“When more than 95 percent of our
potential customers live outside our borders, we can’t let countries
like China write the rules of the global economy” - U.S. President Barack H. Obama
The secretive
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an agreement that serves numerous
purposes; one of them is to contain China’s rising economic power in the
Asia-Pacific region. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) who
normally advises Washington’s insiders on foreign policy matters
produced a report titled ‘Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China’ written by Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis which clearly states that “China
represents and will remain the most significant competitor to the
United States for decades to come” and that “the likelihood of a
long-term strategic rivalry between Beijing and Washington is high.” Blackwill and Tellis recommend that the U.S. Congress “Deliver
on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, … as a geoeconomic answer to growing
Chinese economic power and geopolitical coercion in Asia.” It is a clear message to China. The main-stream media is also on board with the TPP agreement, for example The Washington Post published an article titled ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade deal worth celebrating’, and why is the TPP worth celebrating? “By
knitting the U.S. and Japanese economies together in their first
free-trade deal — and binding both of them closer to rising Asian
nations — the TPP would create a counterweight to China in East Asia”. Time magazine also had a headline that said it all ‘Pacific Trade Deal Is Good for the U.S. and Obama’s Legacy’ which makes its case that a “U.S. presence” will protect its partners from any perceived threats from China:
But Asia is an exception, because deeper involvement there can create economic opportunities (like TPP), and because China’s neighbors are eager for a lasting U.S. presence to protect them from over-dependence for growth and security on China
China was left out of the deal
intentionally (not to say that China would benefit from the deal in any
way), the reason is that the U.S. wants an alliance of nations than can
counter China’s rise to an economic powerhouse. The TPP is meant to
isolate China while the U.S. expands its presence in the Pacific (Part
of the Pentagon’s ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’) turning its partners in the
TPP trade deal into cheap labor colonies without rights that will serve
U.S. interests.
Can China counter the TPP?
RT news reported that China can unite to counter the TPP with Europe which accounts for “€1 billion in trade daily, while bilateral trade in goods reached €428.1 billion in 2013.” According to the RT news report:
This raises questions, whether China and other countries are ready to unite to counter-balance the Pacific Rim pact. “China and Europe may finally look at each other and find some commonalities that they were unaware of before,” said Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis, in a report quoted by CNBC. “China expressed interest to the EU commencing negotiations on a bilateral FTA [free trade agreement] when President Xi Jinping visited the EU in March 2014. At the time, the EU recognized this to be a desirable long-term objective rather than something that would be negotiated in the near future,” CNBC quotes Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at HIS as saying
RT news also reported that “another
way for China to oppose TPP is boosting its BRICS participation. Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa comprise about 30 percent of
world’s GDP at the moment in PPP terms and are projected to increase to
as much as 45 percent by 2030.” Which rightly so, allows China to bypass the TPP trade zone.
Malaysia’s Internal Opposition to the TPP
There are already disagreements within
countries such as Malaysia where former Prime Minister; Dr. Mahathir
Mohamad had recently said that
the TPP is a “very bad” agreement. According to The Malaysian Insider (www.themalaysianinsider.com) “Anti-TPP
lobbyists said the agreement has removed the country’s control over
policymaking and put the government at risk of being sued if it favoured
public interests over foreign investors.” This means that if an
environmental accident occurred and people were injured or killed, the
Malaysian government cannot sue the corporations or governments
involved. Dr. Mohamad explains “Let’s say a few countries are into
mining and it pollutes the environment and we stop it, they (the
companies) can sue governments for loss of future profits” the report said.
the TPP is a “very bad” agreement. According to The Malaysian Insider (www.themalaysianinsider.com) “Anti-TPP
lobbyists said the agreement has removed the country’s control over
policymaking and put the government at risk of being sued if it favoured
public interests over foreign investors.” This means that if an
environmental accident occurred and people were injured or killed, the
Malaysian government cannot sue the corporations or governments
involved. Dr. Mohamad explains “Let’s say a few countries are into
mining and it pollutes the environment and we stop it, they (the
companies) can sue governments for loss of future profits” the report said.
The TPP is a corporate takeover that
will ease rules that normally protects working-class people and labor
unions. The TPP will offshore jobs from the U.S. and Canada to low-wage
nations like Malaysia, Mexico, Peru and Vietnam.
The agreement also eliminates health,
safety and environmental regulations and favors corporations such as
Monsanto over food safety issues. The TPP will empower pharmaceutical
corporations that will expand its monopolistic control over its
manufacturing practices which will eventually increase the price of
medicine. The TPP also threatens internet privacy and the list goes on.
However, as bad as the TPP is, China is the big enchilada. It is
important to remember that the U.S. holds the largest debt in world
history while China is the creditor nation that buys U.S. debt (although
it has been dumping U.S. dollars at unprecedented levels) regardless,
Washington still pushes this ludicrous deal that only makes matters
worse in terms of diplomacy. The TPP serves multiple purposes; one of
them is to expand an economic war that will repel China’s influence in
the region. All countries that signed on to the TPP should keep in mind
what Russian President Vladimir Putin once said “Washington doesn’t want partners. Washington wants vassals.”
More information on the TPP will surface
in the months to come, but so far the available information we do have
has one specific goal, and that is to contain China at the expense of
less developed nations. The TPP is about the U.S. dominating the
Asia-Pacific through trade agreements accompanied by its political and
military presence to ensure that the multi-national corporations
continue to make profits while pushing the Chinese dragon into the
corner. My opinion is that the TPP will fail. The Malaysian people are
one of the first to oppose this agreement. My prediction is that all of
the governments that signed on to the agreement will face mass protests
within their own borders, and that will be a positive step towards
defeating the TPP once and for all.
Copyright © Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment