[Keith_McClary]

Not in TPP, but part of doing business with China:

But the domino that fell just last week will have even more seismic reverberations: Michael Ching Mo Yeung, vice-president of the Canada Asia Pacific Business Association. The South China Morning Post identifies him as the person named as Cheng Muyang, a fugitive who appears on a “Most Wanted” list of 100 people Beijing’s dreaded Central Commission for Discipline Inspection published last week. Of the 100 fugitives, 26 are said to have absconded to Canada. They are now sought by Interpol on charges of money-laundering, embezzlement and other such crimes. The South China Morning Post noted in its piece about his identity that it does not have evidence of Ching’s guilt or innocence. Ching could not be reached for an interview for this piece.

Beijing’s “Most Wanted 100″ is the most audacious move to date in its Operation Skynet effort, which is what you get when you combine a fraud squad with an old-style Stalinist purge and a cunning geopolitical muscle-flexing shakedown. Operation Skynet agents have been combing through Vancouver’s real estate transaction records in recent weeks. Within hours of Beijing’s Most Wanted list making the rounds, police in Harbin, the capital of China’s Heilongjiang province, arrested and jailed Qu Zhang Mingjie, a local Communist Party official. Qu is the mother of the woman Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson calls his sweetheart, the pop star Wanting Qu, formerly Tourism Vancouver’s “ambassador” to China.
...
“China is going to want to get it all back. This is not a casual exercise. This is an active recovery operation, and all that money is going to be removed back to China,” Duhaime said. “In Canada, it’s in the billions. I’m sure it’s in the tens of billions. This is a major monetary drain on the Canadian economy. The whole thing is being driven by China now. It should have been driven by us.”

You won’t hear a lot of cabinet-level noise about this in Ottawa. Over the past three years, Canada has helpfully deported roughly 1,800 people to China, and the plan now is all about cutting Canada’s losses. Last December, Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s ambassador in Beijing, told the official China Daily that Canada was on the verge of ratifying a 2013 deal then Foreign Minister John Baird inked that would help Beijing recover the loot its officials have spirited out of the country, in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.

“I don’t know why we agreed to this,” Brock University professor Charles Burton, a China specialist and former diplomat in Beijing, told me. Dazzled by the promise of riches in China, Canada’s politicians have finally been backed into a corner. Even if Canada can secure a piece of the forfeited-assets pie, it’s China that’s setting the rules now, and there’s no telling a fugitive from justice from some hapless apparatchik from a faction on the outs with President Xi. “We have no means to ensure due process of law or even whether the information we’re getting is valid,” Burton said.

It’s not like we didn’t know this was coming.

Four years ago, businessmen from Mainland China, almost all of them government officials, started arriving in Canada with bags of cash. ...

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Glavi ... story.html

[dissident]

Canada should be worried. It's real estate bubble economy is propped up with absconded Chinese cash.

[Sixstrings]

Article in the Guardian about TPP, Nike and Obama's support for Nike and TPP, and Nike's working conditions overseas:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership will lead to a global race to the bottom

At a time when economic inequality around the globe continues to widen, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will only make things worse. Unlike what President Obama claims, the agreement will only encourage a race to the bottom, in which a small percentage of people get ridiculously rich while most workers around the globe stay miserably poor. We can’t let that happen.

Today, President Obama is visiting Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon to garner support for the trade deal, which would be signed by the US and 11 Pacific Rim countries. That’s an apt place for Obama to beat the free-trade drum – Nike, like the TPP, is associated with offshoring American jobs, widening the income inequality gap, and increasing the number of people making slave wages overseas. Since the passage of NAFTA in 1993, we’ve seen the loss of nearly five million US manufacturing jobs, the closure of more than 57,000 factories, and stagnant wages. This deal won’t be any different.

In November, Zachary Senn, a college student reporter at the Modesto Bee, spent three weeks in Indonesia living with and interviewing workers who make goods for Nike, Adidas, Puma and Converse. When you hear Obama talking about those “high-quality jobs,” think of RM, a 32-year-old mother who told Senn that she works 55 hours, six days a week and makes just $184 a month after 12 years at the PT Nikomas factory, a Nike subcontractor that employs 25,000 people. That’s 83 cents an hour or $2,208 a year.

