The Trade Deal From Hell Gets Worse

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

28 March 15

hanks to our friends at WikiLeaks, we have now learned more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade deal from hell for which the president and all responsible people in both parties have a conspicuous case of the hots. It seems that in their desire to bless us all with the benefits of "free" trade, the negotiators have managed to outsource not only all the manufacturing jobs that are worth a damn, but also the job of domestic environmental spoilage.

The leak reveals that the TPP would replicate the ISDS language found in past U.S. agreements under which tribunals have ordered more than $3.6 billion in compensation to foreign investors attacking land use rules; water, energy and timber policies; health, safety and environmental protections; financial stability policies and more. And while the Obama administration has sought to quell growing concerns about the ISDS threat with claims that past pacts' problems would be remedied in the TPP, the leaked text does not include new safeguards relative to past U.S. ISDS-enforced pacts. Indeed, this version of the text, which shows very few remaining areas of disagreement, eliminates various safeguard proposals that were included in a 2012 leaked TPP Investment Chapter text.

If you want an example of the hard sell behind this second-story job, you can check out George Effing Will's paean to income inequality. The benefits of "free" trade is subtext in every argument he makes about letting the rich keep all of their money. After all, things like the TPP are the ultimate in trickle-down utopianism.

The best way to (in Barack Obama's 2008 words to Joe the Plumber) "spread the wealth around," is, Tamny argues, "to leave it in the hands of the wealthy." Personal consumption absorbs a small portion of their money and the remainder is not idle. It is invested by them, using the skill that earned it. Will it be more beneficially employed by the political class of a confiscatory government?

This is the argument of the mole people, who know nobody else except themselves, and who win every argument they have with the face in their gilded mirror.