Gary
Goff of “Brooklyn For Peace” spoke at a forum on the Trans-Pacific Partnership
on Thursday evening, August 20th in Park Slope. Below is what Gary had to say on TPP……..
How
will the TPP impact the world’s political and military situation? This is the
question the anti-war movement must ask.
Like
all free trade agreements, the TPP will create more inequality – both within
and between nations. Only the very richest in the affected countries will
actually benefit. The rest of us will lose financially and politically. The
off-shoring of production
will increase unemployment and under-employment at home. And as income becomes
more concentrated at the top, so does political power.
More
free trade = more inequality = less democracy
The
TPP allows corporations to override local and national laws. Significantly,
this includes environmental regulations. The climate crisis will worsen. We
will lose arable land and potable water. Pollution will increase and climate
change will accelerate. There will be more droughts, floods, and food
shortages.
There
is already a global refugee crisis – people fleeing their homelands to escape
political, economic, and environmental chaos. The TPP will inevitably
exacerbate this situation.
We
cannot afford to think of the TPP as a discrete phenomenon. At the very least,
we must think of it in relation to its twin, the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership, a proposed free trade agreement between the US and the
European Union. All of the negative consequences of the TPP that we have
discussed apply to the TTIP as well.
In
terms of geopolitics, one of the main objectives of the TPP is containment of
China. Similarly, the TTIP in intended to contain Russia. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the economic
arm of the US’s Asia Pivot. We need to understand that the Asia Pivot is not
simply a political and economic plan. It is military as well. At the same time
the US is negotiating new treaties in the area, it is building additional army
bases and opening new naval ports. And similarly, the US is expanding its
military presence in Europe via NATO.
If
we are to understand the TPP and the TTIP, we have to recognize that they are
major aspects of American imperialism. In
the early 1950s, two economic historians, John Gallager and Ronald Robinson,
published a paper called The Imperialism of Free Trade. In it they showed that
imperialism is a continuous system of economic expansion. Its inner logic is
the same whether it takes the form of fighting a war or negotiating a treaty.
We
need to defeat the TPP and the TTIP. Because of all the reasons everyone else
has mentioned – jobs and food security and so forth. But also because the world
will be a safer, more peaceful, more livable place.