RM works in the sewing department and is expected to process 100 shoes an hour. “If we don’t meet our quotas, we get yelled at”, she told Senn. “And then the quotas are piled into the next day”. Eating lunch is difficult because the food “smells bad,” and worse yet, RM said there is only one restroom, with 15 stalls, for 850 women.

RM told Senn that she doesn’t want Nike to leave Indonesia; she wants an end to verbal abuse and a 50% raise, which would allow her to better provide for her family.

Is $368 a month too much to ask from a multinational corporation that posted $27.8 billion in revenue and spent $3 billion on advertising and promotions in fiscal 2014? Nike CEO Mark Parker was paid $14.7 million in compensation last year. That’s $7,656 an hour.

Wages in Vietnam, a key TPP partner, are even lower than Indonesia. Nike’s largest production center is in Vietnam where 330,000 mostly young women workers with no legal rights earn just 48 to 69 cents an hour, according to the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights (IGLHR).

According to the IGLHR’s A Race to the Bottom report, Nike symbolizes the destructive impacts of trade deals like the TPP. Those $100-$200 Nike shoes you see in stores carry a declared customs value of $5.27 per pair
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/08/the-trans-pacific-partnership-will-lead-to-a-global-race-to-the-bottom#comments

To be objective..

The thing about this is that a crappy job is better than no job at all. But then population just increases, and everyone is still about as poor as they were before. But, like Mexico, there is some progress and you wind up with even more poor people than before but then you also get more rich people and some more middle class where there wasn't before.

So, I'm just being fair. But of course the least Nike ought to be able to do is give them enough bathrooms. And treat the workers humanely, not like a cotton plantation where if you don't pick the day's quota you get verbally abused and the quota is added on to the next day.

They have to process "100 shoes per hour," if quota isn't met it's added to the next day. I'm obviously not sure how much work goes into each shoe, on the assembly line.

A $300 pair of exclusive nike shoes has a declared customs value of five dollars.

So -- I really do understand all this, how trade works.

From an American perspective -- really, this is still the richest country in the world, and there's no good reason we're so far out of line with the rest of the advanced economies. We actually have the highest rate of childhood poverty.

Indonesia's between a rock and a hard place, maybe they'd like the TPP but the workers would like better treatment.

And in the US -- we have to figure something out, as bernie says it doesn't matter how much GDP growth we have if all income gains are literally going to the 1% and just them.

We've got too many poor people in the US, it's not necessary, and trying to say offshoring more jobs will fix that is just an outright lie.

They need to raise the minimum wage here. And start thinking about jobs, in the USA.

[Sixstrings]

Was listening to thom hartman radio show, he reported the TPA fastrack bill failed in the senate just now. So whaddya know, democracy sort of works sometimes after all, we'll see how it winds up in the end though.

They needed 40 votes to defeat it, they got 44.

So it's not over with for good but this stopped the fast track, that leaves debate open and fillibuster and amendments. It's definitely a defeat for Boehner / Obama.

He also mentioned a Republican anti-TPP site:

http://obamatrade.com/

(disingenuous but hey whatever.. free trade deals are Republican bread and butter, but they make this out to be just an Obama thing. The problem is that Obama is being a Republican on this, that's the issue. Jeb Bush is an even bigger free trader.)

[Keith_McClary]

Good summary of TPP issues on Salon.

The 10 biggest lies you’ve been told about the Trans-Pacific Partnership
DAVID DAYEN TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015

You can call it "misleading" or "offering half-truths," but when push comes to a shove, these are lies

I can't remember seeing any pro-TPP articles. Maybe I read the wrong media?

[vox_mundi]

Good summary of TPP issues on Salon.

The 10 biggest lies you’ve been told about the Trans-Pacific Partnership
DAVID DAYEN TUESDAY, MAY 12, 2015

You can call it "misleading" or "offering half-truths," but when push comes to a shove, these are lies

I can't remember seeing any pro-TPP articles. Maybe I read the wrong media?

