Decoding the neoliberal economics vocabulary

Joshua Kurlantzick, Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a lament for the prospects of further neoliberal trade development, Farewell To the Age of Free Trade Bloomberg Businessweek.

"Major potential trade deals, such as the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between Europe and North America, are at risk of falling through," he writes. "As of early December," he reports, the TTIP negotiations "have resumed, but the prospects for a
deal remain highly uncertain."

That sounds like a cause for celebration to me, based on what we've heard is being cooked up for us in the secret negotiations over the TTIP and its evil twin, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

I was thinking as I read Kurlantzick's piece that the current vocabulary of neoliberalism that has become so widely embedded in writing and discussion about international trade because center-left parties in the US and Europe have happily adopted it rather than challenging it, can actually be pretty arcane to readers assigning more common-sense meanings to words.

Here are some examples from Kurlantzick's piece:

Protectionism: People generally have a sense of what that is, barriers to products or money coming in from other countries put up to protect some domestic constituency. In the language of neoliberalism, though, "protectionism" is the worst cuss word. Even capital controls to prevent the fabled "bond vigilantes" from wrecking your country's currency or economy count as "protectionism" in this conceptual world, and therefore are evil by definition.

State capitalism: Almost as much of a cuss word as "protectionism." This is when a country owns a company as public property, as with Gazprom in Russia, PDvSA in Venezuela or, as of this year, YPF in Argentina. Protecting national sovereignty, preventing irresponsible practices by private corporations, revenue for other kinds of development: in the neoliberal worldview, none of them remotely justify the evil of "state capitalism."

Giant state-owned companies: Another way to use the "state capitalism" cuss word adding a little dramatic emphasis

Free trade: Equals goodness. Means removing barriers to capital flows across borders, lowering wages, getting rid of unions, overriding national laws on consumer and environmental protections, lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point)

Economic integration: Removing barriers to capital flows across borders, lowering wages, getting rid of unions, overriding national laws on consumer and environmental protections, lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point)

Globalization: also equals goodness; requires removing barriers to capital flows across borders, lowering wages, getting rid of unions, overriding national laws on consumer and environmental protections, lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point) to maximize goodness

Giant state-owned companies: Another way to use the "state capitalism" cuss word adding a little dramatic emphasis

Political leadership: Doing what international corporations want. Also has variations, such as strong leadership, responsible leadership, etc.

Populism: Not doing what international corporations want. Also a cuss word.

The global trade agenda: Removing barriers to capital flows across borders, lowering wages, getting rid of unions, overriding national laws on consumer and environmental protections, lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point)

Credibility on trade: Removing barriers to capital flows across borders, lowering wages, getting rid of unions, overriding national laws on consumer and environmental protections, lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point). See also: political leadership.

Dynamic: What an economy becomes when it removes barriers to capital flows across borders, lowers wages, gets rid of unions, overrides national laws on consumer and environmental protections and lowers taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point).

Fostering interdependence: Removing barriers to capital flows across borders, lowering wages, getting rid of unions, overriding national laws on consumer and environmental protections, lowering taxes on corporations and the wealthy (preferably to the vanishing point).

As you see, there are some redundancies in meaning among these words and phrases.

Kurlantzick gets several of these words loaded with occult meaning into one notable paragraph:

Far from creating a long tail, globalization and the Internet have instead made economies of scale more important to companies’ survival. That has prompted consolidation in industries from telecommunications to oil to mining, allowing many of these industries to become dominated by giant state-owned companies from countries such as China, Russia, and Brazil. These state-owned enterprises are hardly forces for free trade: They often crush entrepreneurs in their own societies, and they often push for protectionist barriers, not against them. [my emphasis]

When you translate into more everyday language, you get:

Far from creating a long tail, Goodness and the Internet have instead made economies of scale more important to companies’ survival. That has prompted consolidation in industries from telecommunications to oil to mining, allowing many of these industries to become dominated by the Evil Ones from countries such as China, Russia, and Brazil. These Evil Ones are hardly forces for Goodness: They often crush the Good Ones in their own societies, and they often push for Evil Things, not against them.

Who says economics isn't a morality play?

The kinds of trouble neoliberal trade treaties can cause is illustrated in this New York Times report by Sabrina Tavernise, Tobacco Firms’ Strategy Limits Poorer Nations’ Smoking Laws 12/13/2013. Tobacco consumption has been falling in wealthier nations, so the tobacco companies want to sell more cigarettes in less developed countries. And when some countries try to restrict smoking, the companies have started to use the option they have under so-called "free" trade treaties to deter them. "The industry is warning countries that their tobacco laws violate an expanding web of trade and investment treaties, raising the prospect of costly, prolonged legal battles, health advocates and officials said."

... tobacco opponents say the strategy is intimidating low- and middle-income countries from tackling one of the gravest health threats facing them: smoking. They also say the legal tactics are undermining the world’s largest global public health treaty, the W.H.O. Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which aims to reduce smoking by encouraging limits on advertising, packaging and sale of tobacco products. More than 170 countries have signed it since it took effect in 2005.

More than five million people die annually of smoking-related causes, more than from AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined, according to the World Health Organization.

Alarmed about rising smoking rates among young women, Namibia, in southern Africa, passed a tobacco control law in 2010 but quickly found itself bombarded with stern warnings from the tobacco industry that the new statute violated the country’s obligations under trade treaties.

“We have bundles and bundles of letters from them,” said Namibia’s health minister, Dr. Richard Kamwi.

Three years later, the government, fearful of a punishingly expensive legal battle, has yet to carry out a single major provision of the law, like limiting advertising or placing large health warnings on cigarette packaging.

Treaties approved by the Senate have a legal force equal to the Constitution itself in the US; they even override the text of the Constitution, i.e., they have the force of Constitutional Amendments. So we should expect our elected officials from the President on down to take the part of the general public and not business lobbyists in considering trade agreements like TTIP and TPP. (Yes, I know how otherworldly that sounds!)

Kurlantzick makes an intriguing argument that I've not seen put this way before about the immediate future of international trade:

The belief that trade flows would inevitably increase was based on two assumptions: Emerging markets still had huge space to expand, and new technologies would make businesses more interconnected. These ideas still power reports such as HSBC’s forecast. But they appear to be wrong. Today’s technological advances don’t necessarily lead to economic integration. The latest breakthrough in manufacturing, 3D printing, makes it easier for companies to keep their design and initial production work in-house and cut out suppliers—which reduces trade, because it removes incentives to outsource later rounds of manufacturing overseas. The coming breakthrough in many science-based industries — such as synthetic biology, in which living forms are created from strands of DNA — will similarly create pressure for companies to keep operations in-house. Already, many corporations are coming home: Cross-border investment inflows fell by 18 percent in 2012 and probably will drop again in 2013.

I don't know how well-founded that may be, but it's made me curious about the argument.

This, on the other hand, apparently relies on a code I haven't cracked yet:

Over the past 60 years, at least one major economy was able to take the lead in advancing the global trade agenda. Today, however, every prominent trading economy is too consumed by problems at home. Weakened by the shaky rollout of health-care reform, President Obama faces a hostile Congress that has little inclination to support either the administration’s proposed free-trade agreement with Asia, called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), or a U.S.-European trade pact. China's top leaders are still trying to consolidate power and address domestic challenges such as land reform. Britain is consumed with austerity, Japan is embarking on contentious economic reforms, and Germany is constrained by its history and Berlin’s consensual politics. Reports of U.S. spying on top European leaders have caused politicians across the European Union — already skeptical of a trans-Atlantic trade zone because of concerns that many European industries would be swamped — to call for trade negotiations with the U.S. to be cut off. [my emphasis]

This reads weird to me. In this case, "one major economy" presumably means the United States, so why not just say that?

Is there a clear majority in either House of Congress against the TTIP and TPP already? I seriously doubt it. I doubt even more how firm that theoretical opposition will remain when and if the things are signed and business lobbyists go to work on the Congress about the virtues of corporate buccaneering Goodness free trade.

