So-called ‘free trade’ agreements are continually advertised as creators of jobs, yet jobs are lost and wages decline once they go into effect.

As representatives of the 12 countries participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership gather today in New Zealand to sign the agreement, the usual unsubstantiated claims are being put forth.

Why is this so? I mean beyond the obvious answer that such claims are propaganda in the service of corporate elites and financiers.

Corporate-funded ‘think tanks’ that pump out a steady barrage of papers making grandiose claims for ‘free trade’ deals that are relied on by the political leaders who push these deals require some data, no matter how massaged.

One organization prominent in this process is the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which has issued rosy reports in expectation of deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement – for example, it predicted 170,000 new jobs would be created in the US alone in 1995 and that the Mexican economy would grow by four to five percent annually under NAFTA.

A pocketful of mumbles

One way to look at this is that the Peterson Institute is to ‘free trade’ agreements as the Heartland Institute is to global warming. Heartland began as a Big Tobacco outfit issuing reports denying links between smoking and cancer.

As late as 1998, Heartland President Joe Bast claimed that there were “few, if any, adverse health effects“ associated with smoking and boasted to a Phillip Morris executive that “Heartland does many things that benefit Philip Morris’s bottom line, things that no other organization does.”

Heartland later began specializing in global-warming denial, receiving $676,500 from Exxon Mobil alone between 1996 and 2006; after which it stopped identifying its contributors. Mr. Bast seems to have no shame, writing that “Most scientists do not believe human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth’s climate” in an article describing global warming as a “scam”. In fact, 97% of climate scientists agree that human activity is behind global warming.

It is this same attitude toward the truth that pervades papers predicting wondrous results from ‘free trade’ agreements. In contrast to the Peterson Institute’s rosy projections, the first 20 years of NAFTA proved to be a lose-lose-lose proposition for Canada, Mexico and the United States:

• Almost 5 million Mexican farmers have been displaced with inflation-adjusted wages in Mexico barely above the level of 1980;
• US food prices have risen 67% since NAFTA took effect and two-thirds of displaced manufacturing workers in the US have been forced to take work with reduced wages;
• and Canadians suffered drastic cuts in government benefits while their environmental laws were reversed in the wake of corporate challenges.

Rosy reports rest on ideology, not real world

The Peterson Institute is at it again, first claiming the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will result in gains of US$1.9 trillion, and in a new report once again making extravagant claims even if scaled back. In its latest report, the Institute claims there will be no net job losses, while annual income in the US would increase by $131 billion.

These sorts of predictions are routine, and not the product of any single corporate organization. How is it that, all actual experience to the contrary, these sorts of calculations are presented with a straight face?

The political economist Martin Hart-Landsberg, in his book Capitalist Globalization: Consequences, Resistance, and Alternatives, writes that economic models that presume wondrous benefits from ‘free trade’ agreements assume, inter alia:

• There are only two inputs, capital and labor, which are able to move instantaneously but never cross national borders.
• Total aggregate expenditures in each economy will be sufficient, and automatically adjust, to ensure full use of all resources.
• Flexible exchange rates will prevent lowered tariffs from causing changes in trade balances.

Thanks to these starting points, Professor Hart-Landsberg writes, “this kind of modeling assumes a world in which liberalization cannot, by assumption, cause or worsen unemployment, capital flight or trade imbalances. Thanks to these assumptions, if a country drops its trade restrictions, market forces will quickly and effortlessly lead capital and labor to shift into new, more productive uses.

“And since trade always remains in balance, this restructuring will generate a dollar’s worth of new exports for every dollar of new imports. Given these assumptions, it is no wonder that mainstream economic studies always produce results supporting ratification of free trade agreements.”

Given the strong biases in favor of ‘free trade’ agreements, all the more skeptical of the TPP we may be when we see the tiny gains forecast by the World Bank. Vietnam is expected to see the biggest boost among the 12 TPP countries, according to the World Bank forecast – a 10% gain in gross domestic product cumulative through 2030. In other words, less than one percent per year. As a TechDirt summation of this report noted:

“So according to the World Bank’s figures, the US will gain an extra 0.04% GDP per year on average, as a result of TPP; Australia an extra 0.07% annually, and Canada a boost of 0.12% per year.”

