Signalling Through the Clouds

When I study the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade treaty being argued about these days, what comes to mind is that classic song,” Clouds” -  on my short list for greatest pop song of the 20^th century. “I’ve seen the world from both sides now, from win and lose, but still somehow, it’s life’s illusions I recall; I really don’t know life at all.” Proponents say the TPP perfectly enacts a containment strategy toward China, assimilating it into the regulated trading world while concurrently securing active trade arrangements with Japan and India, a keystone of the Obama “pivot toward Asia”. Obama himself argues that any job loss to Pacific trade partners will be minimal, since companies prone to move jobs elsewhere have mainly done so already and that any newly lost jobs will mostly be offset by increased exports. Latin countries included in the agreement, they argue, will have little impact on American jobs, while Australia’s and New Zealand’s impact will be positive. The supporters warn that a lack of Fast Track Presidential authority could create a real international mess, and there’s a lot of merit to that argument.

Populist opponents say they’ve heard that song before, and they are not buying illusions any more. Their big concern is all the secret negotiations with corporations going on that could weaken health and safety standards, stall climate change regulation, etc., and with provisions which could enable Foreign courts to force arrangements detrimental to American workers without recourse to American law. 

The negotiators say, “Relax, trust us.”  At the extreme populists sound like traditional protectionists, but toward the middle, they seem wise indeed. The cogency of arguments on both sides leave me casting around for a “pope’s mule”, an outside-the-box argument that can serve as a tipping factor one way or another.

My roving eyes alight on the recent UK election results, where an anti-EU David Cameron won a surprisingly large victory over his liberal opponents. My knowledgeable grandson attributes it to the British equivalent of gerrymandering – ages ago, the Brits called gerrymandered districts “rotten boroughs”, so they’ve been around awhile there – and says that the popular vote was actually anti-Cameron. I haven’t checked the numbers to verify that, but even if so, it just adds to the point that concerns me. That point was that the Cameron margin was an awful lot like a sigh of defeat for belief in the abilities of national governments to defend the lives of their people in complex international terrain. The Brits seemed to be saying to themselves, our representative government just can’t adequately support the people with the amount of sovereign authority it’s given up. The British gerrymandering argument just reinforces the belief in representative government’s ineffectuality – as the effects of gerrymandering likewise emphasize in the U.S.

That, to my mind, is an essential issue with the TPP. The quest for Fast Track authority is an admission of disbelief in the idea that open discussion of the issues in a representative assembly can be effective. That implies either disbelief in the efficacy of representative government in a global community, or belief that revelation of treaty provisions will show them to be unfavorable to the American people. I’m aware that lack of Fast Track authority could create a total mess, and might well doom the TPP. But it is a significant infringement on the principle of representative government and a signal that in a world as complex as ours has become, democracy is no longer considered effective. Our Congress hasn’t been helping its own case lately. The problem is, as Churchill stated long ago, that all the alternatives to democracy are worse.

I’ve said many times how international corporations and national governments are struggling for global dominance, and that the corporations are winning. The world will not be a better place for ordinary people if they do so. The British election was a no-confidence vote for the belief that sovereign states can protect their people in such an unregulated global environment. Greek threats to leave the EU are a similar sign. Rejecting Fast Track authority would be another such signal. Those signals need to be given. The international scene these days is too wildly unregulated for the interests of individuals to be protected. International corporations are not sovereign governments functioning for the betterment of all the people, and it is time the corporations ceased trying to substitute their interests for the interests of the people. If no sovereign authority is in charge, then corporate interests are. Stronger international institutions and treaties are needed, and the TPP might even be a step in that direction. But we cannot know that based on the current secrecy of agreements. Confidence can only be obtained though open discussions, not secret negotiations. The TPP has much merit to it, and it is time for that to be publicly argued without suspicions of secret reservations.