Trade agreements that emphasize openness should be treated with caution. When the term partnership is used, an even warier eye should be cast at texts, negotiations, and agreements. Where is the pin that underlies the agreement?
On November 13, 2013 WikiLeaks released the draft text of the entire Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). As noted in the preamble, “This chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents.”
The document’s wording has the recognizable features of the Obama administration’s trade policy, an unsurprising fact given that much of it was authored by United States Trade Representative Michael Froman. It says virtually nothing about the rights of individual citizens, and everything about the rights of states and corporations. An interesting feature of the draft text is the extent to which it discloses various disagreements of the parties.
Tiny and at times plucky New Zealand was none too thrilled by a range of the US positions in the chapter, a position that has gotten sharper as negotiations have gone on. Two-hundred and fifty references involving New Zealand are featured, of which 60 show support for the US position. Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei tended to keep company with NZ at many a turn.
No comments:
Post a Comment