China's leaders don't have time to pay attention to international trade? Seriously?

And however much "Germany is constrained by its history and Berlin's consensual politics," that hasn't prevent Chancellor Angela Merkel from imposing a ruinous austerity policy on several of her eurozone partners that benefits Germany at the expense of imposing prolonged depression conditions on those partners. That should be a reason for other countries to distrust Germany on economic matters. But shyness due to its "its history and Berlin's consensual politics" hardly seem to be serious concerns in that regard.

All of that may just be Kurlantzick's way of saying that the US so far hasn't been able to get its way on either treaty, both of which are still under negotiation. But why the strange circumlocutions if that is the real point?

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, neoliberalism, tafta, tafta, trans-atlantic free trade agreement, trans-atlantic trade and investment partnership, trans-pacific partnership, tpp, ttip

The neoliberal side of the Obama Administration

I know I'm jaded about Obama. But this is why.

After a new push for renewable energy, a re-energized affirmative defense of the ACA and a progressive speech on economic inequality in America, here's a new report that in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, the Obama Administration is pushing to "grant radical new political powers to corporations, increase the cost of prescription medications and restrict bank regulation." (Zach Carter, Obama Faces Backlash Over New Corporate Powers In Secret Trade Deal Huffington Post 12/08/2013)

And, of course, treaties when approved by the Senate are equal in legal force to the Constitution.

The good news in Carter's article: "The Obama administration appears to have almost no international support" for those measures.

This is the Barack Obama we've seen most often the last five years on economic policy. The corporate Democrat who pushes the neoliberal agenda aggressively. Yes, he's still NABATR (Not As Bad As The Republicans). But that's faint praise indeed!

How bad could the TPP be? Here's a sample:

One of the most controversial provisions in the talks includes new corporate empowerment language insisted upon by the U.S. government, which would allow foreign companies to challenge laws or regulations in a privately run international court. Under World Trade Organization treaties, this political power to contest government law is reserved for sovereign nations. The U.S. has endorsed some corporate political powers in prior trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the scope of what laws can be challenged appears to be much broader in TPP negotiations.

"The United States, as in previous rounds, has shown no flexibility on its proposal, being one of the most significant barriers to closing the chapter, since under the concept of Investment Agreement nearly all significant contracts that can be made between a state and a foreign investor are included," the memo reads. "Only the U.S. and Japan support the proposal."

Under NAFTA, companies including Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical and Eli Lilly have attempted to overrule Canadian regulations on offshore oil drilling, fracking, pesticides, drug patents and other issues. Companies could challenge an even broader array of rules under the TPP language. [my emphasis]

This cartoon from Public Citizen illustrates the relationship of such courts to justice:

And it sounds like the Administration is carrying water for Big Pharma in the TPP negotiations: "The Obama administration is insisting on mandating new intellectual property rules in the treaty that would grant pharmaceutical companies long-term monopolies on new medications. As a result, companies can charge high prices without regard to competition from generic providers."

And since we all know that the fine folk who run giant banks would never set up a new financial crisis like 2007-8, why should the following worry us?

The U.S. is also facing major resistance on bank regulation standards. The Obama administration is seeking to curtail the use of "capital controls" by foreign governments. These can include an extremely broad variety of financial tools, from restricting lending in overheated markets to denying mass international outflows of currency during a financial panic. The loss of these tools would dramatically limit the ability of governments to prevent and stem banking crises.

The last thing we need is this kind of neoliberal trade treaty to further cripple consumer protections and let corporate bandits run wild.

And let's not forget that the same Obama Administration is simultaneously negotiating a neoliberal Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), aka, Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA).

Tags: neoliberalism, neoliberalism,obama adminstration, tafta, trans-atlantic free trade agreement, trans-pacific partnership, tpp, ttip

Merkel complicates the trans-Atlantic trade negotiations (Updated)

Since I'm no fan of the neoliberal vision for the the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA), aka, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), I'm pleased to hear news of just about anything that might impede it.

This article about the instruction European business lobbyists have been giving to EU negotiators about what to include in the treaty would also be largely acceptable to the American lobbyists calling the shots on the US side of the negotiations (European Officials Consulted Business Leaders on Trade Pact New York Times 10/08/2013):

Internal documents obtained by The New York Times offer a window into the extent that European trade negotiators allow big business lobby groups to set the agenda. Among other things, the business community was seeking an active role in writing new regulations — the trans-Atlantic rules that might one day cover things like how poultry is cleaned and how trade secrets are protected.

"It's a bit like enshrining a right to lobby in the E.U./U.S. trade agreement — that is what it is about,” said Pia Eberhardt, who follows trade issues for the Corporate Europe Observatory, a nonprofit group in Brussels that is critical of corporate ties to government. ...

Although last year’s preliminary discussions could end up having little influence on any final trade pact, the documents offered some hints at the ripest targets for business executives — as well as insights into the officials’ responses. The auto industry was seen as being “first and foremost” among industrial sectors where a melding of regulations from Brussels and Washington made sense, according to an assessment last December by the European trade commission. And the issue of duplicative trans-Atlantic testing procedures was seen as particularly relevant for the pharmaceutical industry.

Among the proposals made last October by business groups that are still on the table is a regulatory oversight group that would have the authority to continue to ensure that any new or existing trans-Atlantic rules are compatible, even after trade negotiations formally conclude. Businesses and other stakeholders would be able to propose regulatory changes to the council.

In other words, what the lobbies are seeking to incorporate into the treaty is a kind of lowest-common-denominator function that would force the level of regulations down to the lower standard between the EU-US area and could override national regulations.

So it's encouraging to hear that German Chancellor Angela "Frau Fritz" Merkel is making better protection against NSA spying an issue in the talks, as reported by Stefan Wagstyl et al, Berlin seeks privacy rules in EU-US trade pact Financial Times 11/03/2013.

Berlin’s unexpected move highlights the anger generated in Germany by claims that American intelligence eavesdropped on a wide range of targets, including Chancellor Angela Merkel. German officials are particularly angry that even when Berlin set up high-level talks with Washington over the extent of US surveillance activities earlier this summer, US officials failed to disclose the monitoring of Ms Merkel’s mobile phone.

Even though German officials insist the relationship with Washington remains strong, Ms Merkel’s position seems to be hardening in response to the public controversy and to concerns in German business about commercial spying. Industry representatives said they were aware that the question of data protection was being “politically discussed” in the context of the trade deal talks.

The proposed safeguards in the trade pact would not be catch-all privacy rules but specific regulations to protect companies worried about industrial espionage.

Merkel's Heinrich Brüning economic policies are awful. But if her personal pride leads her to do constructive things, in this case putting up impediments to TAFTA/TTIP, that's fine by me.

Leonid Bershidsky notes in Bershidsky on Europe: Merkel Turns on US Bloomberg View 11/04/2013:

Germany's volte-face [on the privacy issue and the trade negotiations] is a way to put pressure on the U.S., but also respond to voter sentiment. In Germany and across Europe, the idea of keeping user data on the continent is gaining popularity, with local telecoms offering cloud services as an alternative to U.S.-based ones. Deutsche Telekom even advertises "email made in Germany," saying it routes German internet traffic inside the country only.

Update: Big business on both sides of the Atlantic really want this deal. That's why I'm not too surprised by this story, Data protection ruled out of EU-US trade talks James Fontanella-Khan Financial Times 11/04/2013:

Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission and the EU’s top justice official, said that data protection was outside of the scope of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiation.

"The Commission'’s view and the position taken by all leaders at the recent European Council is clear: let’s not mix up the phone tapping issue with the ongoing trade talks,” Ms Reding told the Financial Times.

"Including data protection in the trade talks is like opening Pandora’s box. The EU is not ready to lower its own standards . . .  That is why the free trade agreement negotiations are not going to include privacy standards."

