by
Edward Alden
April 22, 2014
What does President Obama actually want (click here) from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), his administration’s signature trade negotiation with 11 Asia-Pacific countries? During his visit to four countries in the region this week, we may finally get an answer to that question. And it says something about how closely he has played his cards on the issue that it’s rather hard to predict the outcome.
Wait, I hear some objecting. Of course we know what the president wants. He wants, as his National Security Advisor Susan Rice put it in a briefing Friday, a “comprehensive, high-standards regional trade agreement.” But hard as that is to say, it’s even harder to achieve. And the negotiations have reached the point where some difficult decisions–of the sort that only a president can make–are looming. Yet Obama has given few hints about how he might handle those decisions....
The real lesson to oppose these agreements are in the Third World. These agreements are suppose to assist other nations out of poverty. That is not the case. These agreements enforce poverty and not just in the USA.
Imagine a Latin American village facing poverty forever. Extremely poor quality of life forever. Children without education and a future. Got that?
Now, imagine a MOVEMENT called "Fair Trade." An impoverished village can grow coffee and begin the process of 'function.' It begins to have wells with clean water, men that provide clothing and not rags to their family, the ability to buy books and learn language. Food security. Really cool stuff, right? It is the dream of the USA to share it's ability to capture the free market and empower the impossibly poor to move forward and finally embrace the future.
The comes NAFTA.
Then follows "The Plantations."
Then come those with machetes and guns and the end of the village coffee trees and sometimes even the people themselves.
What happened? Americans came and taught and provided resources and start up costs. The Latin American villages with each family participating in the COOPERATIVE for coffee are once again impossibly impoverished. What happened?
Now, imagine Wall Street mimicking the 'standards' for certification of "Fair Trade" only they want it on mass production. How do they do that? Yep, plantations.
The reality of these massive trade policies is the ENFORCEMENT of poverty. It doesn't matter the country.
Imagine now some thing called Walmart doesn't want a high quality product with all these fancy CERTIFICATIONS, but, they need to compete. What do they do? Do they really want to even invest in establishing plantations?
No.
They create the Big Box Store equivalent of Fair Trade. It is an organization that hands our a certification for MEMBERSHIP called "Fair Trade." No fancy standards, no real 'partnership' in markets to empower the impoverished, just plain old Capitalism and Greed intended to destroy the real "Free Trade" and deceive the consumer. A dream come true. A certification that has no cost except to pay a nominal membership for the right to print the words, "Free Trade" on their coffee.
NAFTA is an absolute disaster. Without any doubt. It has destroyed emerging markets that begin with RELATIONSHIP CAPITALISM. The new trade partnerships started under BUSH that Obama is 'going along with,' will have the same result. These massive trade agreements are about Wall Street profits and have absolutely NOTHING to do with improving the world's populations and/or creating new markets for American products.
These trade agreements make the world a far less hopeful place and victimizes the poor. They are horrible. Do you have a lobbyist in Washington, DC? No? In the White House? No? Whatever makes you think you'll ever be anyone?
While Secretary Clinton was advocating women and girls all over the globe, she never asked herself if the markets for their success exists, is emerging and growing.
Women in the Third World have no rights and when Wall Street is monopolizing the markets and destroying local cooperatives, women are robbed of any hope of the future because they return to chattel rather than empowered to raise their children with the promise their lives are important enough for the future. Women can't own property or accumulate wealth unless their husbands (if they are lucky enough to be married) are succeeding beyond the families imagination. Then and only then will women of the Third World be anything but chattel.
I mean, who is kidding who here?
"The Great Moral America." Ask the Third World how that actually interprets? Better yet, asK the voters in the USA.
NAFTA destroys lives and so has every other trade agreement. CAFTA and now the Pacific and Atlantic trade agreements. WHY NOT SIMPLY HAND THE GLOBE to Wall Street?
Any trade agreement by the USA has caused poverty and not alleviated it. Fact. The intended 'feel good feelings' surrounding these agreements are more cronyism and far less EQUITY.
