Corporations rewrite US law

As we go about our day to day life, our economic future is unfolding in the secret draft of a trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.  You probably never heard of it because it's so secret that even most members of congress are not allowed to even see it.  A NY Times Opinion Article calls it a "Covert Trade Deal".

While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released. Even the George W. Bush administration, hardly a paragon of transparency, published online the draft text of the last similarly sweeping agreement, called the Free Trade Area of the Americas, in 2001.

There is one exception to this wall of secrecy: a group of some 600 trade “advisers,” dominated by representatives of big businesses, who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators.

This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas. The others impose parameters on nontrade policies. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports.

Whatever one thinks about “free trade,” the secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance. That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government. 

Since it constrains what laws can be passed in the future, one commentator decries it as a way for multi-national corporations  to override US laws they don't like.

WTO Stands For “We’re Taking Over”
Public Citizen, which has been doing excellent work on this issue, reports on three U.S. laws that were nullified by the World Trade Organization (WTO):  country-of-origin labels on meat, dolphin-safe labels on tuna, and the ban on sweet-flavored cigarettes designed to get kids addicted to the tobacco companies’ carcinogenic products. (What’s next:  Cherry-flavored crack?)

The WTO and the WTO “Appellate Body” – two bodies most Americans don’t even know exist – overruled these laws in a preemptory manner that would have outraged the Continental Congress.
We didn’t elect them. We can’t communicate with them. But they’ve issued three decrees which we must obey:
1) We are not to know where the meat we’re eating comes from.
2) We must accept the fact that we may unknowingly wind up eating the flesh of dolphins, arguably the most intelligent nonhuman species on the planet. And,
3) We must continue to allow the distribution of products designed to addict our children to a deadly and habit-forming substance.
How’s that for “controlling our own destiny”?

 See here what Peter DeFazio thinks about it.