TPP: Okay, bad, or very bad?

[Tahuti]

I have mixed feelings on this. I absolutely agree that US copyright and patent laws need yet another big overhaul. On the other hand, doesn't the US (and the pharmaceutical industry in particular) produce a lot of the innovations that move the global economy forward? If this is true (and I'm not taking that as a given - someone prove me wrong) then the US should get more clout in this sphere than everyone else.

Well, more patents != innovation. Patents are often used for trolling. And giving patentees a monopoly gives a high risk for potential innovators. It's doubtful patents are necessary for pharmaceuticals in the first place, giving that the medical industry has a vast array of non-profit corporations in the industry who could be involved in research instead. Having said that, there are more political reasons to keep them than to abandon them.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Perhaps, but in your country people go bankrupt and have their lives ruined because they can't afford a prescription for a pill that costs $2 a pop elsewhere.

We don't want that sort of insanity over here, not even a bit of it.

Two things though -

The ACA (Obamacare) is meant to help with this. It isn't perfect but it helps a lot.

The other thing is that AFAIK, US companies (or US subsidiaries of foreign companies) do the majority of drug research and eat that cost. In turn, countries with stricter laws on drug prices make it harder for businesses to recoup their research cost there. We don't have the same strict pricing laws so the US ends up subsidizing drug research costs for the rest of the world.

So I could just as easily argue that Canada should start paying its fair share. (Of course it's not that simple and I've already said in general I'm in favor of reform)

Well, more patents != innovation. Patents are often used for trolling. And giving patentees a monopoly gives a high risk for potential innovators. It's doubtful patents are necessary for pharmaceuticals in the first place, giving that the medical industry has a vast array of non-profit corporations in the industry who could be involved in research instead. Having said that, there are more political reasons to keep them than to abandon them.

In general, more patents do mean more innovation. Particularly in industries where the cost to innovate is so high like in pharmaceuticals. Yup, patent trolling is a thing and the system should be reformed. But that doesn't mean the whole system should go or that countries having vastly different laws on patents are inherently good. And if non-profits could really do the heavy lifting for drug research then high drug prices and orphaned diseases wouldn't be things, would they?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Weren't several of the most successful and innovative pharmaceutical companies founded in Switzerland long before that country recognized any sort of intellectual property for drugs?


Enforcing "Intellectual property" is by definition the opposite of Free Trade. The whole point is to make governments impose legal monopolies on non-scarce goods in order to criminalize actual free trade.

 

[amadeus]

Why does a "free trade" agreement need to be 1,000 pages long?

Why does a "free trade" agreement impose environmental regulations and copyright rules?

How hard would it be, honestly, to just have a piece of paper that says "the undersigned agree to impose no tariffs or import quotas"?

 

[Ice_Tyrant]

Most people, from what I've seen, regard this as Harper basically having sold Canada to China. They're already pricing Vancouver out of reach for ordinary Canadians to live in.

How so?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

China is not a signatory to this agreement and much of the rhetoric around it has been to the effect that "we need to set the rules ourselves now so that China does not set them for us," so saying Harper sold Canada to China does seem odd.

 

[Quintillus]

New Zealand posted some details of the TPP online:

What changes will be made to intellectual property laws?
TPP harmonises intellectual property rules across the 12 countries which has
required compromise from all parties.

New Zealand currently has a 50-year copyright period. 2 However, half the TPP
countries, and almost all OECD countries, have a 70-year period for copyright
works. TPP requires New Zealand to move to 70 years as well, but allows for a
transition to do this over time.

...

Apart from these two changes, TPP does not affect what is or isn’t subject to
copyright. New Zealand will maintain its current copyright exceptions and will not
be prohibited from adopting new ones in the future. In addition, New Zealand will
not be prevented from undertaking a review of its copyright laws.