EU officials stressed that at present there are no common transatlantic standards on data protection and therefore they fear that finding a middle ground with the US would only lower overall EU privacy standards.

Translation: Big business lobbies in Europe really, really want this deal. Plus, who knows how much dirt the NSA has dug up on key EU officials to pressure them with?

But the official statement by Reding might not be all hot air:

Privacy advocates also warned that Germany’s call to include commercial spying rules in the trade talks would inadvertently favour tech groups such as Google and Facebook that have been trying to water down EU attempts to set tough standards.

Lobbyists for the US technology industry have long wanted to introduce data protection in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations as they believe it would give them a better chance to set less stringent standards than the ones currently proposed by the European Commission and EU lawmakers.

US companies argue that the current EU legislation is unworkable because, they claim, it gives little legal certainty on how businesses can use individuals’ personal information. They also want to scrap a clause that would limit the US government’s ability to obtain information on EU citizens without the European data protection watchdog’s consent.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, european union, nsa spying, tafta, trans-atlantic free trade agreement, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

SPD candidate Steinbrück shows unexpected signs of life

Spiegel Online reports that SPD Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück wants the EU to break off the negotiations with the US over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty in protest of NSA spying on Germans and the EU's TTIP trade negotiators. (Freihandelsabkommen mit USA: Steinbrück fordert Konsequenzen aus Spähaffäre 25.08.2013)

Wolfgang Münchau suggested several weeks ago that Steinbrück and the SPD should use Chancellor Angela Merkel's passive response to the NSA spying revelations as a key camapaign issue against her. (Aussitzen ist die teuerste Option Spiegel Online 24.07.2013)

Münchau argued that it would have been better for the SPD to attack Merkel on her muddling-along policy on the euro crisis, repeatedly doing barely enough to stave off an acute stage of the crisis but not enough to solve the problem.

But he also concluded that the SPD in its current situation, it is too identified with Merkel's Eurozone policies to be credible on that. Münchau didn't mention it in his column, but Steinbrück is a figure thoroughly identified with neoliberal measures like raising the retirement age from 65 to 67. So it would be better to attack her for indecisiveness in dealing with the NSA scandal.

As Münchau put it:

Im Jahre 2002 war es auch nicht die Flut, die die Wahl zugunsten von Gerhard Schröder und gegen Edmund Stoiber entschied. Es war die Art und Weise, wie sich die Kandidaten angesichts einer Krise verhielten. Auch heute ist nicht das Thema entscheidend, sondern die Person. Die Krise hat uns gezeigt, wie diese Bundeskanzlerin vermeidet, Position zu beziehen, und wie sie Probleme vor sich herschiebt.

[In the year 2002, it was also not the flood that decided the election for Gerhard Schroder {SPD} and against Edmund Stoiber {CDU/CSU}. It was the way and manner that the candidates positioned themselves in relation to a crisis. Also today, it is not the theme that is decisive, but the person. The {euro} crisis has shown us how this Federal Chancellor {Merkel} avoids taking a position, and how she shuffles around problems with which she is confronted.]

So at least Steinbrück is giving it a try!

Speaking of 2002, Angie became a favorite of the Cheney-Bush Administration by cheering on their policy toward Iraq, after both Schröder and Edmund Stoiber had distanced themselves from it, Schroder's government actively opposing it. Schroder benefitted in the election from his stand against the Iraq War, presumably the crisis to which Münchau refers there.

But Angie isn't ready to cheer on US intervention in Syria in the same way. It's not a parallel situation, because the Obama Administration is doing a full-blown push for war as the Cheney-Bush gang were in 2002-3. In the current phase of the discussion over expanded US/NATO intervention in Syria, all five parties in the German Bundestag are opposing it.

The deputy party leader for Merkel's CDU/CSU, Andreas Schockenhoff, says that the situation in Syria is „völlig unübersichtlich“ ("completely unclear") and, „Ein vorschnelles Eingreifen von außen garantiert keineswegs, dass die Bevölkerung insgesamt besser geschützt wird.“ ("A hasty intervention from outside in no way guarantees that the population will be better protected.") Diskussion um Syrien-Intervention: Drohungen und Warnungen (taz 25.08.2013)

Government spokesperson Steffen Seibert called for a political solution instead of a military one. Leaving Peer Steinbrück once again to chime in with his agreement with Merkel's policy. (Steffen Hebestreit, Syrien: USA erwägen Intervention Frankfurter Rundschau 25.08.2013)

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, syria, syrian civil war, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

The Obama Administration also has expectations for the German election

Emily Schultheis writes in Stepping Up: US Experts Want More Leadership from Germany Spiegel International 08/23/2013 about informed speculation on what the Obama Administration's expectations for Germany after the September election may be.

Of course, the US would always like other countries to support the current US foreign policy more enthusiastically.

But one thing seems to be especially high on the agenda:

Perhaps the biggest area where US trans-Atlantic experts hope to see movement is on economic issues and the ongoing euro crisis. They say Germany could do more to stabilize the European economy and soften its stance on austerity measures to ensure more growth.

"When you have much of the world still teetering and not really on a clear growth trajectory, and Europe really flailing, the German economy is key to the European economy," Hamilton says.

Fran Burwell, vice president of the Atlantic Council, says that even though it's not a politically easy position to take in Germany, the new government should adopt "a more flexible role in terms of debt."

When it comes to economic issues, however, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) may have priority. Both the US and Germany would like to see the establishment of the free-trade agreement and Washington sees Berlin's efforts to help promote the negotiations and bring other European countries on board as being key.

"The TTIP thing is big on the agenda over here (in Washington), and I think Germany has a big investment in that," says Jackson Janes, president of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. "We would expect Germany to continue to take a lead on making sure that goes somewhere, and doesn't break down over certain issues like culture or food." [my emphasis]

A 2013 information release from the AFL-CIO discusses the concerns organized labor has over the TTIP that is under negotiation (U.S.-EU Free Trade Agreement (TTIP)):

The AFL-CIO believes that increasing trade ties with the EU could be beneficial for both American and European workers but as with all trade agreements, the rules matter. Generally speaking, both regions have advanced economies, high national incomes and well-developed legal and regulatory regimes designed to protect the environment and defend workers’ rights. And in many respects, the European nations’ social programs to protect families and the environment exceed those of U.S. laws and regulations — and any U.S.-EU agreement must not be used as a tool to deregulate or drive down these higher standards. If that is the goal, working families of both regions will pay the price.

However, it is important for there to be a new approach to this agreement: the status quo approach to trade has resulted in increasing income inequality, stagnating or declining wages and unacceptably high trade deficits that are sapping economic growth.

Moreover, it is important to note that the EU now includes Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Slovakia—countries whose economies, incomes and worker protections lag behind most of their EU counterparts. In addition, Poland has been engaging in so-called "labor market flexibilities" for a generation and Hungary’s current government has likewise been intent on destroying many worker protections. American workers should be aware that some multinational corporations could be intending to use a U.S.-EU trade agreement to move jobs from the U.S. to these countries whose wages and worker protections do not reach the level of the rest of the EU. [my emphasis in bold]

This is one among a number of very important considerations:

In light of the global financial crisis and recession, negotiators should also abandon the traditional de-regulatory agenda toward financial services that would promote mergers and acquisitions, creating new global conglomerates that would be "too big to fail." Instead, negotiators should concentrate on creating opportunities for institutional cooperation as American and European regulators work to stabilize the global financial system and rein in Wall Street excesses.

At a minimum, a government headed by the SPD instead of Angela Merkel and her CDU would at least be subject to more pressure from its base to avoid another destructive neoliberal trade treaty.

That, unfortunately, is what the Obama Administration can be expected to produce absent effective counter-pressure from its base and the Democratic Party in Congress.

