposition among other TPP countries to a U.S. demand that the TPP include a ban on the use of various commonsense, macro-prudential measures, including capital controls and financial transactions taxes. While the United States has objected to an exception allowing the use of such measures, other TPP nations have stated they will not agree to a TPP that prohibits the use of such measures.
Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)
Australia has maintained an exception to being submitted to ISDS, which elevates individual corporations to equal status with sovereign nations and allows them to enforce a public treaty by "suing" national governments for compensation before international tribunals comprised of private-sector attorneys over claims that government actions undermine their expected future profits. The National Conference of State Legislatures, the body representing the 50 U.S. state legislative bodies, has adopted a policy of opposing any trade agreement with investor-state enforcement. The United States is demanding all countries submit to this system. Even those TPP nations that have agreed to investor-state enforcement oppose the U.S. demand that government natural resource concessions, private-public-partnership utility management contracts and procurement contracts be subject to such extra-judicial processes. The other countries also oppose a U.S. demand that the investor-state terms apply "pre-establishment" - creating a right to investment, including acquisition of land. The United States has consistently opposed an exception supported by most other TPP nations that would safeguard domestic environmental, health and other policies from the TPP tribunals.
Mechanism for the TPP to Go into Effect
Agreement on the legal mechanisms required for implementing the TPP has proven extremely elusive. A standard provision in the implementing legislation of past U.S. trade agreements requires that, after the U.S. Congress ratifies the pact, the president withhold formal written notification of that approval from partner countries until the president certifies that the partner countries have altered their own laws and policies to comply with the trade deal. That is to say, even after both the United States and its trade partners have ratified an agreement, it takes effect only after the United States unilaterally certifies that its partners have changed domestic laws according to U.S. demands. TPP nations argue the certification process gives the U.S. government and corporations enormous leverage to force them to conform to American interpretation of trade agreement terms - some of which are often deliberately vague, opaque and contentious. This process also often delays implementation of agreements.
Sensitive Market Access Issues
Agriculture: Japan's parliament has listed five "sacred" commodities that must be excluded from TPP tariff-zeroing: rice, beef/pork, wheat, sugar and dairy. The United States, Australia and other TPP nations have rejected these exclusions. Australia wants U.S. access for its sugar exports, a demand that the United States rejected in its bilateral FTA with Australia. The United States has declared it will not negotiate new market access with countries with which it already has FTAs - in no small part to avoid the wrath of the politically powerful U.S. sugar industry, which has strong support among Democrats and Republicans in Congress. New Zealand's main TPP demand is increased access to American and Canadian markets for its massive dairy export industry. But with dairy farmers in many U.S. congressional districts, a large bloc of Democrats and Republicans strongly oppose this demand. Yet, despite its refusal to negotiate market access with its current FTA partners, the United States has demanded access for dairy products in Canadian markets - a condition it couldn't secure in the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and that Canada has also rejected for the TPP.
Autos: The U.S. Congress insists that Japan be subject to a special bilateral agreement providing certain additional concessions relating to auto trade, insurance and access for U.S. beef. While the Abe administration agreed to this demand, the bilateral pact - a U.S. condition for Japan being included in a final TPP deal - has not been finalized, with negotiations on auto trade issues especially mired.
Government Procurement: The United States wants national government contracts above a set threshold be made available to firms from all TPP countries on equal terms. But many Democratic and GOP members of Congress oppose any waiver of Buy American preferences, which would be required to implement this rule. The U.S. demand has also raised broad opposition in Malaysia, where its "bumiputera policy" - which guarantees a portion of government procurement contracts go to ethnic Malays - is key to preventing a recurrence of violent attacks against the country's ethnic Chinese population, which dominates its business sector. Other TPP nations want the United States to guarantee that their firms will get the same access to the 50 U.S. states' procurement activities as they would provide to U.S. firms, which U.S. negotiators have refused.
Apparel and Shoes: Vietnam has insisted on duty-free access for its clothing made with inputs from China and other non-TPP nations, and the elimination of U.S. tariffs on footwear. The "rule of origin" Vietnam requests would reverse a long-standing "yarn forward" rule included in past U.S. pacts to support U.S. jobs. If honored, Vietnam's demand would increase the uncertainty that Congress would approve the TPP.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Indigenous Brazilians Lament Lula's Unfulfilled Land Demarcation Promises
"This is revolting for us Indigenous peoples to have had so much faith in the government's commitments to our rights and the demarcation of our territories," said one Indigenous leader.
Apr 19, 2024
Friday is Indigenous Peoples Day in Brazil, and tribal leaders and activists used the occasion to criticize the left-wing government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for falling short on promises to safeguard native land rights.
