Senator Elizabeth Warren fights the White House over the Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership #TPP #TPPA
12/21/14

In his visit to the G20 in Brisbane, President Barack Obama sought to promote his ambitious Pacific Rim trade agreement — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He told an audience at the University of Queensland:

We’ll keep leading the effort to realize the Trans-Pacific Partnership to lower barriers, open markets, export goods, and create good jobs for our people. But with the 12 countries of the TPP making up nearly 40 percent of the global economy, this is also about something bigger. It is our chance to put in place new, high standards for trade in the 21st century that uphold our values. So, for example, we are pushing new standards in this trade agreement, requiring countries that participate to protect their workers better and to protect the environment better, and protect intellectual property that unleashes innovation, and baseline standards to ensure transparency and rule of law.

...On the 17 December 2014, Senator Elizabeth Warren and a number of her colleagues, Tammy Baldwin and Ed Markey, wrote to the White House, outlining a number of concerns in respect of the TPP. Warren commented: ‘We are concerned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could make it harder for Congress and regulatory agencies to prevent future financial crisis.’ She observed, with her colleagues: ‘With millions of families still struggling to recover from the last financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed, we cannot afford a trade deal that undermines the government’s ability to protect the American economy.’

Warren, Baldwin, and Markey highlighted concerns with three specific provisions that could be part of the TPP. First, the Democrat politicians raised concerns about the investor-state dispute settlement process: ‘Including such provisions in the TPP could expose American taxpayers to billions of dollars in losses and dissuade the government from establishing or enforcing financial rules that impact foreign banks.’ Warren and her colleagues warned: ‘The consequence would be to strip our regulators of the tools they need to prevent the next crisis.’

Second, Senator Elizabeth Warren and her colleagues were concerned about including provisions in the TPP that would commit the American financial sector to ‘market access’ rules. She observed: ‘Such rules could be interpreted by international panels to prohibit basic, non-discriminatory restrictions on predatory or toxic financial products — such as particularly risky forms of derivatives — because those restrictions deny access to the U.S. financial markets.’ Warren and her colleagues observed: ‘To protect consumers and to address sources of systemic financial risk, Congress must maintain flexibility to impose restrictions on harmful financial products and on the conduct or structure of financial firms.’

Third, Warren and the other Democrat politicians were concerned about the inclusion of terms in the TPP that could limit the ability of the government to use capital controls: ‘If the TPP were to include provisions from past pacts that required unrestricted capital transfers, it could limit Congress’ prerogative to enact not only capital controls, but basic reform measures like a financial transactions tax.’

The group also requested that the United States Trade Representative provide Congressmen and women with ‘all U.S. proposals and bracketed negotiating texts relating to the three provisions.’ The group wanted transparency in respect of the TPP’s chapters on investment, financial services, and dispute settlement....

https://medium.com/@DrRimmer/senator-elizabeth-warren-fights-the-white-house-over-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp-3cd7bb0a1c91