If this is the best that promoters of corporate hegemony can come up with for the TPP, its likely effect will surely be dismal.

The vanishing ‘gains’

Jane Kelsey, a New Zealand law professor who has long sounded the alarm on the TPP, notes that even the slightly larger gain forecast for that country would actually constitute a statistical blip that may or may not actually exist. She writes:

“[The] National [government]’s glitzy new ‘TPP fact’ page is bad wine repackaged in new bottles. Here’s a few facts they don’t tell you. The projected economic gains of 0.9% of GDP by 2030 are within their own margin of error, even before costs are factored in and disregarding unrealistic modelling.”

A more balanced investigation conducted by Tufts University researchers Jeronim Capaldo and Alex Izurieta led to the conclusion that the TPP, if enacted, would result in the loss of three-quarters of a million jobs through 2025, including 448,000 jobs to be lost in the US alone. Canada, Mexico, Japan and Australia would each suffer jobs losses in the tens of thousands. The Tufts report concludes:

“The TPP would lead to higher inequality, with a lower labor share of national income. We expect competitive pressures on labor incomes, combined with employment losses, to push labor shares of national income further down, redistributing income from labor to capital in all countries. In the USA, this would exacerbate a multi-decade trend.”

Working people in the 11 other TPP countries would get to experience the stagnant wages and declining living standards that United Statesians have been treated to during the past three decades.

More than 330,000 manufacturing jobs are expected to be lost in the US alone if TPP is passed, according to a separate calculation by the United Steelworkers, and Unifor estimates that 20,000 Canadian jobs in auto manufacturing alone are at risk.

If no gain, there will be pain for you

Underlying all this further tilting of the scales already heavily weighted toward corporate money and power is the ‘investor-state dispute settlement‘ provision, whereby multi-national corporations can sue governments to overturn laws and regulations they don’t like under the excuse that measures to protect safety, health or the environment constitute a ‘taking’ of their expected profits – not even actual profits.

The secret tribunal that will hear corporate complaints (the same as the one used under NAFTA) must assume the corporation’s claim is true under some circumstances.

Canada, because it has higher standards than do the US or Mexico, is most frequently sued under NAFTA, although the Canadian pipeline company TransCanada has committed the latest outrage, suing the US government for $15 billion because the Obama administration declined to permit the Keystone XL pipeline. TransCanada is suing for $15 billion even though it has spent $2.4 billion on the pipeline.

Although the governments of the 12 TPP countries are ‘signing’ the agreement today, that is a formality: The deal must still be approved by legislatures and implementing legal changes enacted.

The TPP would enter into force 60 days after all 12 signatories ratify it or, if that doesn’t happen within two years, in April 2018 if at least six of the 12 countries accounting for 85% of the combined gross domestic product of the original signatories have ratified the agreement. That 85% can’t be reached without both the US and Japan, effectively giving those countries a veto and thus placing extra responsibility on opponents in both those countries.

The TPP, even more so that previous deals, has very little to do with trade and much to do with solidifying corporate control over life, arguably the most significant erosion of what is left of formal democracy yet. Regardless of where you live, the TPP can be defeated if we continue to organize.

And once the TPP is sent to the trash heap, it will be time to go on the offensive to roll back existing trade pacts.

Pete Dolack is an activist, writer, poet and photographer, and writes on Systemic Disorder. His forthcoming book ‘It’s Not Over: Lessons from the Socialist Experiment‘, a study of attempts to create societies on a basis other than capitalism, will be published by Zero Books in February 2016.

This article was originally published on Systemic Disorder.

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Never mind today’s signing charade: TPP is heading for the rocks‘ by Sam Cossar-Gilbert.

