US consumer advocate and NZ academic warn of Pacific Free Trade pitfalls [1]
Monday, November 15, 2010 - 05:15. Updated on Monday, September 9, 2013 - 18:40.
THE Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement TPP is the only new trade initiative being taken by the Obama administration, and is being heavily promoted at the APEC summit this weekend.
At a time when the global financial crisis has exposed deep flaws in global free markets, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Chile and Peru are negotiating a free-trade agreement initiated by the US which resurrects the issues raised by the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement in 2004, including higher prices for Australian medicines, less local media content and deregulation of GE food.
The book No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement edited by Jane Kelsey and published by Allen and Unwin explores the Australian and regional issues.
Lori Wallach, Director of the U.S. consumer rights group Public Citizens Global Trade Watch, and author of a chapter in the book said today:
"Underlying the Obama administrations recent Pacific tours and talking up of trade with Asian and Pacific nations is an interest in putting down stakes to counter China in the region. These China-focused U.S. national security and geopolitical goals are crashing into the political reality that the American electorate on a bipartisan basis has zero appetite for more of the same Free Trade Agreements and the conservative Tea Party Republicans are most opposed.
Auckland University Law Professor Jane Kelsey, editor of the book said:
"The champions of a TPP in New Zealand are trying to sell it on two grounds. The first is U.S. market access for dairy products, which New Zealand has as much chance of securing as Australia did for sugar in the AUSFTA. The second is the prospect for this agreement being a stepping stone towards the holy grail of an APEC-wide FTA at some unknowable time in the future which they claim will produce a bonanza for New Zealand, Australia and other TPP countries. This hypothetical is used as a convenient excuse to avoid the reality that there will be no real economic gains for New Zealand from the actual TPP and to avoid discussing the costs. The last thing that New Zealand needs now is to be locked into the failed radical neoliberal agenda of the past three decades". Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, 14/11/10.