Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Betrayal

James Hall
Activist Post

The other leg to the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In Part I scrutiny of the TPP proposal indicates that standards of monopoly amalgamation far exceeded efforts to advance actual competitive trade. From the White House Fact Sheet, the aims of the TTIP are:

Further open EU markets, increasing the $458 billion in goods and private services the United States exported in 2012 to the EU, our largest export market.
Strengthen rules-based investment to grow the world’s largest investment relationship. The United States and the EU already maintain a total of nearly $3.7 trillion in investment in each other’s economies (as of 2011).
Eliminate all tariffs on trade.
Tackle costly “behind the border” non-tariff barriers that impede the flow of goods, including agricultural goods.
Obtain improved market access on trade in services.
Significantly reduce the cost of differences in regulations and standards by promoting greater compatibility, transparency, and cooperation, while maintaining our high levels of health, safety, and environmental protection.
Develop rules, principles, and new modes of cooperation on issues of global concern, including intellectual property and market-based disciplines addressing state-owned enterprises and discriminatory localization barriers to trade.
Promote the global competitiveness of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Opponents of TTIP echo the same loss of national sovereignty, similar to the reservations with TPP. The IPS-Inter Press Service reports on the concerns and consequences.

“The claims that this deal will somehow be an economic cure-all and generate significant growth are simply not supported by any reliable evidence,” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen‘s Global Trade Watch.

But we do know that the talks are based on the demands of U.S. and EU corporations that have been pushing for decades to eliminate the best consumer, environmental and financial standards on either side of the Atlantic.

Also stated in the IPS account is that “Tariffs between the U.S. and E.U. are already low, and critic’s note that what the deal really seeks to accomplish is the removal of “non tariff barriers” (also referred to as “trade irritants”).”

“Non-tariff barriers is a commonly-used euphemism which refers to the array of financial, environmental, health and other policies which the public has put in place to safeguard its own interests,” Ben Beachy, a research director for Public Citizen, told IPS.

Under T-TIP, standards such as those mentioned by Beachy would be “converged”, so that regulations from state to state would be more closely aligned. Supporters of the deal say this uniformity would facilitate trade, but Beachy contended that the greater effect would be to lower regulation levels to a point that “democratic electorates would never stand for.”

Not surprising, the European Commission seeks to rely upon esoteric and speculative economic models to project that increased growth will ensue, while avoiding the hard political concerns in The Economic Analysis Explained study – The overall impact of TTIP.

The CEPR study predicts that an ambitious TTIP deal would increase the size of the EU economy around €120 billion (or 0.5% of GDP) and the US by €95 billion (or 0.4% of GDP). This would be a permanent increase in the amount of wealth that the European and American economies can produce every year.

The video, Economic effects of a transatlantic free trade deal (TTIP) projects the winners and losers, while disclosing that individual countries would be relinquishing their own policies to an unelected economic bureaucracy.

The flaws of any corporate or trade delegation research is that the conclusions are baked into the assumptions. Acknowledging the formation of a unified supra-national trade and commerce authority to implement economic decisions is usually outside the parameters of such studies. So when a Bertelsmann Foundation survey admits the obvious, it becomes noteworthy.

In some respects, TTIP could be considered as a new sort of trade agreement—one that provides a framework for mutual regulatory decision-making and sets high standards that other countries outside the US and Europe can eventually join as well. This framework approach allows negotiators to quickly conclude an historic tariff and investment deal and leave the door open to future streamlining on those policy differences that might be too difficult to bridge today.

In order to appreciate the radical departure from national regimes and the transfer of administration and authorization of law by treaty, through regulation into an economic federation of non-governmental governance, is startling.

Grasp the vast extent and scope of this betrayal, in the skillful presentation on the YouTube, AVN | US & EU Merger – TransAtlantic Trade & Investment Partnership. The banksters controlled media and press remain virtually silent and tightlipped about the economic coordination into a Corporatocracy of elites control. The New World Order consolidated economic structure, progresses with every trade treaty.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership have the objective of merging the American economy into and under the European Union model of supranational dictates. If this were not the path to betrayal, what would you call it? With the fallout from the nuclear option by “Democrat Dictator” Harry Reid, the filibuster will not stop ratification of treaties in the Senate.

False promises of job expansion are nothing but hideous promises for the uninitiated or unintelligent. The TTIP is just another tactic to maintain and expand the Anglo –American hegemony. Only favored companies that operate under the oversight and protection of central bankers, benefit from monopolistic trade arrangements.

Protective tariffs built America. Free Trade agreements are destroying the middle class. Increasing economic activity under a framework that effectively excludes the next generation of the working population only fattens the Plutocrats appetites for even more dominance.

The TTIP assurance to “Promote the global competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises” is a total fraud. Ask any business executive, the commerce race is stacked in favor of the corporatist. Then pose the same question to a small business owner, who knows they seldom even get the chance to play the international trade game at all.

Original article archived here

James Hall is a reformed, former political operative. This pundit’s formal instruction in History, Philosophy and Political Science served as training for activism, on the staff of several politicians and in many campaigns. A believer in authentic Public Service, independent business interests were pursued in the private sector. Speculation in markets, and international business investments, allowed for extensive travel and a world view for commerce. Hall is the publisher of BREAKING ALL THE RULES. Contact [email protected]