Have you read the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal yet? You can read it right here, as no less a personage than President Obama himself informed me via email the other day. I’ve only made it to Chapter 2 so far (there are 30 chapters). It kicks insomnia’s ass.
As CP Pierce points out, Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs says it’s a lousy deal that should be voted down. According to Sachs, TPP’s provisions “enshrine the power of corporate capital above all other parts of society, including labor and even governments,” and while it gives lip service to social fairness and sustainability goals, “the agreements are thin, unenforceable, and generally unimaginative.”
Climate change isn’t even mentioned, according to Sachs. Senator Warren also gives the proposal a frowny face.
Pierce concludes that this deal, along with education policy, “is going to be one of the only acts of [Obama’s] presidency with which the president justifies the criticisms levelled at him from the left.” Sounds about right.
If these analyses are accurate, I’m glad the Democratic candidates are fleeing the TPP like workers running toward daylight from a collapsing mine. But if the pessimists among us are to be believed, some version of a shitty deal is inevitable because Global Economy.
Maybe President Obama is among those pessimists and that’s why he supports this particular shitty deal. I’ve quoted my old co-blogger StrangeAppar8us on this topic before because he was so right about the declining influence of national sovereignty and rising power of multinational corporations:
In truth, nations have been obsolete as sovereign organizational units for some time. There are sovereign corporations and sovereign piles of capital, but nations are basically accounting entries associated with a particular profile of a) indigenous resources, b) comparative labor costs, c) relative social stability, d) relative currency strength and e) relative weakness of business taxation and regulatory controls. Local military power still matters, and some nations still command a certain reflexive residual deference to their post-WWII/Cold War primacy. However, in an age of cheap intercontinental shipping and wire transfers, nations are basically cultural theme parks competing for ticket sales.
One of my cousins once played “Goofy” at Disney World, wearing a hot, stuffy costume in the 90-degree heat for minimum wage while toddlers kicked him in the shins and older children whacked him in the nuts with replica light sabers. Welcome to the New Economy, fellow characters.