[governance] more secrecy... Elizabeth Warren Free Trade Letter Calls For Trans-Pacific Partnership Transparency

[Riaz K Tayob]

[Intellectual property rights are being discussed in the TPP, the 
secrecy of the negotiations is causing lots of concern... government for 
the 1% by the 1%, a truth increaslingly self-evident?]

Zach Carter <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter> Become a fan 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/users/becomeFan.php?of=hp_blogger_Zach%20Carter> 


zach.carter at huffingtonpost.com <mailto:zach.carter at huffingtonpost.com>


  Elizabeth Warren Free Trade Letter Calls For Trans-Pacific Partnership
  Transparency

Posted: 06/13/2013 7:45 am EDT  |  Updated: 06/13/2013 11:08 am EDT


WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday sent a letter 
to President Barack Obama's nominee to head U.S. trade negotiations, 
expressing concerns about the administration's lack of transparency in 
the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a major trade deal being negotiated 
largely in secret.

Labor unions, public health advocates and environmental groups have long 
decried so-called free trade policies for undermining important 
regulations in the pursuit of corporate profits. The letter signals that 
Warren's tough stance on bank regulation extends to other major consumer 
and public interest matters.

What the public does know about the TPP has been learned through leaked 
documents 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/obama-trade-document-leak_n_1592593.html>. 
According to those documents, the Obama administration is seeking to 
grant corporations the ability to directly challenge regulations in 
countries involved in the talks -- a political power that was typically 
reserved for sovereign nations until the 1990s. Obama opposed such 
policies as a presidential candidate in 2008. The leaked intellectual 
property chapter of the deal includes provisions that would increase the 
costs of life-saving medicines in poor countries.

Warren's letter does not take issue with specific terms of the 
negotiations, but rather the secrecy surrounding the process. Members of 
Congress have been allowed to see TPP negotiation texts. Some have said 
they were insulted 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/obama-trade-deal-democrat_n_1578827.html> 
by the complex administrative procedures the office of the U.S. Trade 
Representative, or USTR, imposed to actually access the texts -- 
barriers not imposed on unelected corporate advisers.

Members of official "Trade Advisory Committees" stacked with corporate 
officials have been given access to the texts. But on June 6, Labor 
Advisory Committee Chairman R. Thomas Buffenbarger wrote a letter to 
acting U.S. Trade Representative Miriam Sapiro objecting to the "severe 
restrictions" that her agency had placed on information available to 
advocates for working people.

In her letter, Warren asked current White House official Michael Froman, 
who Obama has nominated to be the next head of USTR, whether he would 
make a copy of the negotiation text available to the public. She also 
asked for a full accounting of all information that has been made 
available to each official advisory committee.

The Obama administration has been negotiating the Trans-Pacific 
Partnership for several years, and Obama said at his 2013 State of the 
Union 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/12/state-of-the-union-obama-trade_n_2673259.html> 
address that he hopes to have the deal approved by the end of the year.

Read the full text of Warren's letter here 
<http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/EWFromanLetter.pdf>.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20130613/198493eb/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t