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When the director of policy for Doctors Without Borders tells the public that "U.S. negotiators have basically functioned as drug lobbyists" and "We consider th

• thedaveoflife 11y ago
  Maybe the best way to ensure access to medicine is by providing economic opportunities to the worlds most impoverished citizens. In other words, if the trade off is say a 10% increase in per capita GDP in exchange for less access to generics, maybe the former is better than the latter?
  • chad_oliver 11y ago
    Perhaps, but there is no way that the TPP is going to produce at 10% increase in GDP per capita. I'm generally supportive of free trade agreements, but in the case of the TPP, all the low-hanging economic fruit has already been picked. There are no significant remaining trade barriers that can be removed to generate quick growth.
  • zanny 11y ago
    Those writing the TPP have no interest in passing any of the profits of these trade deals off to impoverished third world nations to enrich their societies. If you want a mutually beneficial trade agreement, you don't need secret meetings or a rush to get it through congress.
    • thedaveoflife 11y ago
      The reason it is kept secret is presumably because the general public has difficulty seeing the ancillary benefits (reduction of trade barriers) and pays close attention to the obvious drawbacks (IP rights for "evil" corporations). This contention is fairly well supported by a cursory read through this or any other internet thread about a trade agreement. Whether the good in the TPP outweighs the bad is an open question that I don't have an answer to. I am just trying to provide some counter arguments to an otherwise one-sided discussion on here.
      • stephengillie 11y ago
        That's an incredibly weak justification, and it comes off as patronizing. You're telling me that they have to hide when they do trade deals, because people might object to the concessions? So you're going to commit is to something we didn't agree to? That's exactly why we need transparency. And who decides who gets to make these deals? "Oh let us decide for you." No, you'll make a decision I don't want.
      • lugg 11y ago
        They must be some pretty weak and nuanced ancillary benefits if you're unable to explain them in such a way this "dumb" populace can understand the trade offs. > Whether the good in the TPP outweighs the bad is an open question that I don't have an answer to. I am just trying to provide some counter arguments to an otherwise one-sided discussion on here. Its not an open question, its a closed, hidden question we don't get access to, let alone any answers to. This is a one-sided discussion because it is a one-sided situation.
  • fweespeech 11y ago
    http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2012/05/16-us-trade-strategy-meltzer http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2012/05/16-us-tr... > Economic modeling estimates that the benefits to the U.S. from the TPP will be $5 billion in 2015, rising to $14 billion in 2025 Yeah, its not worth it. Btw US GDP is ~$16 trillion. This isn't going to move the meter at all. Its primarily about securing foreign IP rights for US companies, Obama's legacy, and strategic influence.
    • snowwrestler 11y ago
      I think the parent meant 10% GDP growth in the other (non-U.S.) countries.
      • fweespeech 11y ago
        It doesn't do that either.
• rayiner 11y ago
  I don't see why his affiliation with Doctors Without Borders carries argument-ending weight here. They do noble work, but their interest is the well-being of people outside the U.S. The best case scenario for them is U.S. companies doing all the expensive R&D, and their patients outside the U.S. getting the resulting drugs for free. The USTR, in contrast, has the sole responsibility of maximizing the benefit to the U.S. It's in our interest if people outside the U.S. have to pay us a bunch of money to get the drugs we invent. That is not to say that we shouldn't be giving free drugs to people who need it. But that's a policy decision decidedly outside the scope of the USTR. We have agencies like USAID whose job it is to handle humanitarian aid.
  • amirmc 11y ago
    Your comment seems to conflate 'our', 'us' and 'we' with the drug companies themselves. There should be more to such negotiations than just whatever is in the (self)interest of US-based drug companies. That all this seems to be happening behind closed doors doesn't inspire confidence.
    • AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      Within limits, the interests of the drug companies coincide with those who want new and better drugs to treat various illnesses. Those against the drug companies are on the side of those who want lower prices for existing drugs. I want both, so I want a balance...
