| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Trade and TPP
Trade and TPP
Dr. Adrian H. Krieg CMFGE
TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) is an intended treaty involving 14 nations, essentially an expansion of “Free Trade” the “Trojan Horse” of multinational and globalist interests. The planned treaty consists of 29 chapters only 5 of which deal with trade, not unlike NAFTA that comprise two entire books and over 1,000 pages of text. The intended treaty will encompass 40% of the worlds GNP. 600 multinational corporations are the authors of the plan and members of the “partnership”. It is the largest planned international treaty ever considered in world history. The treaty will cover international relationships between Banking, Internet, Labor, Hospitals, Healthcare, as well as environmental issues. TPP is secret; no portion of it has been released. Congressmen are allowed to read it but must submit any notes to review (censorship); no one outside the 600 multinationals has a full copy. We know this from the three chapters revealed by Julian Assange of WIKILEAKS. The American US Chamber of Commerce is the major drumbeater for TPP. The Chamber claims that TPP will increase trade, employment, improve infrastructure and many other things; proof of the assertions is sadly missing, evidence is contrary. TPP benefits multinational corporations and nothing else.
Free trade treaties (actually to this date only agreements) are a national scandal demonstrated by NAFTA whose deleterious results are; 11.7 million lost blue-collar jobs, 57,000 small business closures, my corporation included, and an annual trade surplus of $5.7 billion with Mexico turned into a $56 billion deficit. The fact that TPP is intended as a treaty makes things much worse. If TPP is passed by congress it becomes part of constitutional law and American challenges to any segment of the treaty will have to be approved by all signatories, i.e. all 12 nations that signed onto TPP and require a 2/3rds majority in congress to change it. This makes modification, possible challenge and change to the treaty virtually impossible. If enacted TPP will destroy any remaining family businesses and farms with multinational corporations overtaking all production. Hello New World Order!
A large portion of the intended treaty deals with the Internet, regulating what service providers must collect, what content shall be allowed, and how it will be regulated. Present American control of ICANN is planned to be terminated and the Internet to be controlled by an international body. (Good-bye net neutrality, 4th amendment and 1st amendment)
Local i.e. national labor, marketing, distribution, and sales regulations will be terminated and surpassed by TPP regulations. Protection of domestic industries will be terminated—no protective duties or tariffs. A local American producer will be forced to compete with any producer of the 12 signatories to TPP as well as the six of NAFTA & CAFTA, (Dominica, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua) which are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zeeland, Peru, Singapore, Viet Nam and USA, (18 nations). Already existing free trade through NAFTA/CAFTA are [USA/Canada/Mexico], Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Presently existing “Free Trade” agreements have resulted in 10 years of annual trade deficits totaling over $ 4 trillion. Put more clearly for 240 months we have as a nation imported more than we export. We additionally have free trade agreements with Panama and South Korea. Let me simplify this; we will have treaties and agreements with 20 nations, every one but Canada of which has lower wages, less regulations, lower or no social labor protections, and our manufacturing industries are supposed to compete with them based on production, regulatory and environmental regulations that make manufacturing in America from 1 to 80 times more expensive.
The plan simply is to eliminate small and family owned business, long the bane of multinationals, and total control of the world economy by 600 multinational corporations. Governments love this idea; multinational corporations are large like governments, inefficient, and generally do not develop new products, services, or inventions, but steal them from those smaller firms who produce them.
In the to-date released chapters we learn of a peculiar provision in the plan to stifle competition. Assuming that some governmental authority decided to build or grant to a business a toll bridge over a river, but a private contractor owned a highway bridge nearby, under TPP that contactor can sue the government for loss of business. This would equally apply to healthcare facilities, hospitals, or sports stadiums. It is nothing but protection from competition for existing large business.
Examining the basic concept put forward by progressives is the theory that through the increase of interdependence between nations through the liberalization of trade and elimination of tariffs and duties, the world will become more peaceful because we will all be dependent upon each other. This concept has no credibility at all; it is a theory that has over time been proven wrong. Mexico has demonstrated a worsening relationship with America, as has China and we have trade agreements with both of them. All that this has produced is loss of American manufacture, loss of blue-collar employment, and drastic increases of trade deficits. Let me be very clear here; any nation that produces year on year trade defects will at some point see the erosion of value of their currencies. Any nation that does not manufacture becomes the colony of the nation that manufactures! The ultimate cost of continued deficits is monitory inflation, i.e. a continuation of ever-rising prices. Present American dollar inflation is about 10.7% annually not the Disneyworld on the Potomac claimed 1.7%.
If TPP were to be passed, inflation and unemployment will grow drastically. Many more family owned businesses will go down the tubes. Manufacturing will in America end. Why? Because the average wages in America and Canada are about $32.50 per. hrs. China is $0.75C, India is $0.81C, Mexico is $4.04, Japan is $27.80, S. Korea is $16.20, and Singapore is $ 18.72, (Switzerland with the highest hourly wage at $43.28 also has the lowest unemployment rate, because most employment is super high skilled). To ovoid embarrassment I will not list hourly wages in nations of CAFTA. In crass terms manufacturing costs can be separated into labor, raw materials, and government costs. Of these, raw materials are in most cases the lowest portion, and labor is the highest. For this reason many manufacturing enterprises farm out labor-intensive portions of production to places where costs, especially labor and government regulations are lower. Beginning with the Maquiladora programs (w. Mexico) that pre-date NAFTA. American manufacturers transferred well over two million jobs prior to NAFTA, to Mexico, and that’s just in the automotive, TV/radio industries. In case you have not noticed America who invented TV no longer makes them. Instead of addressing this problem Washington claims that TPP will offset China’s huge trade imbalance with America, it will do no such thing. The ultimate outcome of TPP will be a shift of trade imbalance from China to Asian TPP members, which will result in China aggressively soliciting high labor cost parts manufacture from TPP member states to China to keep their costs low.
We have reached the point where we are so dependent on Japan, S. Korea, and China that we are no longer able to produce military hardware to supply our defense needs. TPP will expand this dependency. Conversely, no other nation is so dependent upon foreign suppliers as is America.
International trade is exactly that, we purchase goods overseas and they collect dollars for it. We set the value of the dollar because it is the international reserve currency, something that like the English Pound (£) was, that will soon end. When we then consider the result of the loss of the dollar as international reserve currency, forcing American business to purchase goods in other than dollar denominated currency, combining it with TPP, we see the end of America and the beginning of an international multinational business cartel controlling 40% of the world’s economy.
TPP has nothing to do with trade, free or otherwise. TPP is an instrument to eliminate competition from the multinationals and to once again jack up their profit margins, as usual at the expense of the American Middle Class. All this smells of Obamacare and its 20,000 pages of rules and regulations, we will again be told; “you must pass this so that we call all find out what’s in it” (Nancy Pelosi)
Dr. Krieg was on the CT/RI DEC (District Export Council), an international trade advisory body to the USDC for 15 years from the Reagan Admin to the Clinton Admin. He was opposed to NAFTA from its proposal days, having lived in Mexico he was well informed on Mexican production costs.
For more information go to: www.a2zPublications.com