It's not you ...

As Trans-Pacific Partnership Debate Rages, Broadcast Evening News Stays Silent
Media Largely Ignore Negotiations Of Sweeping Free Trade Deal

Broadcast nightly news programs have remained silent on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) over the past three months of weekday programming, even as Congress is scheduled to vote this week on whether to grant President Obama authority to finalize the terms of the massive trade deal. The coverage blackout continues a trend extending back to 2013.

A Media Matters analysis of ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC's Nightly News from August 1, 2013, through May 10, 2015, found that the programs completely ignored the trade negotiations and related policy debates. Only PBS NewsHour devoted substantive coverage to the TPP, with 14 total segments:

Coverage of the TPP among major cable outlets has been similarly one-sided. Since August 1, 2013, MSNBC has mentioned the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 124 evening and primetime segments, the overwhelming majority of which (103) came during The Ed Show. Fox News trails far behind with just 12 mentions of the TPP over that time period, 10 of which have come since February 1, 2015. CNN has been almost completely absent from the discussion, registering only 2 mentions of the trade negotiations:

[Pops]

U.S. Senate Democrats delivered a major blow to President Barack Obama's trade agenda on Tuesday, blocking debate on a bill that would have smoothed the path for a Pacific trade pact.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/ ... B320150512

[onlooker]

Well, well well , the Democrats did not cave into the President. Maybe because he is lame duck president. This is just a reprieve. Certain this trade agreement will eventually pass as has pretty much all trade initiatives since WWII

[Sixstrings]

Well, well well , the Democrats did not cave into the President. Maybe because he is lame duck president. This is just a reprieve. Certain this trade agreement will eventually pass as has pretty much all trade initiatives since WWII

Mmmhm nope they didn't cave, they all stood up to him. All D's except for one voted against the fast track. I read there's more opposition in the house, and a small bloc of R's against it in the house as well.

It's not because he's a lame duck -- it's because people still remember nafta and they aren't going to go for this pacific nafta and that's just that.

Of course, this being politics.. sometimes people are against things before they are for them.

I think this is a win though, onlooker. Trade deal may be dead. And as it should be, at minimum it needs to wait and be a campaign issue so voters can vote and Hillary can be forced take a position and then Bush is obviously already for it.

And they can just debate it out, in the debates, and they can tell us what's in the deal and how great it's going to be for everybody.

President Obama is not happy with Elizabeth Warren, word is, this is a "real fight" and not one of those "pretend fights."

Obama says Elizabeth is just a politician, like anybody else:

“She’s absolutely wrong,” Barack Obama said, before I could even get the question out of my mouth.

He was talking about Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and populist crusader...

Three days after that broadside, when we sat down at Nike’s headquarters outside Portland, Ore., Obama still seemed unusually irritated.

“Think about the logic of that, right?” he went on. “The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall Street to make sure that we don’t repeat what happened in 2007, 2008. And then I sign a provision that would unravel it?

“I’d have to be pretty stupid,” Obama said, laughing. “This is pure speculation. She and I both taught law school, and you know, one of the things you do as a law professor is you spin out hypotheticals. And this is all hypothetical, speculative.”

Obama wasn’t through. He wanted me to know, in pointed terms, that for all the talk about her populist convictions, Warren had a personal brand she was trying to promote, too.

“The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” he said.
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/why-obama-is-happy-to-fight-elizabeth-warren-on-118537612596.html

Okay let me see if I understand that, he's saying that:

a) Warren was a law professor, and he's saying he was a law professor too so he knows that all law professors do is "spin hypotheticals." So what's that mean, you can't trust law professors? But he was one, I'm confused.

b) He says “the truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else."
Ok so what does that mean, that you can't trust any politician, and Liz is a politician? But isn't Obama, too?

Here's the truth of the matter: people trust Warren.

And people do not understand why the President was trying to ram this TPP through without even telling anyone what's in it. And why he's just pushing Republican corporate interests, anyway, how about something for workin' folk. Why was a Democrat ever working so hard for this thing, and wanting it so much, to start with.