Trade Ministers from twelve Pacific countries will sign the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in New Zealand today, signaling the end of a protracted seven-year negotiation process.

But ratification by national parliaments remains far from guaranteed as opposition to the undemocratic agreement continues to build.

The countries signing on to TPP account for 40% of global GDP. The deal is not just about import tariffs, but a range of issues that will affect access to health, the energy we use and our governments’ abilities to regulate in the public interest.

For example the New Zealand Prime Minister John Key admitted that the TPP would increase the price of medicine. For many countries this means a choice between life and death for their citizens.

The agreement was negotiated in complete secrecy. Trade ministers will continue this undemocratic tradition by signing the deal in an expensive hotel far from public view, even before most parliaments have had a chance to properly discuss it.

Yet massive street protests will provide leaders with a noisy reminder that the TPP faces a strong public backlash and difficult ratification battles in national parliaments. According to recent Ipsos polling fewer than one in five Americans believe Congress should pass the deal.

Resistance is growing across the Pacific

Things have not gone smoothly for what President Obama calls “the biggest trade deal of the 21st century” since it was agreed in October last year.

The US could prove to be where TPP faces its biggest challenge. Without American support the whole thing could collapse. 2016 is a presidential election year, making a controversial trade deal very difficult to pass, especially given that leading presidential candidates, Clinton, Trump and Sanders all oppose it.

Furthermore, in Congress there is resolute opposition to the TPP from the vast majority of Democrats and a growing number of Republicans. The situation is such that Inside Trade notes “the TPP itself may be a lame duck”.

The people of Canada have elected a new Liberal government, who has demanded a comprehensive analysis of the impacts of the TPP. Who can blame them? One new study by Tuff University estimates the country will lose 58,000 jobs because of the deal – and that’s just Canada’s share of the 771,000 jobs TPP will kill in the 10 years after it comes into force.

There is also growing public opposition in other TPP countries. Recently in Malaysia over 15,000 people took to the streets to denounce the deal, New Zealand’s major opposition party has called for the deal to be renegotiated and a legal suit has been launched by Japanese citizens.

While the TPP faces an uncertain future, unfortunately it could sneak through national parliaments. Many governments, like the global elite, still hold firm to the ideology that the sole solution to growing inequality, unemployment and dangerous climate change is more of the same – ‘greater power for big business’.

TPP undermines human rights and the environment

Instead of protecting the environment and human rights, as proponents would suggest, the TPP would undermine regulations on a vast range of issues including food safety, access to medicine, genetic modification, chemical use and climate change.

The deal favors safeguards for corporate investments over safeguards for the climate. TPP is designed to protect ‘free trade’ in dirty energy products and will lead to an increase in coal, oil and gas exports, fueling global warming. For example, the TPP requires the US Department of Energy to approve all exports of liquefied natural gas to TPP countries.

Time and time again trade and investment agreements are used to support corporate profits at the expense of the environment and endangered species. The Sierra Club found that the TPP would increase the trade and demand for products such as ivory, shark fins and palm oil that kill endangered animals, by eliminating taxes (or tariffs) on trade in those products.

It would also further cement the unfair Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which enables foreign corporations to sue governments in secret tribunals for adopting policies that could harm their expected profits. This is a strong mechanism that legally enforces investors’ interests, while the environment chapter and human rights protections in the agreement remain weak and voluntary.

Just this month, the Canadian oil pipeline company TransCanada announced that it would use ISDS to sue the United States for $15 billion for not allowing the Keystone tar sands oil pipeline. The US is now facing the prospect of billions of dollars in fines for protecting its environment and people from climate-killing tar sands.

Trade ministers may enjoy a self-congratulatory atmosphere as they sign the “biggest, most comprehensive trade deal of the century”, but they know that the battle is far from over.

Now is the time for those concerned about the environment and human rights to raise their voices about this destructive trade deal and make sure that this 6,000-page injustice never sees the light of day.

Sam Cossar-Gilbert is economic justice and resisting neoliberalism program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International. He tweets @samcossar

Also on The Ecologist: ‘Never mind today’s signing charade: TPP is heading for the rocks‘ by Sam Cossar-Gilbert.

