Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, has written a piece on the TPP in the American Prospect. Regarding the lack of transparency, she warns: “The implications for the principle and practice of democratic governance are dire. Not only would a vast array of decisions affecting our daily lives be made in venues where we have no role, but even if the U.S. wanted to make changes to the adopted pact it would require consent by all signatory countries. Thus, accompanying the imposition of specific retrograde policies would be an unprecedented shift of power toward locking in corporate rule insulated against the normal means of democratic accountability such as elections, advocacy, and public protest.”
Her article is part of a larger report published by the American Prospect, titled Pacific Illusions. The report argues that the TPP will fail to meet its stated goals of reviving U.S. manufacturing and countering China’s increased influence in the region, because the TPP “doesn’t address the most important issues: currency manipulation, trade with state-owned companies, investment subsidies to induce off-shoring, and the asymmetry between the mercantilist policies and practices of much of Asia and the free trade regime of the United States.”