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • pdeuchler 11y ago
    Big fan of your comments usually, so it's disappointing to see such a specious argument. Not only is this a false dichotomy (free drugs vs getting paid fairly), it's dramatically removed from reality. Currently, without the TPP, the large pharmaceutical companies make billions in profit every year even including the rampant "piracy" in countries like India and China. Or, with the TPP, all of those generics go poof, billions lose legal access to modern drugs, and pharmaceutical companies increase profits by 30, maybe 40 percent? Of course that slack will get taken up by USAID, like you said, which means that now American tax payers will be on the hook to provide medicine that is now more expensive because our own government made them so. Doesn't really add up, does it?
• icanhackit 11y ago
  U.S. negotiators have basically functioned as drug lobbyists I made a similar comment a few days ago - what we need is a crowd-funded lobbying platform for everyday people. A kind of Kickstarter for law and policy. If a few thousand or even tens of thousands of people chip in a few dollars to lobby for a change in policy, we can compete with corporations who have bought their way into power. While we're complaining on the internet big business is using pocket change to get what they want. It needs to be as easy if not easier to pay a few bucks for your desired policy as it is to complain about it in an online forum.
  • smokinn 11y ago
    There's no way everyday people can compete with corporations anymore. There are approximately 244,673,000 adults aged 18+ in the US: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html 318,857,056 * (1 - 0.233% of Persons under 18 years, percent, 2013) ~= 244,563,362 And according to https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/ , to match the $3.24 Billion spent on lobbying in 2014 you'd have to get absolutely everyone in the US 18 or over to give you 13$ and a quarter just to match what corporations are spending. It's not the least bit realistic, and if the pre-2008 growth rate in lobbying spend picks up again it'll just get more and more out of control. What's really necessary to get this absolutely incredible amount of money out of politics. The two presidential candidates shouldn't have to spend over 30 billion dollars on an election. The amount of money in politics right now is just insane.
    • click170 11y ago
      Yes but how do you do that when the supreme court has ruled that money equals free speech? There's lots of people who can see that money in politics is the problem. How do we solve it though? Wait for a supreme court judge to die and hope their replacement aligns with our views on this topic? Petition the whitehouse? Fund a kickstarter campaign to get our own people lobbying for this?
      • walterbell 11y ago
• kr4 11y ago
  It seems that the TPP, TTIP and TiSA are not about the sort of “free trade” that would free local businesses to sell abroad. They are about freeing international corporations from the government regulation necessary to protect the economy, the people, and the environment. They are about preserving privatized monopolies and preventing competition from the public sector. And they are about moving litigation offshore into private arbitrary tribunals What is going on was predicted by David Korten in his 1995 blockbuster, When Corporations Rule The World. Catherine Austin Fitts calls it a “corporate coup d’état.” This corporate coup includes the privatization and offshoring of the judicial function [0] delegated to the US court system in the Constitution, through Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions that strengthen existing ISDS procedures. As explained in The Economist [1], ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe. Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases. The secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent give wide scope for creative judgments – the sort of arbitrary edicts satirized by Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, although the termination was apparently legal. Under the TPP, however, even larger and more unpredictable judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations extend not merely to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive. Just the threat of a massive damage award for impairing “expected corporate profits” could be enough to discourage prospective legislation by lawmakers. 0]: http://ellenbrown.com/2015/04/24/the-trans-pacific-partnership-and-the-death-of-the-republic/ http://ellenbrown.com/2015/04/24/the-trans-pacific-partnersh... 1]: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21623756-governments-are-souring-treaties-protect-foreign-investors-arbitration http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21623756...
• Alupis 11y ago
  There's also the fact that the Executive branch (for current and all future Presidents) has just greatly expanded it's power, and snubbed out Congress' ability to stone-wall any trade deals they don't agree with (via amendments, etc...). Obama likes to constantly state that he will act because Congress "refuses" to... which completely ignores the fact that Congress' "lack" of action is exactly what they are supposed to do when there is no agreement on an issue. Just because Congress doesn't execute the President's will doesn't mean Congress is wrong! Now the Executive branch gets to unilaterally decide what trade agreements are good for the nation (and that usually means which big lobbying firm courted the Executive branch the best) -- that doesn't sound very democratic to me.
  • bobwaycott 11y ago
    When the Congress hands the Executive fast-track authority for such dealings, it is quite disingenuous to point the finger at the Executive. The Executive branch is going to take and hold every single power the Congress grants it. The Congress is there to balance a runaway Executive. Congress surrendered the authority. They are the ones to blame.