This past week saw the ceremonious signing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Auckland, an event whose prime purpose was to convince the world that a trade agreement that most people have not even heard of and which has so far been approved by only one (Malaysia) out of 12 elected parliaments is already done and dusted.
Even the Sidney Morning Herald concedes that it was a giant PR exercise:
"It masks the fact that for Australia and most TPP countries, the public debate and parliamentary process to pass implementing legislation, leading to final ratification of the deal, is just the beginning, and it will be a rocky road."
The road will be particularly rocky in the U.S. where the treaty’s safe passage through Congress and the Senate is far from guaranteed. Indeed, the trade agreement has become so toxic with the voting public that not a single presidential contender dares to endorse it. Even the former US Trade Representative, and now Senator, Rob Portman, has come out against TPP, albeit for the wrong reasons, most tellingly the fact that he, too, is up for reelection this autumn.
However, the biggest blow to the global corporatocracy’s bloated designs did not come from the U.S. It came from Germany, where the German Association of Judges (DRB, an association that also includes prosecutors) just issued adamning indictment on the EU’s proposal to establish an “international investment court (ICC)” for the TPP’s sister treaty, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)…Wolf Street
German Judges Pooh-Pooh Obama’s Sacred US-EU Trade Pact
Don Quijones
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