More in sorrow

Image via The Rumpus.

OK, I'm so sick of this I can hardly stand it any more, but David Atkins, whom I really like, is on the one hand correct when he writes this about the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations:

The secrecy is somewhat understandable given that it’s a multilateral international negotiation. Still, it should be much more transparent given the dramatic potential domestic consequences. The loss of manufacturing jobs, while a potent political argument, loses some of its sheen in the face of evidence that trade has already been so liberalized that TPP can’t do much further damage.

And on the other hand really wrong when he writes this:

Rather than reforming and curtailing America’s onerous intellectual property laws, TPP seeks to expand and internationalize them.

That is, once again, not what we know; TPP doesn't seek anything. The 12 parties seek what they seek, which is different things, sometimes in conflict with each other. That's why the thing has to be negotiated. What we know about this is that in 2011, the US negotiators apparently wanted to internationalize US intellectual property laws and the other 11 countries did not. We don't know who, if anybody, won the fight, but I would note that 11 usually beats 1, and if the US won that one they must have given something to the other countries that they wanted more.

Similarly, the US wanted to force a certain level of transparency on the way governments set prices for drugs and medical devices, which has been widely interpreted as an underhanded way of protecting US manufacturers' (ridiculously high) prices for these things, and the other 11 countries did not. One thing we do know that we didn't know a week ago, which I noted on Wednesday, was that the 11 did win a battle last December over part of the pharmaceuticals provision, removing the reference to "competitive market-derived prices", which was seen as an avenue for Big Pharma companies to appeal prices they thought were too low.

Jared Bernstein wrote on this:

the change came not because of anything any of us on the outside said about this–-the damn debate is so heated that anyone who speaks up against this sort of thing is a labor-backed troglodyte who doesn’t understand the benefits of free trade. It came about because the other signatory countries pushed for it.

Well, duh. And anybody who speaks in favor of it is a corporate tool who doesn't understand that these companies are dedicated to destroying all human life. I hate bothsiderist accusations, but this is one case where my (normal) side is not being a lot more honest than theirs.

The US bargaining position on this issue was clearly wrong, and wrong because the Obama administration allowed itself to be hoodwinked, ironically enough, with arguments about "transparency":

“It was very clear to everyone except the U.S. that the initial proposal wasn’t about transparency. It was about getting market access for the pharmaceutical industry by giving them greater access to and influence over decision-making processes around pricing and reimbursement,” said Deborah Gleeson, a lecturer at the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University in Australia.

But the overwhelming majority in the negotiations couldn't put up with it and got rid of it. That's how it is supposed to work, and evidence that it has been working.

Bad US proposals for the pact can't survive unless the other countries want them to, and the same goes for Malaysia's attachment to human trafficking and Vietnam's insistence on preventing effective labor organizing and Australia's refusal to submit to international judgment over the adequacy of its carbon reduction plans. The idea is to create a consensus moving everybody ahead on their parochial issues so that all are better than they were before.

Or probably I should say "the idea was" because it now looks fairly dead.

I don't blame the House Democrats for refusing to help pass the Trade Adjustment Assistance bill on Friday (I'd have voted against it myself, if only because of the Republicans' poison pill amendment on environmental regulation—the most important aspect of TPP to me is the potential power to force countries to combat global warming, and this item would make sure it doesn't happen). But I'm sad that the agreements, this one and still more the TTIP, which would undoubtedly be considerably more progressive in character, won't be completed and this project of putting our delinquent and dangerous nations under some international supervision is apparently at an end (I know, Pelosi hasn't given up).

And I'm really sad that my people, organized labor, the environmental movement, forces against inequality, seem to have given themselves in to some serious bad faith.

If anybody wants to read any more, I was in an epic exchange at Political Animal. I'm not copying it over here because Disqus (I tried to storify but couldn't figure out a way).