Victory at last? The Economist Reports: “The TPP is dead”

The chief economist of The Economist magazine, Simon Baptist, believes that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal is dead following the failure of final round negotiations in Hawaii last week.

Here’s Baptist’s latest commentary on the TPP from his latest email newsletter:

The latest talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) did not end well and election timetables in Canada and the US mean that the prospect of a deal being ratified before the end of 2016 (at the earliest) is remote.

The usual problem of agricultural markets was prominent, headlined by Canada’s refusal to open its dairy sector.

For New Zealand—one of the four founder countries of the TPP, along with Brunei, Chile and Singapore—this was a non-negotiable issue.

Dairy was not the only problem.

As usual, Japan was worried about cars and rice, and the US about patent protection for its pharma companies.

The TPP was probably doomed when the US joined, and certainly when Japan did.

It then became more of a political project than an economic one.

Big trade agreements had hitherto focused on physical goods, while the TPP had an aim of forging rules of trade beyond this in intellectual property, investment and services.

China was a notable absence, and the US and Japan, in particular, were keen to set these rules with enough of the global economy behind them such that China would be forced into line later on.

For now, the shape of international standards in these areas remains up for grabs.

The next step for the TPP, if anything, is whether a smaller group—such as the founding four —will break away and go ahead on their own, with a much smaller share of global GDP involved, and in the hope that others will join later.

Obviously great news if it is true but that last line worries me, ‘hope of a breakaway of a smaller group’.

Knowing Australia, and their incessant need to have a presence on the global stage they will sign anything to fell like they are ‘part of the club’.

What is intriguing and heartening about the Economists verdict isn’t merely that the TPP is dead.

But that it’s so dead that for it to be revived, it would have to be in radically different form, with a much smaller group of countries.

And if I read the Economist piece correctly, the “founding four” does not include Japan, which joined the negotiations late.

Japan’s famously powerful farmers are not likely to sign up for a deal that encroaches on the island nation’s beef and rice lobbies.

And it’s hard to see how anyone would take a Pacific political or economic pact all that seriously that did not have China or Japan as members.

Are you new to this?

Wondering what was the TPP?

The TPP, as you may have heard, outright surrenders U.S. sovereignty to multinational corporations, handing them total global monopolies over labor practices, immigration, Big Pharma drug pricing, GMO food labeling, criminalization of garden seeds and much more.

In all, the TPP hands over control of 80% of the U.S. economy to global monopolists, and the TPP is set up to enable those corporations to engage in virtually unlimited toxic chemical pollution, medical monopolization, the gutting of labor safety laws and much more.

Plus, did I mention the TPP would have displaced millions of American works as corporations outsource jobs to foreign workers?

While corporations rake in the profits from new global powers, everyday American workers will lose their livelihoods and their jobs (not to mention their pensions).

Lets hope it stays dead.

See how this it could have affected Australians here.

Or watch this amazing video on it.