New Zealand has, however, agreed to extend its existing laws on technological
protection measures (TPMs), which control access to digital content like music,
TV programmes, films and software. Circumventing TPMs will be prohibited but
exceptions will apply to ensure that people can still circumvent them where there
is no copyright issue (for example, playing region-coded DVDs purchased from
overseas) or where there is an existing copyright exception (for example,
converting a book to braille).

...

In addition, TPP will not affect current New Zealand law on
software patents or require methods of medical treatment to be patentable.

...

What does TPP mean for medicines?

Consumers will not pay more for subsidised medicines as a result of TPP. Most
prescription medicines are fully subsidised and, with few exceptions, New
Zealanders pay no more than $5. TPP does not change this in any way.
Few additional costs are expected for the Government as well.
Under TPP there is no change to New Zealand’s standard 20-year patent period,
but countries will have to extend the term of a particular pharmaceutical patent if
there are unreasonable delays in examining the patent or getting regulatory
approval. New Zealand’s processes are efficient, however, so very few patent
term extensions are expected, based on current practice, and only in exceptional
circumstances.

...

A number of earlier, far-reaching proposals relating to medicines and to
PHARMAC were knocked back during the TPP negotiations and are not part of
the final agreement.

The whole PDF is 9 pages long, so not that bad (although it's not the whole agreement, but a summary of it). Among the economic analysis, it concludes that copyright extension will cost New Zealanders $55 million per year, and lowered tariffs on imported goods will cost New Zealand $20 million per year, whereas lower/eliminated tariffs on exported goods will save New Zealanders $259 million per year (on $20.1 billion worth of exports).

One other interesting clause is:

In addition to tariff liberalisation, TPP also addresses other, non-tariff barriers to
trade in goods, including by:

• ensuring that food safety and biosecurity measures do not create unjustified
  obstacles to trade, are based on scientific principles and are no more trade-
  restrictive than necessary

With the interesting part being, what are "scientific principles" and "no more trade-restrictive than necessary"? The tobacco industry certainly has contested whether smoking is harmful over the years; Monsanto would likely be more than willing to do the same with GMOs if evidence were to emerge suggesting that GMOs (or, more likely IMO, particular GMOs) were harmful.

On a bit of a plus note, the tobacco industry has apparently become so infamous that, "TPP also contains a provision that allows the Government to rule out ISDS challenges over tobacco control measures." So Canada may be able to go ahead and introduce its more stark tobacco warning messages without fear of being sued.

In summary, I think I'm leaning towards "bad" at this point. It could be worse, since the pharmaceutical clauses are not as extreme as feared, and it doesn't prevent self-sovereignty on what is subject to copyright. But it does include more restrictive copyright on certain works, include Digital Millennium Copyright Act-like measures (TPMs in the New Zealand document), and contain potential corporate loopholes on customs restrictions. There's also the whole negotiated-in-secret thing and that there's probably more things of note to it than New Zealand has disclosed so far.

So I'm still against it - the very fact that it was negotiated in secret without public input makes me oppose it in principle for reasons similar to why I've voted against laws that I support when they are proposed as constitutional amendments rather than plain old laws - but it's not looking quite as bad as I suspected.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Economically it's mostly meh.

Politically in the US it is brilliant and hilarious.

Any Republicans in congress with significant seniority are going to be caught in a film loop where they start out waving a pompom chanting "NAFTA NAFTA rah rah rah!" and cut directly into "trade agreements are socialism imposed on us by the great Satan Obama!" Watching them try to explain things like that is always fun.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Why does a "free trade" agreement need to be 1,000 pages long?

Why does a "free trade" agreement impose environmental regulations and copyright rules?

How hard would it be, honestly, to just have a piece of paper that says "the undersigned agree to impose no tariffs or import quotas"?

As said, because "free trade" is essentially nothing but a label to deceive the public. Just as those whole agreements are a tool to trick the public out of having a say.
I mean those dame agreements go as far as to replace proper legal procedures with private secret courts who have a invested interest to rule in favor of investors as this will mean more work and money for those courts. Initially, such courts were only conceived as an option for countries with no functioning legal system. Their general introduction? Just absurd. No national parliament would ever have passed such a thing on its own.
But for the sake of "free trade", apparently everyone is just fine with it...