Tags: neoliberalism, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

The menace of the Trans-Pacific Parnership (TPP)

Wenonah Hauter of the Food & Water Watch harshes on the Trans-Pacific Parnership, one of the two major neoliberal trade treaties the Obama Administration is currently negotiating under the high secrecy to which it is addicted (The Un-American Way Other Words 08/21/2013):

This controversial agreement is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It’s comprised of the United States plus 11 other nations that border the Pacific Ocean. The TPP would boost liquefied natural gas exports and food imports. This increases the real dangers posed by reckless fracking for natural gas and the growth of imported food from several countries whose safety standards fall far short of our own.

The TPP could become the biggest corporate power grab in U.S. history. This deal would establish a regime under which corporations would acquire an equal status to countries, allowing them to take legal action against governments both at the national and local levels.

With this power, multinational corporations — especially energy companies — could overturn laws enacted to protect the public and the environment if they were to deem that those protections violated the profit-based terms of this trade agreement. ...

The TPP would encourage increasing the amount of seafood we take in without requiring the trading partners to ban the use of illegal chemicals.

The closing line from which the title comes is, "Undermining laws that U.S. citizens voted to put in place isn't the American way."

I don't like that formulation. Because it is part of the Constitution that ratified treaties are just as much a part of the law of the land as the text of Constitution itself.

But the way the TPP is shaping up, it will become a vehicle for overturning important laws that need to stay in force.

The TPP and its equally malign twin, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), are both really bad ideas in the form in which they are currently conceived: neoliberal treaties designed to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of the vast majority of workers.

Tags: tpp, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, trans-pacific partnership, ttip

TTIP talks move forward

So far the threatened EU postponement of the EU-US talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) hasn't materialized. Not a surprise. But it doesn't change the fact that the NSA surveillance revelations have made the EU nations more cautious about the treaty prospect.

Historic trade talks get underway in Washington Euronews 07/08/2013:

Sara Miller Llana in Will US-EU trade talks spur growth - or show globalization's limits? 07/08/2013 frames the TTIP negotiations in a useful way:

With tariffs already low, this deal will focus more on business barriers such as safety standards or inspection procedures. The issues might seem pedestrian, but are some of the trickiest to negotiate, going to the very heart of the way people live their lives: the way chicken is cleaned, or the assumptions people make when they walk into a pharmacy or get into a car.

Miller Llana's report suggests that a failure of the TTIP to come to fruition would be a major setback for the neoliberal trade project, a prospect that some of us find less unpleasant than the business lobbies do:

Yet even if it fails – and there are plenty who think that the obstacles such as agriculture and, most recently, data privacy are insurmountable – a failure would be pivotal, showing that tariffs can be dropped but non-tariff barriers, which are often more cultural in nature, remain stubborn. A failure, says Fredrik Erixon, the director of the European Center for International Political Economy (ECIPE) in Brussels, "could lead to a larger standstill in efforts to address 21st century trade barriers."

The agricultural subsidies, French concerns over their film industry and European concerns over privacy rights with the Obama Administration's extreme surveillance policies all look to be big issues in the TTIP talks.

What should be big issues are the continued effects of the neoliberal trade treaties in undermining wages and salaries for ordinary workers, driving regulatory standards toward a lowest common denominator, weakening unions and boosting the risky, destructive financialization of economies.

Supporters of the TTIP concept in the US hope it will be an easy sell to the Congress:

So far TTIP has not generated widespread controversy in the US. That might be because it's still early days. But it's also because of the nature of the deal, says Charles Kupchan, a transatlantic expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "Since trade is relatively free and since [the US] and the EU are at similar stages of development, this is not a deal that is going to cause major dislocation," he says. "This is an easier sell politically."

The Monitor editorializes in favor of the TTIP concept without worrying much about the destructive effects. And they are also hoping US citizens won't notice what's happening (Why EU-US trade talks should be about more than trade 07/08/2013):

An agreement would create the largest free-trade zone ever – one that would dwarf NAFTA by encompassing 820 million people. The world needs such an economic jolt. Last year, trade expanded at a slower rate than the growth in domestic economies, reversing a trend that had helped create rising prosperity after World War II.

The days when trade talks could spark mass protests – such as those in Seattle in 1999 – are probably over. Trade itself has slowly knitted bonds and common interests across borders and redefined the identities of many people. The world now Googles together, eats sushi, or watches "Downton Abbey."

Not every country will get what it wants or avoid what it fears. Trade involves trade-offs. But more than that, it also leads to an enlarged sense of community. Trade deals are not only mutual back-scratching. They might also lead to an embrace of the other as one’s own. [my emphasis]

The TTIP, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) also being prepared, certainly need to provoke debate and protest in the US and in Europe, too.

Andrew Gavin Marshall characterizes the TTIP as follows (Large Corporations Seek U.S.–European 'Free Trade Agreement' to Further Global Dominance Alternet 05/10/2013):

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the latest corporate-driven agenda in what is commonly called a "free trade agreement," but which really amounts to 'cosmopolitical corporate consolidation': large corporations dictating and directing the policies of states – both nationally and internationally – into constructing structures which facilitate regional and global consolidation of financial, economic, and political power into the hands of relatively few large corporations.

Such agreements have little to do with actual 'trade,' and everything to do with expanding the rights and powers of large corporations. Corporations have become powerful economic and political entities – competing in size and wealth with the world’s largest national economies – and thus have taken on a distinctly 'cosmopolitical' nature. Acting through industry associations, lobby groups, think tanks and foundations, cosmopolitical corporations are engineering large projects aimed at transnational economic and political consolidation of power... into their hands. [ellipsis in original] With the construction of "a European-American free-trade zone" as "an ambitious project," we are witnessing the advancement of a new and unprecedented global project of transatlantic corporate colonization. [my emphasis]

Tags: neoliberalism, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, trans-pacific partnership, tpp, ttip

Stiglitz on the TPP and TTIP neoliberal trade treaties under negotiation

There are two major trade treaties the US is currently negotiating, both under the high level of secrecy that is a dubious but clear distinction of the Obama Administration approach to governance, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso discusses the TTIP negotiations this past February, European Union and United States will launch negotiations for transatlantic free trade agreement 02/13/2013. It all sounds wonderful for all parties concerned in his version, of course:

In The Free-Trade Charade Project Syndicate 07/04/2013, Joseph Stiglitz discusses some of the problems with the TPP in particular. But this warning also applies to the TTIP, as well:

If negotiators created a genuine free-trade regime that put the public interest first, with the views of ordinary citizens given at least as much weight as those of corporate lobbyists, I might be optimistic that what would emerge would strengthen the economy and improve social well-being. The reality, however, is that we have a managed trade regime that puts corporate interests first, and a process of negotiations that is undemocratic and non-transparent.

The likelihood that what emerges from the coming talks will serve ordinary Americans’ interests is low; the outlook for ordinary citizens in other countries is even bleaker.

He mentions several key issues in the TPP/TTIP negotiations: capital controls; business regulations; agricultural subsidies; intellectual property; protections for socially valuable considerations, e.g., the French film industry; the role of China in the Asian supply chain; and, the appalling lack of transparency by the Administration in the negotiations with both TTP and TTIP.

Prohibiting capital controls is still a favorite neoliberal notion because it gives the overgrown financial industries lots of opportunities for speculation against local currencies. Stiglitz writes, "Other trade agreements have insisted on financial liberalization and deregulation as well, even though the 2008 crisis should have taught us that the absence of good regulation can jeopardize economic prosperity."

And he's putting it mildly there!

He says this about agricultural subsidies:

The Doha Round was torpedoed by the United States' refusal to eliminate agricultural subsidies – a sine qua non for any true development round, given that 70% of those in the developing world depend on agriculture directly or indirectly. The US position was truly breathtaking, given that the WTO had already judged that America’s cotton subsidies – paid to fewer than 25,000 rich farmers – were illegal. America's response was to bribe Brazil, which had brought the complaint, not to pursue the matter further, leaving in the lurch millions of poor cotton farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and India, who suffer from depressed prices because of America’s largesse to its wealthy farmers.

