Politico has obtained a draft of the TPP treaty section governing intellectual property. While it’s devastating all around. it’s provisions on pharmaceuticals are particularly bad. Drug prices would rise everywhere, and in many poorer countries generics would no longer be available, meaning that (even more) people will die so drug companies can make obscene profits. The provisions in question are those proposed by the United States, so keep that in mind as we go further.
What struck me was this:
U.S. officials said the key point to remember about trade deals is that no provision is ever final until the entire deal is final—and that major compromises tend to happen at the very end of the negotiations. They expect the real horse-trading to begin now that Obama has signed “fast-track” legislation requiring Congress to pass or reject TPP without amendments.
via Politico
So, let’s parse this. The Obama administration is telling us that there is no need to worry about the terrible effects of its own proposals, because there is always the chance that it will compromise and the final product will be better than what it has clearly signaled it wants, by proposing it in the first place.
The Obama folks have always had rather strange ways of approaching negotiations. When it came to the health care and stimulus bills, Obama’s approach was to make his opening offer what he felt he would probably get after protracted negotiations. Shockingly, Republicans demanded more concessions, which he proceeded to give them, even though it bought him nary a vote. And let’s not even get into the negotiating strategy he employed to avert government shutdowns, by offering to eviscerate Social Security. Only the refusal of Republicans to agree to anything Obama proposed saved us then. But let Tom Tomorrow tell the story:
Back to the “trade” pact. Based on past practice, there is no good way to look at these “trade” proposals. First, if this is an indication of what Obama thinks he would get after protracted negotiations ( see: cartoon above), one must be truly frightened to contemplate what Obama would really want if given his druthers. But I suspect that this is not a replay of his health care negotiating style; he reserves that for Republicans, or did until recently, as there are some indications he may have learned a lesson most of us never needed. No, his administration will be playing hard ball on this, so what you see in the draft is what we’re likely to get when the dust settles.
So we are left to ponder some semantic distinctions. Is his administration merely being disingenuous, or would it be more accurate to say that they are lying?
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