The force behind those agreements never was the government just wanting more free trade. It always has been big money. First they tried on a global scale, but that failed miserably. Now they try on a semi-global scale and it works splendidly because everyone thinks he has to do it since the others will do it, too.

It is possible that I am a bit unfair in my harsh one-dimensional critic, but it seems very apparent to me that this is what it comes down to.

 

[Tahuti]

Why does a "free trade" agreement need to be 1,000 pages long?

Why does a "free trade" agreement impose environmental regulations and copyright rules?

How hard would it be, honestly, to just have a piece of paper that says "the undersigned agree to impose no tariffs or import quotas"?

Because it is politically incorrect, by which I mean there is no political will or interest to do so. All those 1,000 pages, more or less exceptions to free trade to placate political interests are necessary to make such an agreement politically viable. Let's face it, no politician is going to agree with "the undersigned agree to impose no tariffs or import quotas" at this moment. Those who do probably don't even make it into office.

It is kinda like saying "there should be world peace!" Well, peace sells, but who's buying?

 

[warpus]

So I could just as easily argue that Canada should start paying its fair share. (Of course it's not that simple and I've already said in general I'm in favor of reform)

We'd be on board paying our share if the system wasn't so horribly messed up over on your side of the border.

 

[trader/warrior]

What is reportedly the final draft of the intellectual property rights chapter has been leaked, apparently confirming a lot of the fears about its contents:

https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter-051015.pdf

http://www.theguardian.com/business...ases-tpp-intellectual-property-rights-chapter

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Lighten up guys. If you put out a one line trade agreement that says "no limits" you get Northrop selling B2 bombers in the international market, among other consequences. Yes, a "free trade" agreement is, and always will be, a list of exceptions that is fully intended to be exhaustive, but probably will prove not to be. When the points that were missed come to light and need to be corrected hopefully they won't be anything so obvious as B2 sales, but assume there will be additions to the list, and rightly so.

 

[Little Faith]

Electronic Frontier Foundation's take on this:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/final-leaked-tpp-text-all-we-feared

 

[Tee Kay]

Trade liberalisation is a Good Thing but TPP is like a cable bundle, you pay for the five channels that you actually watch and two hundred channels that are assorted manners of junk. Except this also has infringements on personal freedoms and national sovereignty thrown in.

Internet freedom and ISDS are my two main gripes with this.

 

[Antilogic]

Trade liberalisation is a Good Thing but TPP is like a cable bundle, you pay for the five channels that you actually watch and two hundred channels that are assorted manners of junk. Except this also has infringements on personal freedoms and national sovereignty thrown in.

Internet freedom and ISDS are my two main gripes with this.

Good analogy, and those two issues are something I don't like about it as well. Overall, it's a big gift list for transnational corporate people and a raw deal for those of us who are people people.

 

[kiwitt]

Where a country needs to check any laws it writes in future with overseas corporations, so as not to affect their profits, is not a full and open democracy.

Yes, we can pass laws on same sex marriage, etc., but what about these ...

e.g. if we want pass a law that you need to have more H&S officers, more staff equals more costs equals less profits. Law is scrapped.
e.g. if we want to pass a law to add a 'sugar tax' or 'fat tax', less product will be sold, less profits. Law is scrapped.
e.g. if we want to pass a law to make public spaces smoke-free, less cigarettes sold, less profits. Law is scrapped.

I could go on but lots of laws that we could pass that improve the well being, but because they will affect profits, we can not. How this is not the end of democracy as I know it, I don't know what is.

 

[crabapple]

Extremely bad, it removes democracy. Hopefully TTIP can still be stopped

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Does it mean states giving up power to the corporations for more profit? If greed is good this is going to be awesome!

 

[crabapple]

it means that corporations can sue states that changes laws that lowers corporations future profits.