‘Free trade’ is at best a misnomer, at worst an oxymoron: these trade pacts contain surprisingly little related to trade. So, what are they really about?
Don Quijones, freelance writer, translator in Barcelona, Spain. Editor at WOLF STREET. Mexico is his country-in-law. Raging Bull-Shit is his modest attempt to scrub away the lathers of soft soap peddled by political and business leaders and their loyal mainstream media. This article is a Wolf Street exclusive.
On Saturday, people hit the streets of Europe to protest the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Deal (TTIP), a hyper-secret, so-called ‘free’ trade agreement that aims to bind together two of the world’s biggest markets that together represent more than 800 million consumers and 45% of global trade.
But ‘free trade’ is at best a misnomer, at worst an oxymoron: TTIP contains surprisingly little related to trade, as Ben Beachy of the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch explains.
In the TPP deal (DQ: TPP stands for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is currently stalled in the U. S. Congress but which Obama seeks to revive during the lame duck session)… only five of 29 chapters have anything to do with what is traditionally defined as trade (i.e. customs, tariffs and other barriers to trade). [Most are] so-called ‘non-traditional’ trade issues, which would include, for example, the right of a corporation to have a monopoly patent over some drug that it produces, a right that is fundamentally antithetical to free trade.
Indeed, what gets rarely mentioned in the debate is the fact that trade between the U. S. and Europe has never been freer, with the average tariff between the two regions already as low of 3%. Which begs the question: why the sudden need for a new, game-changing transatlantic trade agreement? Especially when you take into account that the TTIP is forecast (by a study commissioned by the European Commission, no less) to provide a paltry 0.1% boost to economic growth in Europe… over a 10-year-period – the equivalent of a rounding error!
So, if it’s not about trade, what is the TTIP really about? As I previously reported (hereand here), one of the primary goals of 21st century trade deals like TTIP is to enshrine into law the corporate takeover of the political, cultural, economic, financial, agricultural, scientific, digital and public space, as well as remove any remaining barriers on the ability of multinational corporations to exploit the world’s resources – including, of course, its human resources.
But that’s just part of the story, albeit a very important one. There is also a more subtle agenda at work: namely to secure Western domination of the global economy and geopolitical landscape for the foreseeable future.
To achieve that goal, the U. S. and its allies have just one trick left up their sleeve: launching the mother of all trade wars.
EBC: ‘Everyone but China’…
This post was published at Wolf Street on October 14, 2014.
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