7 ways the Trans Pacific Partnership threatens people and the planet

by Bill Waren, senior trade analyst

The Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal is not so much about trade as it is about deregulation and forcing governments to pay corporations and wealthy investors for the cost of complying with environmental and other public interest safeguards. The TPP broadly restricts the policy space for governments to take effective environmental and climate action.

Unlike most international agreements, tribunals of trade lawyers would effectively enforce the TPP. Such tribunals could impose retaliatory sanctions like higher tariffs on the non-complying countries’ exports or award money damages that can run into millions or even billions of dollars.

Trade tribunals often treat environmental and public health regulations as trade barriers.

Until about twenty years ago, trade deals focused on reducing trade barriers like tariffs and quotas. Today’s trade deals, by contrast, focus on curbing the authority of democratic governments and legitimate courts to regulate the global marketplace. Trade tribunals often treat environmental and public health regulations as trade barriers. Trade deals like the TPP focus on dismantling many regulations that are alleged to interfere with the profits of multinational corporations and wealthy foreign investors.

Multinational corporations have lined up behind the TPP, as have Wall Street banks and Big Oil. But over 1,500 public interest organizations, such as internet freedom groups, faith-based organizations, labor unions, women’s & LBGT advocates and environmentalists, are standing up to oppose TPP.

It appears that President Obama wants to force a post-election, “lame-duck” vote on the TPP. That is a unique moment in the political calendar when members of Congress who are retiring or have been voted out of office are least accountable to their constituents.

Here are seven ways that the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal threatens people and the planet:

1) TPP investment tribunals subvert democracy. TPP would allow firms to turn to secretive international tribunals where they can sue governments for millions or billions of dollars if environmental or other public interest regulations interfere with expected future profits. This would discourage government action like restricting oil and gas drilling, imposing pollution controls, and limiting the use of fracking (hydraulic fracturing). TransCanada, for example, is using a similar provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement to sue the U.S. for $15 billion for stopping construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

2) The TPP undermines sound climate policy. The TPP would ramp up global warming by increasing U.S. coal, oil and gas exports to the world. The TPP is designed to protect “free trade” in such dirty energy products shipped out of West Coast ports. The result would be worsened climate change from carbon emissions across the Pacific.

3) The TPP deal threatens bees. The TPP could thwart efforts to stop the use of bee-killing neonicotinoid (neonic) pesticides. Neonics are believed to be a leading cause of bee declines. But, multinational chemical companies want to use the TPP and similar deals to stop future action to save the bees and the crops that depend on bees for pollination.

4) TPP threatens deregulation of chemical safety standards. TPP could result in suits before trade tribunals imposing retaliatory trade sanctions such as higher tariffs on U.S. exports to force the roll back of effective state regulation in California and other jurisdictions of dangerous chemicals associated with breast cancer, autism, infertility and other illnesses.

5) TPP undercuts prudent food safety regulations. Food safety protections are also put at risk. The TPP would give foreign food exporters greater powers to challenge border inspections, as well as authorize legal attacks on food safety standards before corporate dominated trade and investment tribunals. This dirty deal would also substitute private food safety certifications for government inspections in many cases. In particular, TPP promises to unleash a tsunami of unsafe seafood exports to the United States. Vietnam and several other Pacific basin countries are notorious for their unclean and toxic factory fish farming operations.

6) TPP encourages GMOs. The TPP provides new protections for biotechnology and use of genetically modified organisms. Obligations are established for TPP countries to quickly approve GMO crops and products, unless very high standards of scientific certainty regarding the risk to health and the environment are met. GMO labeling requirements at the state or local level could be put at risk. In addition to that, significant patent protections are provided to biotech seed companies. All of this runs counter to a central tenet of sound environmental regulation, the “precautionary principle”, the precept that deregulatory action should not be taken if the consequences are highly uncertain and potentially quite dangerous.

7) TPP puts family farms at risk. The TPP is likely to increase the volatility of agricultural markets, putting sustainable family farms at risk and increasing corporate control of markets and production practices.

If you want to join the fight against the TPP, contact Bill Waren at wwaren@foe.org.