US trade policy also undermined the promise of both the last major immigration reform and one of the key promised benefits of the NAFTA treaty, as Dave Neiwert explains in Remember the Minutemen Salon 06/29/2013:

We should recall how we got here in the first place: After the North American Free Trade Agreement was ratified in 1994 by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, the Clinton administration began a series of crackdown operations at key ports of entry along the Mexico border. The treaty, which in creating a trilateral trade bloc opened up the ability of investment capital to cross borders freely, was sold to the American public as, among other things, an essential component in controlling immigration.

But as we know, the undocumented immigrants kept coming across the Mexican border:

The numbers kept growing because the tide of immigrants had swollen to a tsunami – in large part because of NAFTA and its effects on the Mexican and American economies. When Mexico approved NAFTA in 1992, President Salinas abolished a provision in the Mexican constitution that protected the traditional small Mexican farmers from competition with corporate agribusiness, particularly American corporations. Cheap American corn put over a million Mexican farmers out of business, and that was just the beginning. With the economy collapsing around them, scores of manufacturers who specialized in clothing, toys, footwear and leather goods all went out of business. The only upside to NAFTA for Mexico – the arrival of new manufacturing jobs, including auto-building plants, as they departed the United States for cheaper shores, and of a fresh wave of maquiladora, the plants where various manufacturers would outsource their labor to Mexico – proved illusory: by 2000, many of those jobs had been taken to even cheaper labor sources in Asia, and the bleeding only grew worse from there.

In the meantime, the American economy – riding along first on a technology bubble, and then on a housing bubble – was bustling, creating in the process in excess of 500,000 unskilled-labor jobs every year, the vast majority of which American workers either would not or could not perform. Yet the antiquated American immigration system only issued 5,000 green cards annually to cover them.

The result was a massive demand for immigrant labor in the United States, and an eager supply in Mexico seeking work – but at the border where a rational transaction should have been taking place, there was instead a xenophobic crackdown aimed at keeping Mexican labor in Mexico, with predictably limited success. [my emphasis]

Trade policy matters. A lot. In today's neo-Gilded Age, it sounds almost utopian for Stiglitz to say that we need "a genuine free-trade regime that put the public interest first, with the views of ordinary citizens given at least as much weight as those of corporate lobbyists," it really is immediately necessary. Otherwise, the TTP and TTIP will do more harm to ordinary Americans and the people in the other countries involved in them. We don't need yet another gimmick that benefits the One Percenters of the world at the expense of everyone else. We have too many of those already.

Tags: neoliberalism, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, trans-pacific partnership, tpp, ttip

US vs. Europe vs. Latin America Over Edward Snowden

The Edward Snowden case acquired an extra touch of melodrama the last couple of days as Anna Chapman, the Russian spy expelled from the US in 2010 ...

... supposedly proposed to him via Twitter ...

... then followed up with this message to the NSA:

Die Welt seemed to accept that as her real Twitter account, Ex-Spionin fragt: "Snowden, willst Du mich heiraten?" 04.07.13.

Yes, Edward Snowden, this could be you (well, maybe!)

Honey trap? Publicity stunt by Chapman? A great opportunity for Snowden? I mean, shoot, if you have to spend the rest of your life at the Moscow Airport, you can see why he might want some company!

Then again, this DPA story "Chapman" liebt "Snowden": Twitter-Romanze amüsiert Moskau Salzburger Nachrichten 05.07.2013 was more cautious on whether it is really her Twitter account.

The Chapman story is entertaining. Especially with The Americans on hiatus for the summer. Speaking of which, Chapman and her fellow spies busted in 2010 were the inspiration for the series: Olivia B. Waxman - Q&A: The CIA Officer Behind the New Spy Drama The Americans Time 01/30/2013

But the diplomatic flaps that the Snowden affair and what seems to be hamhanded handling of it by the Obama Administration are more series that Anna Chapman publicity stunts. The revelations of NSA spying on the EU nations has caused some upset. And it seems to be more than just leaders doing the required posturing for domestic political reasons to show they maintain some national pride. Stephen Walt writes in News Flash: States Spy on Each Other Foreign Policy 07/03/2013:

The National Security Agency has done us all a service by reminding the world that international politics is still a) inherently competitive and b) primarily conducted by nation-states. I refer, of course, to the recent revelations that in addition to spying on U.S. citizens, the National Security Agency (NSA) has also been spying on America's European allies. You know: our closest strategic partners!

But he also notes that there may be some substantive consequences to this:

Which is not to say this aspect of the Snowden affair won't have significant consequences. Exposure of the NSA's efforts is bound to complicate efforts to negotiate a transatlantic trade and investment agreement [TTIP], an initiative that faced plenty of obstacles already. It is also going to give ammunition to all those people who are worried about the globalization of information and who would like to see governments do more to protect privacy and limit both corporate and governmental data-collection. And that makes me wonder whether we are now at the high-water mark of loosely regulated global connectivity, and that all these revelations will eventually lead both democracies and authoritarian societies to place much stricter limits on how information flows between societies (and individuals).

If so, then you should probably enjoy the Wild West of Internet freedom while you can, before the firewalls go up.

As I've said before, I won't be crying if EU upset over the spying disrupts the progress of the TTIP negotiations, because it's already looking to be a bad deal for most people in the countries affected. And speaking of which, I see indications that the real upset by EU government was over the extent of what is still called "industrial espionage." In other words, the EU One Percent is especially worried that the NSA is tapping into private trade and proprietary information and passing it on to American corporations. But that's not to minimize fears on the part of the majority that the US is tapping into their private conversations with no good reason. Spain's former Foreign Minister Ana Palacio from the conservative party (PP) also highlights the connection between uproar over NSA spying in Europe with the TTIP negotiations (The Snowden Effect Project Syndicate 07/04/2013):

... Europeans have raised serious questions about US intelligence practices. These range from the lack of professionalism implied by allowing contractors to conduct such sensitive work to America's hands-off approach toward certain allies, like the United Kingdom and New Zealand, while relegating many of its other allies – including most of the European Union – to surveillance-worthy status.

The bitter irony is that, at this suddenly inauspicious moment, Europe and the US are launching their most significant joint project since the creation of NATO – a transatlantic free-trade agreement. For the sake of its success, is it really too much to ask of the US that it play its part internationally with a bit more skill and professionalism, and that it treat its partners with respect?

Andrea Böhm argues in Purer Selbstverrat Zeit Online 05.07.2013 that the famous "soft power" of the US comes not just from the cultural industry ("Hollywood") and technological innovation ("Silicon Valley") but also from the country's continuing struggle to realize its own ideals. Joschka Fischer, for instance, the former Green Party leader and former German Foreign Minister, admire the democratic self-renewal that the US has repeatedly displayed in our history. But, Böhm notes, that struggle to realize democratic ideals looks like it is tapped out at the moment. "Amerika hat derzeit nicht die Kraft zu Selbstkorrektur. Die muss jetzt anders entstehen." ("At this time, America doesn't have the power for self-correction. It must comes from somewhere else now.") The NSA surveillance revelations have highlighted the similarities between the Obama and Cheney-Bush Administrations on extreme domestic spying practices.

And Böhm rightly points to the key problem in that regard of the state of Permanent War, of which the War on Terrorism has become a continuation of the Cold War. "Er [Obama] kann das amerikanische Militär von den Kriegsschauplätzen in Afghanistan und im Irak abziehen, nicht aber sein Land aus dem geistigen Kriegszustand lösen – und vielleicht will er es auch gar nicht." ("He [Obama] can pull the American military out of the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not release his country out of the mental state of war - and maybe he also just doesn't want to.")

