The Empire’s New Asian Clothes – America’s Strategic Rebalance As Covert Retreat

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Yves Smith

Yves here. This article provides perspective on Obama’s unseemly anxiety to push through the toxic trade deal known as the TransPacific Partnership. We’ve chronicled at some length how this is not in fact a “trade” deal but is designed to make the world safer and more profitable for US multinationals by strengthening intellectual property protections (helping Big Pharma, Hollywood, and technology firms) while providing for enhancement of the rights of foreign investors to bring cases against governments in secret arbitration panels for measures that would reduce expected profits. The effect of these investor provisions is to allow foreign companies to challenge labor protections and environmental and product safety regulations, facilitating a race to the bottom.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/01/empires-new-asian-clothes-americas-strategic-rebalance-covert-retreat.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

 
Obama Downplays Trade Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership: Fleeting Mention Doesn’t Even Reference Recently Introduced Camp-Baucus Fast Track Bill Eyes on Trade

http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2014/01/obama-downplays-trade-authority-trans-pacific-partnership-fleeting-mention-doesnt-even-reference-rec.html