April 22, 2014
What does President Obama actually want (click here) from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), his administration’s signature trade negotiation with 11 Asia-Pacific countries? During his visit to four countries in the region this week, we may finally get an answer to that question. And it says something about how closely he has played his cards on the issue that it’s rather hard to predict the outcome.
Wait, I hear some objecting. Of course we know what the president wants. He wants, as his National Security Advisor Susan Rice put it in a briefing Friday, a “comprehensive, high-standards regional trade agreement.” But hard as that is to say, it’s even harder to achieve. And the negotiations have reached the point where some difficult decisions–of the sort that only a president can make–are looming. Yet Obama has given few hints about how he might handle those decisions....
The real lesson to oppose these agreements are in the Third World. These agreements are suppose to assist other nations out of poverty. That is not the case. These agreements enforce poverty and not just in the USA.
Imagine a Latin American village facing poverty forever. Extremely poor quality of life forever. Children without education and a future. Got that?
Now, imagine a MOVEMENT called "Fair Trade." An impoverished village can grow coffee and begin the process of 'function.' It begins to have wells with clean water, men that provide clothing and not rags to their family, the ability to buy books and learn language. Food security. Really cool stuff, right? It is the dream of the USA to share it's ability to capture the free market and empower the impossibly poor to move forward and finally embrace the future.
The comes NAFTA.
Then follows "The Plantations."
Then come those with machetes and guns and the end of the village coffee trees and sometimes even the people themselves.
What happened? Americans came and taught and provided resources and start up costs. The Latin American villages with each family participating in the COOPERATIVE for coffee are once again impossibly impoverished. What happened?
Now, imagine Wall Street mimicking the 'standards' for certification of "Fair Trade" only they want it on mass production. How do they do that? Yep, plantations.
The reality of these massive trade policies is the ENFORCEMENT of poverty. It doesn't matter the country.
Imagine now some thing called Walmart doesn't want a high quality product with all these fancy CERTIFICATIONS, but, they need to compete. What do they do? Do they really want to even invest in establishing plantations?
No.
They create the Big Box Store equivalent of Fair Trade. It is an organization that hands our a certification for MEMBERSHIP called "Fair Trade." No fancy standards, no real 'partnership' in markets to empower the impoverished, just plain old Capitalism and Greed intended to destroy the real "Free Trade" and deceive the consumer. A dream come true. A certification that has no cost except to pay a nominal membership for the right to print the words, "Free Trade" on their coffee.
NAFTA is an absolute disaster. Without any doubt. It has destroyed emerging markets that begin with RELATIONSHIP CAPITALISM. The new trade partnerships started under BUSH that Obama is 'going along with,' will have the same result. These massive trade agreements are about Wall Street profits and have absolutely NOTHING to do with improving the world's populations and/or creating new markets for American products.
These trade agreements make the world a far less hopeful place and victimizes the poor. They are horrible. Do you have a lobbyist in Washington, DC? No? In the White House? No? Whatever makes you think you'll ever be anyone?
While Secretary Clinton was advocating women and girls all over the globe, she never asked herself if the markets for their success exists, is emerging and growing.
Women in the Third World have no rights and when Wall Street is monopolizing the markets and destroying local cooperatives, women are robbed of any hope of the future because they return to chattel rather than empowered to raise their children with the promise their lives are important enough for the future. Women can't own property or accumulate wealth unless their husbands (if they are lucky enough to be married) are succeeding beyond the families imagination. Then and only then will women of the Third World be anything but chattel.
I mean, who is kidding who here?
"The Great Moral America." Ask the Third World how that actually interprets? Better yet, asK the voters in the USA.
NAFTA destroys lives and so has every other trade agreement. CAFTA and now the Pacific and Atlantic trade agreements. WHY NOT SIMPLY HAND THE GLOBE to Wall Street?
Any trade agreement by the USA has caused poverty and not alleviated it. Fact. The intended 'feel good feelings' surrounding these agreements are more cronyism and far less EQUITY.