That attitude helps explain how the diplomatic hostilities over Snowden have spread to South America with the retaining of Bolivian President Evo Morales plane in Vienna this week for over 13 hours because France, Italy, Portugal and Spain withdrew overflight rights after his plane departed from Moscow. The Real News reports in Bolivians Indignant at European Treatment of President Morales 07/04/2013:

The Young Turks also report on the story in Why Is Obama Bullying the President of Bolivia? 07/04/2013:

Martín Granovsky in Lo que hay detrás Página/12 05.07.2013 notes that although the formal complaints are being directed against the European countries that played games with overflight, the main actor in this drama is clearly the United States. Bolivia is protesting, apparently with good reason, that withdrawing the overflight rights was a serious violation of diplomatic protocol and international law. They even used the word "kidnapped," to describe Evo's stopover in Vienna.

But Bolivia doesn't seem to be complaining about Austria's conduct. Austrian President Heinz Fischer posted this photo of him greeting Evo at the airport ("Boliviens Präsident Evo Morales kann Heimreise fortsetzen": Statement von Bundespräsident Heinz Fischer 03.07.2013):

Bolivian Presisdent Evo Morales and Austrian President Heinz Fischer

Less obviously plausible is Bolivia's argument that Evo's life was endangered by the overflight problem. I suppose this argument is based on the pilot's message, heard in The Young Turks report, that they had to land because their were running out of fuel.

The South American alliance UNASUR have issued a formal protest against France, Italy, Portugal and Spain in solidarity with Bolivia, Declaración de la UNASUR frente al agravio sufrido por el Presidente Evo Morales 04.07.2013, calling their action a continuation of "colonial practices." (Technically, the declaration in the name of "Las Jefas y Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno de países de la Unión de Naciones Sudamericanas (UNASUR), reunidos en Cochabamba" (the chiefs of state and government of countries of the Union of South American Nations {UNASUR} meeting in Cochabamba", Bolivia under the auspices of UNASUR. This Reuters headline spins it as South American leftist leaders rally for Bolivia in Snowden saga 07/05/2013. The actual "chiefs of state and government" were Evo Morales himself, Argentina's Cristina Fernández, Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, Peru's Rafael Correa, Uruguay's José Mujica and Surinam's Dési Boutarese. As Reuters reports:

At the end of the summit ... a statement was issued demanding answers from France, Portugal, Italy and Spain. The United States was not mentioned in the statement.

"Europe broke all the rules of the game," Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said shortly after arriving at the Cochabamba airport. "We're here to tell President Evo Morales that he can count on us. Whoever picks a fight with Bolivia, picks a fight with Venezuela."

Maduro said an unnamed European government minister had told Venezuela that the CIA, the U.S. spy agency, was behind the incident.

"We are not colonies any more," Uruguayan President Jose Mujica said. "We deserve respect, and when one of our governments is insulted we feel the insult throughout Latin America." ...

Noticeably absent from the Cochabamba gathering was the president of regional heavyweight Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, who sent her international affairs adviser and a deputy foreign minister to the meeting.

The presidents and foreign ministers of Chile, Peru and Colombia, which have good relations with the United States, also stayed away. In a written statement, Colombia's foreign ministry called on Bolivia and the European governments involved to find a diplomatic solution.

Bolivia and Venezuela were also irked at receiving provisional arrest requests for Snowden from Washington, a move Bolivia called "illegal and unfounded".

The UNASUR statement (or UNASUR Six?), aka, Declaration of Cochabamba, called the overflight denials violations of international law and says that Evo was "virtually taken hostage" ("convirtiéndolo virtualmente en un rehén").

In this kind of diplomatic situation, it's important to keep in mind that politically operative assumptions are not the same as journalistically or legally documented facts. So far as I'm aware as of this writing, Washington has not admitted to pushing France, Italy, Portugal or Spain to withdraw overflight rights from Evo's plane. But it's a very plausible assumption, almost an inevitable one. Cenk Uygur in The Young Turks report does a decent job of framing that. He also addresses the uncertainty as to whether the plane was actually searched while it was on the ground in Vienna. Marcy Wheeler writes in Europe again stuck saying, "They told us they were sure" Emptywheel 07/05/2013:

In point of fact, it’s not yet clear Snowden wasn't on the plane. While Austrian authorities checked the passports of the known passengers on the plane, they apparently did not conduct a thorough search. And 3 Spaniards who showed up to conduct a search were denied entry (though Morales did stop in the Canary Islands, which would have provided another opportunity to conduct a search on Spanish territory, but by that point Morales was already making a literal international incident about his treatment).

Granovsky quotes Argentine human rights attorney Leandro Despouy, one of the authors of the 2009 UN special report that charged prisoners were being tortured in the Guantánamo gulag station, points out that some of the countries denying overflight rights to Evo's plane did grant overflight to American planes they knew to be carrying prisoners kidnapped by the United States.

Diana Cariboni and Jared Metzker comment on the Latin American angle to the story in Snowden Is No Trifling Matter IPS News 07/04/2013:

Morales' aircraft was rerouted and forced to land in Austria, where it was stuck on the tarmac for 14 hours. The governments implicated in the incident brandished technical explanations, and after hours of heated negotiations, the presidential jet was allowed to take off again.

While it was grounded, the plane and its passengers were apparently subjected to some kind of inspection, the scope of which is not yet clear. But afterwards, Austria's foreign minister, Michael Spindelegger, stated that there were only Bolivian citizens in the aircraft.

The incident violates international law, because aircraft carrying national leaders have diplomatic immunity. Bolivian diplomats complained at the United Nations that Morales had been "kidnapped" during the time he was grounded in Austria. And the indignation spread to other South American governments.

They also report on the diplomatic pressures the US is bringing against offers of asylum to Snowden. The highly unusual action against Evo Morales is part of this pressure:

Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said "It seems either the U.S. had something to do (with the decision to deny the airspace) or it was done out of a sense of solidarity with the U.S.

It is possible they made the decision alone based on a recognition of how serious this issue is to the U.S."

Shifter said that normally such a drastic step would indicate a state of war. He described it as "An extreme overreaction ... Whatever one thinks about Snowden or Morales, it seems like this was disrespectful of international law."

He also said the incident "looks terrible in political terms.“It was out of proportion. It reflects a patronising, paternalistic mindset that stronger countries can bully weaker ones."

But he disagreed with Younger that it would facilitate a Latin American refuge for Snowden. "What this ultimately underscores is how seriously the U.S. regards this case," he said.

"It may be tempting to take Snowden in in order to needle the U.S., but the consequences of that will have to be taken into consideration. The U.S., for all its weaknesses, is still the U.S.," he said. [my emphasis]

Tags: anna chapman, argentina, bolivia, cristina fernández, domestic spying, edward snowden, evo morales, obama administration, nsa spying, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

More surveillance stories

Here a couple of quick takes on the US dragnet surveillance story.

Greg Miller, Misinformation on classified NSA programs includes statements by senior U.S. officials Washington Post 06/30/2013; see commentary by Digby, Whose interests are the secrets serving? Hullabaloo 07/01/2013, Miller's article addresses one point of interpretation in the early Glenn Greenwald reporting on Edward Snowden's revelations, "News accounts of the NSA programs have also contained inaccuracies, in some cases because of the source materials. Classified NSA slides that were published by The Post indicated that the NSA was able to tap directly into the servers of Google, Microsoft, Apple and other technology companies. The companies denied that they allowed direct access to their equipment, although they did not dispute that they cooperated with the NSA."

Rick Perlstein made much of that distinction in his dispute with Greenwald over the story. See Glenn Greenwald's 'Epic Botch'? The Nation 06/13/2013 and subsequent posts in Rick's Nation blog. Perlstein relies heavily in his criticism on the arguments of Karl Fogel, which he elaborates in Epic botch of the PRISM story Rants.org 06/11/2013 and further posts on that blog.

But it has always sounded to me like a distinction without much of a difference.

Ludwig Greven, Merkel muss den USA jetzt drohen Zeit Online 01.07.2013 applauds the idea of the EU threatening the US over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) to get them to back off the current level of, uh, friendly espionage they the Obama Administration conducting against our EU and NATO (supposed) friends and partners.

