Seriously—it is so secret that not even all members of Congress have been allowed to read it. Even weirder, those who have been allowed to read it must do so in a secret room in the basement of the Capitol building. Seriously.
That doesn’t mean, however, that we don’t know anything about the TPP. And the bits that we do know about it reveal that this really isn’t a trade deal.
Take, for instance, the latest meeting over the TPP with world leaders who met here in Atlanta. What were they discussing?
The United States argued for longer protections for exclusivity for prescription drugs. The U.S. delegation was arguing that the trade agreement should expand globally at a 12-year exclusivity period for drugs that treat diseases like cancer.
Doctors Without Borders came out against this stating: “TPP countries have agreed to United States government and multinational drug company demands that will raise the price of medicines for millions. . . . The big losers in TPP are patients and treatment providers in developing countries. . . . The TPP will still go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries.” That’s not very encouraging. What else do we know about the TPP? Well, it is not just an agreement extending monopolies for drug companies. It is also an agreement that creates massive copyright protections.
The Electronic Freedom Foundation says that, “Despite its earlier promises that the TPP would bring ‘greater balance’ to copyright, more than any other recent trade agreement, the most recent leak of the intellectual property chapter belies their claims. The U.S. Trade Representative [Michael Froman] (USTR) has still failed to live up to its word that it would enshrine meaningful public rights to use copyrighted content in this agreement.”
But what you need to know is that the worst thing about the TPP is something called the ISDS—the Investor-State Dispute Settlement.
Under the ISDS, foreign corporations would be allowed to appeal legal decisions to international tribunals rather than face domestic courts.
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