Posted on 10/08/2015 8:15:57 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
After six years of negotiations, a final Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement has been reached in Atlanta. Check your pacemakers, trade policy wonks. This is about as exciting as it gets in our world.
First, congratulations are in order for the TPP negotiators, who worked extremely hard over the past several years in an environment of profound public skepticism – much of it driven by pervasive scaremongering – to arrive at this moment. Reaching accord on a broad array of subjects between 12 countries at different levels of economic development with disparate policy objectives is not a task for the faint of heart.
Second, there is still quite a bit of work to be done on the domestic front. Even with the deal “concluded,” the president cannot sign the agreement until 90 days after he officially announces his intention to do so. During that period, there will be intensive consultations between the administration and Congress over the details; the legal text of the agreement will be made available to the public on the internet; the USTR advisory committees will submit their assessments of the deal to Congress; and there will be ample opportunity for informed, robust domestic debate about the deal’s pros and cons.
After the 90-day consultation period, the president can return to the TPP partners with input from Congress, which may or may not warrant modifications to the deal to improve its chances of ratification. Once the deal is signed, the administration then has a maximum of 60 days to prepare a list of all U.S. laws that will need to be changed on account of TPP; the U.S. International Trade Commission will have a maximum of 105 days to do an analysis of the likely impact of the TPP on the U.S. economy; the congressional trade committees will perform mock markups of the implementing legislation; and, then, the final TPP implementing legislation will be introduced in both chambers. After the legislation is introduced, the House will have 60 days and the Senate will have 30 days to hold votes.
These requirements stem from the Trade Promotion Authority legislation enacted over the summer. If the TPP is going to be ratified by this Congress under this president, the timelines suggest that there isn’t much room for delay. Although it has become an article of faith that trade bills don’t move during election years, there is simply no avoiding the TPP landing in Congress’s lap and animating the presidential debates and primary elections. Expect a vote anytime after July 2016, including, possibly, during the lame duck. (And watch to see whether and how Hillary Clinton contorts her position to come back around to supporting the deal she helped launch as Sectretary of State.)
As to substance, I’m not offering any endorsements until I have a chance to review the text. In fact, my trade center colleagues and I intend to do a chapter-by-chapter assessment of the deal, rating each on a scale of 0 (protectionist) to 10 (free trade), and providing an aggregate TPP grade. We expect the scores for some chapters will be pulled down by certain terms that amount to baked-in protectionism. For example, apparently the United States “secured” a 25 year phase-out period for our 2.5% auto import tariffs and a 30 year phase-out for our 25% pick-up truck tariff. Gee, thanks for that shot glass of economic freedom.
Like most legislation that comes before Congress, there will be both good and bad terms in the TPP. If the agreement is net liberalizing, I will likely offer my endorsement. And, as I like to say about these trade deals, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Will the GOP traitors who voted for the SECRET deal
be able to read it now?
Will the American people?
The TPP is dangerous because it undermines the most basic elements of US sovereignty and our Constitution, and would make it virtually impossible for the US to do anything to protect our communities or enforce the border. The TPP has a bunch of sections that focus on arbitrations called “ISDS”, which basically allows all the crony capitalists and buddies of Obama to bring unlimited lawsuits against any policy they consider inconvenient for their open-borders globalism.
It would allow George Soros, Sheldon Adelson, Mark Zuckerberg and the Chamber of Commerce to go crying to a bunch of self-appointed arbitrators and lobbyists about how US restrictions on immigration, border enforcement and the H1b visa are cutting into their profits, and then poof, just like that, the TPP gives them the power to override US sovereignty and basic border laws. Thus there would be no limit to H1b visas since this would “cut into the profits” of Mark Zuckerberg (even Ted Cruz has waved a white flag on the H1b visa issue and supported even more visas— a shame, since he’s lost my vote on that vount alone). Even worse, the US border would be left wide open and enforcement would be illegal since this would “cut into the profits” of Soros, Adelson and the Chamber of Commerce crony capitalists.
If the TPP were to pass, you can kiss America goodbye. The ISDS lawsuits would cripple anything that would make us even resemble a sovereign nation. We’d quickly become a banana republic and then fall apart into a gaggle of little 3rd world statelets. Any Republican who’s supported this mess deserves a primary challenge and a nasty public denunciation.
So the loss of national sovereignty and the loss of individual freedoms don't matter to these folks. All that matters is that we avoid the "evils" of protectionism.
What a schmuck.
Lots of unemployed, under employed and desperate Americans on the way and he can’t contain his excitement.
For those who naively argue that Treaties do not supersede the Constitution, here is your proof. There is a reason our founders made it difficult to ratify treaties, and why they should be few.
All who voted for TPA - yes that means you Sen Cruz - need to be held accountable for their treason.
And before you flame me Cruzbots, if TPA had not passed, TPP would not be here today. Cruz voted for TPA. Your hero is not what he portrays himself as - look at the votes not the words.
I used tu support him. Then came TPA, then Corker, then the Koch Brothers, then Club For Growth. He does a better job of fooling conservatives than Rubio, but the end result is the same: amnesty and huge increases in H1-B visas. That investment banker wife will be sure to make that happen.
If they don't the treaty is dead right? Or is this like the Corker Iran bill travesty?
This violation of our national sovereign must not go in unanswered from those who voted for it they should be made to pay Price.
As far as I’m concerned, every single incumbent politician needs to be thrown out.
But Congress cleverly considers trade agreements to be merely a part of regulating commerce with other nations, and therefore, Congress merely needs to pass implementing legislation by simple majority votes.
Agree with you 100%. I used to be for Ted Cruz, until he announced his supporting for more than tripling the corrupt, anti-American H1b visa and flooding our industries with slave labor from India. Cruz is nothing more than a RINO traitor just like McCain, Rubio, Ayotte, Graham, Fiorina, Hatch, Flake and Jeb Bush himself.
He didn’t start that way, but embracing the H1b visa and the TPP put Cruz squarely in the RINO category. Those two issues and gun rights are absolutely non-negotiable for any Republican calling himself a Constitutional conservative, and Cruz has betrayed the base on two of those. Unacceptable.
Yeah, in fact the TPP is dead if any one of the 12 nations rejects it, so we need to be licking our chops to fight it hard on every front. Great way to save our country, humiliate Obama and deprive him of his legacy, and crush the RINO’s and their lackeys all in a single stroke.
Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal Reached! Now What?
*********
All who voted for TPA - yes that means you Sen Cruz - need to be held accountable for their treason.
Let’s be sure to send them ALL a “thank you” note...from We the People...who are sick and tired of politicians putting $$/power over country and constituents.
Agreed
So which candidate(s) are you supporting?
Congress cleverly considers a trade agreement part of regulating international commerce (Article I, Section 8), as opposed to a treaty. These trade agreements, which include all sorts of provisions, would seem to me like the latter.
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