Barrett Brown holds forth on The cyber-intelligence complex and its useful idiots Guardian 07/01/2013:

Summing up the position of those who worry less over secret government powers than they do over the whistleblowers who reveal such things, we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that we can trust small cadres of unaccountable spies with broad powers over our communications. We must all wish Friedman luck with this prediction. Other proclamations of his – including that Vladimir Putin would bring transparency and liberal democracy to Russia, and that the Chinese regime would not seek to limit its citizens' free access to the internet – have not aged especially well.

An unkind person might dismiss Friedman as the incompetent harbinger of a dying republic. Being polite, I will merely suggest that Friedman's faith in government is as misplaced as faith in the just and benevolent God that we know not to exist – Friedman having been the winner of several of the world's most-coveted Pulitzer Prizes.

Tags: barack obama, domestic spying, edward snowden, obama administration, nsa spying, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

Massive NSA spying and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP)

Video report from Euronews, New NSA spy claims hit Germany as EU calls on Washington for explanations 06/30/2013


This could be one very good effect of the NSA spying revelations, to make it harder to get a deal closed on the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP), a treaty currently being negotiated that is basically aimed at undercutting regulations on banks and other corporations, lowering incomes for most people and overriding existing consumer protection laws. (Claus Hecking and Stefan Schultz, Spying 'Out of Control': EU Official Questions Trade Negotiations Spiegel International 06/30/2013)

Maybe if corporations start realizing that the massive domestic surveillance programs could really start costing them money by torpedoing a treaty they want, some of them will start pushing politicians they, uh, sponsor, to put some functional privancy limits in place. Not that the TTIP would be any better because of that!

Of course, the Obama Administration and other supporters of the spectacularly wide-ranging might say this is more evidence of how Edward Snowden and news outlets that printed his and other revelations about the NSA spying program have hurt the national interests of the US.

Part of what is going on here, I say as someone who hasn't followed the news about "cyberwar" and cyber espionage in great detail, seems to be that the world is hashing out new standards for what is acceptable and unacceptable spying. Of course, all countries outlaw espionage, even for friendly countries. And all countries engage in it, including against friendly countries.

So alongside the laws that are often honored in the breach, there is an elaborate set of diplomatic protocols and side agreements about just how far one country will go in retaliating against another for routine espionage. And part of what we're seeing now is surely a shaking out of what those new informal practices and protocols will be in international law and foreign relations will be.

But as the EU's reaction shows, some European countries that are on very friendly terms with the United States think that the US stepped over that informal line. When it comes to dragnet spying, the formal, legal restrictions don't seem to concern the Obama Administration excessively.

Chris Strohm reports for Bloomberg Businessweek in A Privacy Board Was Supposed to Protect Americans From NSA Spies 06/27/2013 that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that is one of the "transparency" and oversight safeguards against the program being abused is about as useless as the Congress and the courts have been in exercising any oversight or imposing any limits on whatever domestic spying the President decides he wants to do.

So, we know the NSA and other federal and local agencies are conducted what collectively amounts to a gigantic domestic surveillance dragnet. The federal programs have what is apparently no effective oversight on what the Executive Branch is doing with the program. There is a secret court, the FISA court, that approves broad Executive requests and issues secret warrants but it's all secret. Citizens can't get any relief from the regular federal court system because the Administration argues no one has standing to take action unless they can prove they're being spied on and they can't prove that unless the Administration provides information on the programs and they don't because they're secret. There is nominal Congressional oversight, but none of them can talk publicly and explicitly about programs going on that they see are dangerous or illegal because the programs are secret. Even when Members of Congress think Administration officials are committing the federal felony of lying to Congress about the programs, they can't say publicly why they think a crime is being committed because it's all secret.

Supposedly these programs are helping the Administration catch terrorists all over the place. But they can't tell us anything convincing on who or how because it's secret. And the revelations about the program from Snowden's leaks are damaging the anti-terrorism effort badly. But they can't say how, either, because it's all secret. Except for the leaks of apparently classified information that say it's having some bad effects, leaks which aren't prosecuted by the Administration. Or officially verified. Because it's all secret.

The mainstream media, to the extent they don't try to ignore the programs altogether, are generally uninterested in serious investigative reporting on them - fortunately with a few exceptions. Since everything's secret, the public's information on what their government is doing with these vast surveillance programs, even on the broad outlines of the programs, is largely coming from whistleblowers who risk espionage charges, life in prison or indefinite exile abroad to make the information public. Even when the actions revealed may be illegal actions against American citizens. And the conventional wisdom among the Beltway Village reporters is more inclined to criticize the government for not having caught the leakers sooner than to push for more responsible reporting on the massive domestic spying programs.

I suppose if you think that Obama, and all of the folks at the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and all of the 1.4 million holders of security clearances, many of them working at private contractors like Edward Snowden was, will always be honest and responsible in their acquisition and use of the information, then it's all great. Even though anonymous pro-Administration sources are telling the press that it will take the government months yet to figure out what all Snowden may have taken.

I'm certainly not convinced.

Tags: barack obama, domestic spying, edward snowden, guantánamo, obama administration, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

Obama, a President who has seriously failed the rule of law

"It is not ... war crimes and torture that upsets the Nobel Peace Prize winner in the White House, but rather those that manage to make these crimes public," writes Ralph Sina in George W. Obama: Das Ende einer Hoffnung Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 7/2013 (July 2013) ("Es sind somit nicht Kriegsverbrechen und Folter, die den Friedensnobelpreisträger im Weißen Haus empören, sondern jene, die es wagen, diese Verbrechen publik zu machen.")

Sina's article focuses on Obama's massive domestic and international spying programs and his harsh war on whistleblowers including Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden. The article could have used some closer editing. In the first paragraph, for instance he says that George W. Bush retired to his "farm", apparently unaware that Bush dumped his famous ranch for a place in Dallas as soon as he no longer saw the need for the ranch as a showplace where he could imitate Ronald Reagan playing a cowboy.

But he does make some important points. One that I don't see made often enough about Obama treatment of Bradley Manning was his openly declaring that Manning was guilty of a crime. As Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, this creates tremendous and illegitimate pressure on the military court martial to find him guilty and hand out the most severe sentence. Some of the "torture-like" conditions to which Manning was subjected were modified when a reporter finally confronted Obama with a question about it in public. But it went on unconscionably for a long time. And there was no indication that Obama ordered any disciplinary measures for those who ordered Manning's disgraceful treatment.

Obama, after all, had already publicly declared Manning a criminal and (effectively) a traitor. And he adopted an indefensible Look Forward Not Backward policy toward prosecuting torture crimes and war crimes under the Cheney-Bush Administration.

He points also to the shameless situation, which Obama as President owns, that at least 56 inmates at the Guantánamo torture gulag that even the authoritarian Obama Administration acknowledge to be innocent of any crime are still indefinitely imprisoned there. Obama, who has no scruples launched drone "signature strike" assassination against completely unknown persons, has the power to have fixed that situation for those innocent men. He also has the power and the solemn obligation to prosecute those who falsely imprisoned men like that them and tortured so many, brutally murdering some of them in the process. But he won't prosecute the torturers. And I fully expect he will leave office with those innocent prisoners at Guantánamo still there with no foreseeable prospect of resolving their situation.

Obama's most important Constitutional responsibility as President was and still is restoring the rule of law after the Cheney-Bush Administration's tortures and war crimes. He has completely rejected that responsibility.

Toward the end of the piece, Sina points out that Obama's extreme policies on electronic surveillance mean that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the neoliberal trade treaty now being negotiated between the US and the EU, would carry real dangers for EU laws and constitutional principles of privacy and individual rights. These treaties are a favorite instrument in the neoliberal framework of economic policy to undermine protections for workers and consumers and, in the case of telecommunications, individual rights for the financial benefit of the corporations involved and for the governments dominated by them.

Sina concludes of Obama, "Nicht nur Amerika hat einen großen Hoffnungsträger verloren, sondern auch Europa." ("Not only America but also Europe has lost a great focus for hope.")

