Now that a
fast track agreement is close at hand for the TPP, the Obama administration is left with one minor glitch: Small-town America just doesn't understand what the TPP really is.
The United States is negotiating the TPP with 11 other like-minded countries -- Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and, of course, what more like-minded nation is there in the world than the tiny sultanate of Brunei Darusallam? The apple pie capital of the East, where Americans find a virtual home-away-from-home in a strict, socially controlled religious state of pious worship and mass consumption. Of apple pie.
Smile! Say "Cheese!" Brunei also happens to have the largest oil fields in Southeast Asia.
Want a piece?
Read below the orange cheese whiz doodle to see how carving up the Asian-Pacific pie will bring jobs and opportunities back to small-town America. Hooray!
I don't know why they call it "fast track" when passing this thing has been inevitable for several years now.
It was in April seven years ago when then-candidate Obama suggested, among a litany of ills and grudges small-town Americans harbor, that we cling to our anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain our frustrations. Who can blame us for our misguided animosities, he said, now that all the jobs are gone, and have been for more than 25 years.
In those statements, President Obama revealed himself a wealthy man: a winner surveying a crowd of sad and bitter losers, shaking his wizened head and in a kindly voice, explaining how the world works so as to help the uneducated masses understand their lot in life. Andrew Carnegie would have been proud.
To-day the world obtains commodities of excellent quality at prices which even the generation preceeding this would have deemed incredible... The laborer now has more comforts than the landlord had a few generations ago. The farmer has more luxuries than the landlord had, and is more richly clad and better housed. The landlord has books and pictures rarer, and appointments more artistic, then the King could then obtain.
The price we pay for this salutary change is, no doubt, great. We assemble thousands of operatives in the factury, in the mines, and in the counting-house, of whom the employer can know little or nothing, and to whom the employer can be little better than a myth...
Thank goodness the U.S. Trade Representative is there
to debunk all those "myths suggesting that TPP would overturn or undermine our ability to buy American or even prevent states and local governments from implementing their own procurement processes." TPP promotes buying American across the globe! Our Trade Rep condescends to explain. A people should know when they're conquered.
The Obama Administration is committed to creating jobs, strengthening domestic manufacturing, and promoting sustainable economic growth that benefits American families. That is why USTR is pursuing trade negotiations that contribute to those goals by unlocking new economic opportunities for American workers, businesses, farmers, and ranchers.
Yes, small-town America, just go to legal zoom and hang yourself a shingle, get your go-daddy website up and your quick books online, and you, too, can compete on a level playing field for foreign government procurement and bid your way into all those lucrative Asian-Pacific contracts. Brunei is yours for the taking, dairy farmers of PA!
In general, I've approved of President Obama's job performance. I voted for him twice. I could not see programs like combat drones, uber-surveillance, or global grab-bag trade agreements coming to an end if I voted for the other guy (spontaneous uncontrollable shudder to imagine Palin's Mini-me "President McCain" or a dog-gone "President Romney"). I've signed several "I have your back" petitions and pledges for Team Obama. I've cheered for equal pay, for voting rights, for the closing of Gitmo... at least Obama has tried to be our champion. Yay for the right side of history.
Yet, I admit, Mr. President, I cling to my anti-trade sentiment, when it comes to global policy that begs a nostalgic return to the Gilded Age. The economic liberty of those Captains of Industry who are bold enough, intrepid enough, and rich enough to compete on a global scale shall not perish from the earth. But what does that have to do with small-town America? If, back when Obama was campaigning, the jobs had been gone in small-town America ever since the early-1980s, that means NAFTA didn't bring them back. That means CAFTA didn't do it for us. I can't even keep track of all the FTAs (pronounced "FaTwAs," a.k.a., "we agwee to fwee twade"). Now, the Obama administration is making a hard sell for how good TPP will be... for ranchers? TPP will unlock opportunities for American ranchers? Don't even get me started on the BLM and the Clive Bundys of the world.
But it's not really about dairy farmers and ranchers. The USTR straightens us out about the real point of the TPP: "TPP will tear down barriers in other countries..."
There is nothing in TPP that will ban federal, state, or local governments from buying American. In fact, under TPP we are working to ensure that more countries around the world have the ability to buy American in order to help support jobs here at home. TPP will tear down barriers in other countries to create opportunities for our workers in fast-growing markets where governments are significant buyers of goods and services.
Surely this isn't how the TPP is presented overseas. I imagine the talking points are quite different when explaining how TPP is good for Malaysian ranchers.
But the USTR is correct: technically, the TPP "will do nothing to prevent tax dollars from being used on procurement projects at any level of government right here at home. Nothing in TPP will restrict the ability of governments to make purchases in accordance with their environmental policies."
Who needs the TPP to tear down those weak local barriers here at home? Steam-rolling over local ordinances and environmental policies was perfected right here in America; this is essentially what the TPP is exporting to the rest of the world.
What are like-minded trading partners getting in this deal? First of all, let's not forget The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia, what Matt Taibbi describes as:
a broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States"
There could be no more level a playing field, no fairer competition, than the American model of government procurement. It's all too good to be true -- and too big to fail. As the USTR explains, "Because the United States has the largest economy in the world, our market is, by definition, larger than anyone else’s market." It's a no-brainer. Next stop, Singapore!
Of course, the real winner on that level playing field is the corpocracy, as described by Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic work "Democracy in America" nearly 200 years ago: “The friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed,” he warned, on an “industrial aristocracy…. For if ever again permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy make their way into the world it will have been by that door that they entered.”
In spite of several valiant attempts to override the corpocracy's power,
As de Tocqueville predicted, the industrial aristocrats have prevailed in America. They have garnered enormous power over the past 150 years through the inexorable development of the modern corporation. Having achieved extensive control over so many facets of our lives — from food and clothing production to information, transportation, and other necessities — corporate institutions have become more powerful than the sovereign people who originally granted them existence.
Corporations are able to invoke
constitutional “rights” and protections under the Commerce Clause and Contracts Clause, as well as under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments. American corportions have been tearing down the barriers of environmental policy for decades. We've got your back, all you oil barrons of Brunei Darusallam.
Give us your hard wood, your copper, gold, and oil, your dirt-cheap labor yearning to sew our yoga pants...
THE USTR assures us that "TPP will support American jobs and innovation by opening up new markets for American products in growing economies across the globe." We all know what American products in growing economies are all about... Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? That's the American development model... What emerging economy doesn't want a chance to build that American Dream? But the TPP is not for them, remember. It's for American workers and businesses. And farmers. And ranchers. There's no doubt small-town America can provide cheaper products and services than, say, a sweatshop in Singapore. These are real opportunities for Americans everywhere. Just go to legal zoom and hang yourself a shingle, get that go-daddy website up...
And stop being provincial. Stop clinging to anti-trade sentiments. The evidence in support of TPP is just too -- evidential. Yes, yes, it was all done in secret -- but the proof is there. The experts have weighed in on the good, the bad, and the ugly in TPP, and have seen the light, and they saw that it was good.
There is indeed substantial evidence that import competition from low-wage countries has contributed to the momentous decline in U.S. manufacturing employment in the last two decades. We even researched and published some of that empirical evidence. Still, we believe blocking the TPP on fears of globalization would be a mistake.
Because... apple pie?
Can I have a slice of cheddar cheese with that?