New chatter on silent TPP talks
The United States is moving to fast-track the signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), while the residents of other signatory nations demand to know what is in store.
Legislation to give US President Barack Obama the authority to fast-track the far-reaching trade deal cleared committees in both houses of Congress last week.
It means final votes in both houses will take place by the end of May, meaning all 12 TPP trade ministers will enter a final negotiating round in the next four to six weeks, officials say.
The TPPA is seen as a broad effort to contain China by building a ring of exclusively linked economies around it.
But for the nations that do sign on, the deal to stay on top of China requires a range of concessions, as governments give up certain rights to control the trade activities of companies operating within their borders.
Extended drug patents and the right for international companies to sue governments that inhibit their growth are among the concessions that countries including Australia are about to make.
Two of the main driving forces behind the deal have been the governments of the US and Japan.
Barack Obama has argued that the TPP will bring better paying, export-fuelled jobs, while Japan’s President Shinzo Abe sees the TPP as a way to open up to competition certain higly-protected segments of the Japanese economy.
Chief among these sectors is the politically influential Japanese farming market.
Abe’s enthusiasm to get the deal done has sparked legal action in Japan.
Activists have filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government in an attempt to halt its involvement in the talks.
“A total of 1,063 plaintiffs, including eight lawmakers, claimed in the case brought to the Tokyo District Court that the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact would undermine their basic human rights such as the right to live and know that are guaranteed under the Constitution,” Japanese news outlet Mainichi says.
The reports claim that the TPPA’s boost to corporate sovereignty jeopardises the independence of Japan's judicial system.
“[The TPPA] violates the people's right to know as the document is confidential and the negotiating process will be kept undisclosed for four years after the agreement takes effect.”
According to the Mainichi story, there are 157 people on the Japanese legal team, but there is some speculation that they may have left their move too late.
Closer to home, leaders of several of New Zealand's biggest political parties have added their signatures to an open letter calling for action on the TPPA.
The letter has already been signed by Australian MPs with special responsibilities involving TPPA, a former Japanese Prime Minister and other former ministers, members of the Malaysian caucus on the TPPA, and Canadian opposition leaders.
The letter “calls on them to ensure that any final deal effectively protects the constitutional right of countries to resist pressures from any other country to interfere with the legislative process,” Auckland University law professor Jane Kelsey said.
Australia’s own Trade Minister Andrew Robb has been one of the more prominent supporters of the far-reaching secret trade deal, though his lines of justification and defence have been strongly questioned.
Digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been unrelenting in their information campaign on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP); another secretive, anti-user trade agreement.