Tags: accountability for torture, barack obama, bradley manning, edward snowden, guantánamo, obama administration, torture, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip

Who benefits from neoliberal policies in Europe?

The Real News reports on last week's protests over the shutting down of the Greek state TV service ERT, Thousands Strike Greek Gov't Pulling the Plug on State TV 06/13/2013:

Greek democrats won a victory on ERT Monday, as the BBC News reports in Greek court suspends ERT broadcaster closure 06/17/2013. The conflict over ERT has increased the possibility of new elections coming soon: " as coalition leaders went into talks, the main opposition party Syriza held a rally in Athens' Syntagma Square to demand early elections."

The Austrian news magazine Profil in an article by Christina Hiptmayr asks, Milliarden für Griechenland: Wer sind die Profiteure? ("Billions for Greece: Who are the profiteers?") 17.06.2013. Short answers:

• We can't tell you; it's secret (German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and Jörg Asmussen, a director of the ECB)
• Deutsche Bank (that doesn't want higher taxes now on financial institutions)
• Some of Greece's creditors (although who benefited by how much, we don't know)
• Big European banks (which ones, consult Herrs Schäuble and Asmussen)
• Hedge funds (for details, ask Schäuble and Asmussen)
• European insurance companies (check with Schäuble and Asmussen on who and how much)

Hiptmayr's article is largely devoted to a new report by the left-leaning ATTAC Austria group, which is often described misleading as an "anti-globalization" group, Greek Bail-Out: 77% went into the Financial Sector 17.06.2013, with additional background material.

When the Greek debt crisis became obvious in 2009, the Troika (EU, ECB, IMF) acting at German Chancellor Angela Merkel's direction and insistence, didn't take the action that even then was very obviously needed, imposing a "haircut," a debt writedown, on the Greek public debt. That would have required Greece's creditors, not least among then German and French banks, to take losses at a time when their income and balance sheets were already under pressure from the "North Atlantic crisis," as Joseph Stiglitz and others describe the current depression.

This Yannis Ioannou cartoon of 06/06/2013 shows predators charging into Greece behind the Troika tank flying the flags of the IMF and the eurozone:

The English version of ATTAC's report concludes, "At least 77% of the bail-out money can directly or indirectly be attributed to the financial sector," though it notes that "the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have applied 23 tranches comprising €206,9 billion to the so-called 'Greek bail-out'," but "have however provided hardly any documentation on the exact usage of those huge amounts of public funds."

But the report describes the following estimate of how they estimate €204.1 billion of the €206.9 billion was applied:

• €58,2 billion (28,13%) were used to recapitalise Greek banks – instead of restructuring the too big and moribund sector in a sustainable way and letting the banks' owners pay for their losses.
• €101,331 billion (48,98%) went to creditors of the Greek state. €55,44 billion of these were used to repay maturing government bonds – instead of letting the creditors bear the risk for which they had received interest payments before. Another €34,6 billion served as incentive to make creditors agree to the so-called "haircut" in March 2012. €11,3 billion were used in a debt buyback in December 2012, when the Greek state bought back almost worthless bonds from its creditors.
• €43,7 billion (22,46%) went into the national budget or couldn't be definitively attributed.
• €0,9 billion (0,43%) were used as Greek contribution to the new bail-out fund ESM.

Greece wound up with a bailout that prevented them from defaulting on payments to their creditors for a couple of years, while much of the Greek debt was then transferred off the books of private creditors and on to those of public institutions. Not all the beneficiaries were non-Greeks, though:

Among those actually rescued is the multi-billion Latsis clan, one of the richest families in Greece, owning large parts of the state-rescued "Eurobank Ergasias". Speculators benefited, too: During the debt buyback in December 2012, the hedge fund Third Point pocketed €500 million with the aid of European public funds. "When Barroso, the President of the European Commission, labels the so-called Greek bail-out an act of solidarity, you have to ask: Solidarity with whom?", [Lisa] Mittendrein [a member of ATTAC Austria's governing board] comments.

The report gives a glimpse of how this "solidarity" bailout may look to Greeks:

• Several times, EU and IMF reneged on their announcements and withheld promised disbursements by weeks or even months to put pressure on Greek democracy: in autumn 2011 to prevent a referendum on austerity policy; in May/June 2012 to raise the chances of Troika-friendly parties in the national elections. By withholding promised funds, the Troika forces the Greek government to issue short-term bonds to avoid imminent bankruptcy. Since those "treasury bills", maturing within a few weeks or months, carry a higher interest rate, this actually increases Greek government debt. This serves as further evidence that debt reduction is not the Troika's main interest, but rather a pretext to push forward the destruction of the welfare state and workers' rights.
• A tranche of €1 billion disbursed in June 2012 was primarily used to finance Greece's compulsory contribution to the EFSF-replacement ESM. Thus, the EFSF financed its own successor – yet not directly but by raising Greek government debt.

Profil's Hiptmayr takes care to distance herself a bit from the hippies at ATTAC Austria with this stale bit of euro-crisis conventional wisdom:

Keine Frage, die Hauptschuld an ihrem Schuldendesaster tragen die Griechen selbst. Doch das Geld, etwa für die Finanzierung ihres aufgeblähten Staatsapparates, haben sie sich von ausländischen Investoren geliehen. Diese haben kräftig mitverdient am Verschwendungswahn Griechenlands.

[No question that the primary fault for the debt disaster lies upon the Greeks themselves. Certainly, foreign investors lent them the financing for their overblown state apparatus. They also mightily empowered Greece's wasteful madness.]

Please. The more German and Austrian media repeat this kind of lazy non-analysis, the more surprised their readers will be when Greece or Spain bails out of the euro and the prices for German and Austrian exports soar, with results most Germans and Austrians will not like.

Former SPD Chancellor and longtime professional elder statesman Helmut Schmidt gave an interview to the Handelsblatt paper, „Der Euro ist prima“ 17.06.2013, in which he called (somewhat obliquely in the linked report) for a Krugmanesque stimulatory fiscal policies in Germany that would involved increasing German wages and salaries and raise inflation in Germany in order to power a recovery that could lift the rest of the eurozone out of the current recession and put the whole currency zone into a sustainable growth path. He also criticized the exorbitant salaries of bank executives.

I'm confident Angela Merkel won't listen to him. Nor will she listen to his warning that it has been a big mistake for her to play such an obviously leading role in Europe as she has with her austerity policies. He thinks that, because of the Second World War and the Holocaust, such a role would not be feasible for Germany "for centuries."

As part of the current G-8 summit in Northern Ireland, the negotiations officially began on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), another neoliberal project to reduce wages, weaken unions, eliminate worker protections, promote privatization and deregulate corporations. The fact that Merkel is enthusiastic about it is reason enough in itself to be extremely suspicious of it.

Obama spoke about it today along with others. (Remarks by President Obama, U.K. Prime Minister Cameron, European Commission President Barroso, and European Council President Van Rompuy on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership 06/17/2013) According to these fellows, it's all good:

Cameron: "And we should be clear about what these numbers could really mean: 2 million extra jobs, more choice and lower prices in our shops."

Barroso: "I’d rather have our companies invest in you, in overseas products and services and job creation, than in double-testing, or multiple inspections, or even separate manufacturing lines. Our regulators need to build bridges faster and more systematically." Yeah, all this inspecting bridges and such is soo-oooo 20th century! "So even if these negotiations may not always be easy, I’m sure they will be worth it for the sake of the jobs it creates and because of the strategic dimension of what we are doing."

Obama: "It would increase exports, decrease barriers to trade and investment. As part of broader growth strategies in both our economies, it would support hundreds of thousands of jobs on both sides of the ocean."

Van Rompuy: "It shows the political will to work together -- to work together with our long-standing and most trusted partner on the essential objective for governments on either side of the Atlantic -- growth, jobs, and prosperity."

Did I mention they said it would create jobs?

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, greece, transatlantic trade and investment partnership, ttip