A new paper published this week in Environmental Sciences Europe confirms there has been a dramatic increase in the total volume of glyphosate applied to crops across the world.

Over 70% of the total volume of glyphosate sprayed world-wide over the last 40 years (1974 to 2014) has been sprayed in just the last 10 years.

The paper, ‘Trends in glyphosate herbicide‘ use in the United States and globally, by Charles M. Benbrook, reveals that globally, glyphosate use has risen almost 15-fold since so-called ‘Roundup Ready’ genetically modified (GM), glyphosate-tolerant crops were introduced in 1996.

Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association said: “This research reveals that Monsanto’s glyphosate is now the most heavily used weed-killer in history, and use is sky-rocketing – nearly 75% of all glyphosate ever sprayed on crops was used in the last 10 years. This huge increase in chemical spraying is what we can expect if GM crops are ever grown in England.”

After the introduction of ‘Roundup ready’ crops, genetically modified to survive glyphosate applications, the US has seen a steady increase in the reliance on the herbicide. Whilst GM has been touted by producers as reducing the need for pesticide use, the opposite, has in fact been true.

Herbicide resistant and tolerant ‘superweeds’ have evolved, causing farmers to spray even more in an attempt to combat the weeds, causing an ever evolving ‘arms race’ between weeds and pesticides.

With this increasing resistance, the next generation of genetically modified crops will have to withstand being sprayed with a cocktail of stronger herbicides. However this will only cause increasing damage to the environment, ecosystems and human health.

Glyphosate: a perfect storm of problems

The Soil Association also revealed glyphosate is one of the three pesticides regularly found in routine testing of British bread – appearing in up to 30% of samples tested by the Defra committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) in recent years. A recent analysis found that 85% of tested products from Warburtons – a well known bread company tested positive for the chemical.

Serious doubts have been cast over the claimed ‘safety’ of glyphosate. In a US study, three out of ten women tested positive for Glyphosate in breast milk at levels around 1,000 times higher than allowed in drinking water.

In 2015, the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans“, based on an extensive study of peer-reviewed research on actual product formulations.

However the IARC opinion was later contradicted by the European Food Safety Authority, following their own literature review which also included numerous unpublished industry studies. The EFSA analysis also concentrated on the ‘active ingredient’ glyphosate rather than representative formulations.

The question is moot as the European Commission is shortly to decie on whether to re-licence glyphosate for use within the EU. A letter sent to Commissioner Andriukaitis last week by 65 MEPs demanded a hlt to the approval process so along as

• key studies used for the assessment remain confidential or unpublished,
• glyphosate-containing formulations are not properly and fully assessed,
• the Commission has not adopted specific scientific criteria for the determination of endocrine-disrupting properties.

The figures are stacking up in the UK

The new figures published today come against a background of increased use in the UK. Glyphosate is used in public parks, playgrounds  and other urban areas to kill weeds. And in the last year for which government figures are available, nearly a third of UK cereals, wheat and barley, were sprayed with glyphosate – a total of just over one million hectares.

The herbicide is widely used as a ‘dessicant’ a week or so before harvest to kill and dry fields of arable crops and make then easier to harvest. It is licenced for use on wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, oilseed rape and other crops. However its use so such a short time before harvest means that residues often remain on the food.

The Soil Association is calling for a UK ban on this use of glyphosate. Figures analysed by the Soil Association from government data last year revealed glyphosate use in UK farming has increased by 400% in the last 20 years.

Peter Melchett explains “As well as being identified as a probable human carcinogen, the research notes that recent studies have made the connection between glyphosate exposure and a number of serious health effects as well as cancer, including the degeneration of the liver and kidney, as well as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“The research rightly questions the safety of using glyphosate on crops destined for people to eat just before they are harvested – a growing practice in the UK, which must end.”

Vanessa Amaral-Rogers is a freelance journalist writing mainly on environmental themes.