On Thursday, the Brazilian government announced the demarcation of Aldeia Velha, land of the Pataxó people, in the northeastern state of Bahia, as well as the territory of the Karajá people in Cacique Fontoura, Mato Grosso.
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However, Indigenous peoples were anticipating the demarcation of six new territories. Lula acknowledged their disappointment.
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Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), an umbrella group, said in a statement earlier this week that "the most serious thing is that the Lula government is tarnishing its historical trajectory."
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APIB demanded that Lula "put an end to the criminal organizations that intimidate our people and communities, persecute and murder our leaders" and "dedicate farms for agrarian reform and demarcate our lands, which have been invaded and plundered for centuries by the invaders who arrived here 524 years ago and their current descendants."
Thousands of Indigenous peoples from throughout Brazil are expected to rally in the capital BrasÃlia next week for the Terra Livre—or Free Land, camp—the country's largest annual native mobilization. Two years ago, Lula, then a presidential candidate, told Terra Livre attendees that he would end illegal mining on Indigenous lands. Despite a crackdown that resulted in an initial dramatic drop in illicit mineral extraction on Indigenous lands, illegal miners have returned with a vengeance in places including land belonging to the Yanomami people.
Criticism of Lula's demarcation process and the Brazilian government's Indigenous rights record came from outside Brazil as well.
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This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
Law enforcement officials confirmed to CNN that someone lit themself on fire Friday outside the New York City courthouse where former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records.
"The man walked into the park across the street from the courthouse, throwing flyers into the air," the network reported, citing law enforcement. "He then pulled something out of a backpack—it was not immediately clear what the item was—and lit himself on fire."
Journalists were in the area for the historic trial and CNN anchor Laura Coates was among those who described the scene live on-air as New York Police Department officers and emergency responders worked to extinguish the fire.
Police were "slow to respond in part because of barricades around park," Politico's Emily Ngo explained, sharing photos and videos from the scene on social media. There is "only one way to get into park outside the courthouse without jumping the fence. It's been barricaded in anticipation of protests. And since there hasn't been much in the way of protests, police presence is light. Police had to run all the way around to get to the man."
The person who self-immolated "was responsive when he was removed but he is very, very badly burned. Body charred," Ngo said.
CNN reported that the flyers featured allegations of wrongdoings against New York University and said, "NYU is a mob front."
A self-identified citizen journalist named Jack shared on social media a photo of a booklet the person reportedly left in the dirt.
An unverified Substack post says in part: "My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan. This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup."
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Environmental and public health advocates on Friday welcomed the Biden administration's latest step to tackle "forever chemicals," a new Superfund rule that "will help ensure that polluters pay to clean up their contamination" across the country.
"It is time for polluters to pay to clean up the toxic soup they've dumped into the environment," declared Erik D. Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We all learned in kindergarten that if we make a mess, we should clean it up. The Biden administration's Superfund rule is a big step in the right direction for holding polluters accountable for cleaning up decades of contamination."
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As part of the Biden administration's "PFAS Strategic Roadmap," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule designates perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) as hazardous substances under the Superfund law—the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.
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David Andrews, EWG's deputy director of investigations and a senior scientist, has led studies that have found that PFAS are potentially harming over 330 species and more than 200 million Americans could have PFOA and PFOS in their tap water.
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As an EWG blog post detailed in anticipation of the new rule earlier this week:
A hazardous substance designation allows the EPA to use money from its Superfund—the EPA's account for addressing this kind of contamination—to quickly jump-start cleanup at a PFOA- or PFOS-polluted site and to recover the costs from the polluters. If a company that contributed to the PFAS contamination problem refuses to cooperate, the EPA can order a cleanup anyway and fine the company if they fail to take action.
[...]
When a chemical is added to the list of hazardous substances, the EPA sets a reportable quantity. Any time a substance is released above that quantity it must be reported. By imposing reportable quantities, the EPA will get immediate information about new PFAS releases and the chance to investigate immediately and, if necessary, take actions to reduce additional exposures. This information is also shared with state or tribal and local emergency authorities, so it can reach communities more quickly.
"For years, communities that have been exposed to these chemicals have been demanding that polluters be held accountable for the harm they have created and to pay for cleanup," Safer States national director Sarah Doll highlighted. "We applaud EPA for taking this step and encourage them to take the next step and list all PFAS under the Superfund law."
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Mary Grant, the Public Water for All campaign director at Food & Water Watch, agreed that further action is necessary.
"Chemical companies have attempted to hide what they have long known about the dangers of PFAS, creating a widespread public health crisis in the process," Grant emphasized. "These polluters must absolutely be held accountable to pay to clean up their toxic mess."
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