[Subjectivist]

My Ohio Democrat Senator is calling out President Obama over his treatment of Senator Warren for spearheading the anti TPP vote.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/05 ... publicans/

I think referring to her as her first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps--I've said enough."

[onlooker]

Well, well well , the Democrats did not cave into the President.

. Just to clarify said NOT

[Pops]

Yeah, some few of them still have to face the voters next year ...

[Sixstrings]

My Ohio Democrat Senator is calling out President Obama over his treatment of Senator Warren for spearheading the anti TPP vote.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/05 ... publicans/

I think referring to her as her first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps--I've said enough."

Hm, they're saying he's being sexist.

I think they're right -- he's got a condescending tone, and like she's off the reservation and telling truths that aren't supposed to be told.

When he says "Elizabeth," it's like, "that silly woman."

Or a pet poodle or something, like, "oh Elizabeth you bad poodle you chewed up the rug look what you did."

Meanwhile -- Obama never actually tells us what's in the TPP or makes a case for it. So far all I've heard is that "Warren is a politican too" and "you can't trust law professors."




Warren, Elizabeth, whatever -- a lot of people would like to call her Madame President.
I like her, I've always said I like her, I know these banker issues pretty well and she's a WATCHDOG for the consumer and anyone that has to go to work for a living, other than capital gains.

That's a great person to have in politics, a real watchdog for the people.

[Sixstrings]

This was Warren's response to Obama saying she is "absolutely wrong" and just "spinning hypotheticals:"

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and prominent liberal voice, stuck to her argument in an interview published on Monday with a Washington Post blog, saying Obama should release details of the Pacific trade talks so legal experts can determine if a pact could be used to weaken U.S. bank rules.

"If the president is so confident it's a good deal, he should declassify the text and let people see it before asking Congress to tie its hands on fixing it," Warren said
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/11/us-trade-obama-warren-idUSKBN0NW1N020150511

I've already heard Warren say on tv before, that she'd like to talk about this deal BUT SHE CAN'T BECAUSE IT'S CLASSIFIED SECRET.

I doubt she'd just be making stuff up if she didn't have something here.

The President actually brought all the senate Democrats into a meeting, and the meeting was CLASSIFIED -- that means secret, it means it's a federal crime to divulge what is said, only the President can declassify something.

BTW I'm not going all "the UN just invaded Texas" crazy. TPP is probably just a really bad deal that's great for the corps that got all their stuff in it, and yeah it's NAFTA expanded out to the entire Pacific rim and will lose millions of jobs, but otherwise there's no conspiracy here just same old same old.

But a lot of people in the world are saying this thing stinks and they don't want it.

A lot of people in the world don't like these trade tribunals, like Phillip Morris suing Uraguay and Australia over anti smoking initiatives.

The truth of the thing is just what Warren has said, that if they ever told everyone what's in the deal, then nobody would want it so that's why they have to keep it secret.

[Sixstrings]

Just some thoughts --

* From what I've read, the korea free trade deal passed by Bush lost a lot of jobs in the US, and this TPP is based on that, but now it's NAFTA for the entire Pacific rim

* We all know nafta lost a lot of US jobs, and to be fair it built mexico up and actually did good things for them. So that's good on humanitarian grounds, but so would emptying your bank account and just giving it all to a Sri Lankan or Vietnamese. How much more of that can we really do, and survive ourselves?

The globalists want to solve global problems by giving our jobs to foreigners, and then the 1% make a lot of money too. So it's good for the 3rd worlders, it's great for our rich, but all we're left with here in the US is government jobs and gov spending, but Republicans just want to take that away too anyway.

These policies in Washington, are good for everyone EXCEPT the 99% here in the USA.

* This TPP will lose American jobs, further hurt the 99% and further enrich our capitalists.

To be fair, there is strategic value in doing this thing, to help Japan out and give them a lot more of our jobs. So then that strengthens the alliance and helps to counter China. Also they are thinking maybe China will be brought into the TPP.

