This article by Reuters on a crucial vote in the US House of Representatives regarding the TPP (the Trans Pacific Partnership) was flagged by AOL as a top story.
The reporters, Richard Howard and Krista Hughes, never get around to telling readers in this lengthy article that TPP is a secret.
Here is a list of 605 overwhelmingly corporate advisers to the US government who have actually seen and helped write the TPP. Wikileaks has leaked some sections of the draft text, and has put up a “bounty” for the full text, but the TPP is very complex deal negotiated behind closed door for several years by government officials and corporate insiders. That’s important to know isn’t it?
The article states “fast-track trade authority for the president – is a central part of Obama’s strategic shift toward Asia. It would be accomplished in part through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that could boost global economic growth and U.S. exports, while setting common standards among emerging and rich nations in one of the world’s biggest trade deals.”
Reuters, like the other 99.999% of us who live in countries whose governments are negotiating the TPP, has not seen, much less analyzed the full TPP text. Public debate is based on partial leaks, the negotiating governments’ largely unverifiable claims, and experience with previous multilateral deals like NAFTA.
Without clarifying any of that to readers, talking about what TPP “could do” is basically dishonest.
Based on what is known about TPP, it is likely only to be of real benefit to the insiders who wrote it. As economist Dean Baker has often explained on his blog, tariffs among the negotiating countries are already low, so lowering them further will produce very minimal benefits. On the other hand, the regulatory structure businesses are trying to impose through the TPP (which we know about from partial leaks of the draft text) is likely to do a great deal of harm to most people.
Reuters’ article illustrates that the corporate media is at least as big a barrier to informed public debate about TPP as is draconian government secrecy. Without a pliant, self-censoring media, governments and corporate insiders would not get away with keeping the TPP text secret for several years.
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