But goodness, how many more jobs can we lose? Have we not bled enough? I know Japan wants this trade deal, I know Japan says it will strengthen our alliance as they face off with China. But the fact of it still means we're going to give them a lot more of our jobs. Look -- I really like Japanese people, and I'm really glad Japan shares our values and is a liberal democracy. But I'm sorry, we just can't afford anymore of this, we can't afford to give them more jobs.

I just think these jobs offshoring deals are something from the past, and we just can't do any more of it because the American worker just can't bear the weight of it anymore.

The only exports that go up with these trade deals, are jobs exported out of here.

* If they are going to go passing a *classified bill* that they already know is going to lose at least a million jobs, then couldn't they at least tack on a minimum wage increase? No, they won't do that will they? Or any other thing that may help workers in this country. Because the whole point is to lower wages even further, and hire somebody in Vietnam to do your job, for 50 cents an hour.

So I'm against this thing, because they can't even deign to bother to put anything in it to at least add some sugar to the bitter. To mitigate the job loss impact of it, here.

Corporate Democrats try to tell liberal Democrats that they are "living in the past," and "not the 21st Century." They just say the "jobs are gone" and can't ever come back. And then they want more of these free trade deals, to make it even worse.

The problem is that for corporate democrats, their vision of this century is the same as the Republicans. A richer 1%, a poorer 99%. Both of these groups -- corporate democrats and republicans -- just accept it as a given that the new world order is globalist and it's all trade deals and that's what our foreign policy is all about too, and unfortunately the American working man just does not fit into any of that.

[yellowcanoe]

I'm sure some politicians supported free trade agreements because it would improve the lives of people living in developing nations. However, as these same countries typically have a high population growth rate, the impact of relocating jobs from developed countries will be largely negated over time.

[Scrub Puller]

Yair . . .
yellowcanoe

I'm sure some politicians supported free trade agreements because it would improve the lives of people living in developing nations

Yuh think??

Cheers.

[Keith_McClary]

Guard tells top senator that she can't take notes on TPP
By Cory Doctorow at 2:10 pm Tue, May 12, 2015

We thought it was crazy when Obama's trade threatened Congress with prison if they disclosed anything about the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

But it just gets dirtier. Sen Barbara Boxer [D-CA] tried to get a look at the text. First she limited her helpers to staffers with security clearance, because the TPP is Classified ("God knows why... It has nothing to do with defense. It has nothing to do with going after ISIS.").

But when she got there, the guard told her she wasn't allowed to take notes. Then he relented and told her she could take notes, but that he would confiscate them and read and file them when she was done.
It's no wonder that the Senate rejected the proposal to fast-track the TPP through Congress.

“The guard says, ‘you can’t take notes.’ I said, ‘I can’t take notes?’” Boxer recalled. “‘Well, you can take notes, but have to give them back to me, and I’ll put them in a file.’ So I said: ‘Wait a minute. I’m going to take notes and then you’re going to take my notes away from me and then you’re going to have them in a file, and you can read my notes? Not on your life.’”

Boxer noted at the start of her speech that she hoped opponents of the trade promotion authority bill — the so-called fast-track legislation required to advance the TPP — would be able to block the bill via a filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is expected to file a motion to invoke cloture on the measure later this afternoon.

[Sixstrings]

This is the truth on these free trade deals:



Obama insults populists, calling them "ignorant:"

Obama Hurls Insults at Liberals on Trade

President Obama’s performance in pushing for approval of fast track legislation of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal, in which he’s allied with Republicans and has spent the last week castigating and insulting liberal Democrats, has been one of the most bizarre and ill-advised performances of his presidency.

I spent many years working for senior Democratic Senators such as Lloyd Bentsen and House Democratic leaders beginning with the legendary Speaker Tip O’Neill, and have never seen any president of either party insult so many members of his own party’s base and members of the House and Senate as Mr. Obama has in his weeks of tirades against liberals on trade.
http://observer.com/2015/05/obama-hurls-insults-at-liberals-on-trade/

NAFTA:



US trade deficit compared to other countries: