"The Americans are a little bit surprised we think their foods are inferior." TTIP - Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership C/D?

does ilx care about it?
who stands to benefit most from this?
do you worry about the future of these cheeses? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_cheeses_with_protected_geographical_status
are concerns over investor-state dispute settlement well-founded?
is this largely the multilateral agreement on investment with a different name?
how likely is it to actually go through?

is it true they have terrible meat in france? i read that somewhere. like, if you get a steak it's not gonna be anywhere near as good as a steak in the u.s.

there are some outstanding cheeses being made in new england now. i can almost be a cheese locavore these days. it ain't yer grandma's cheddar anymore...

i don't really know what this thread is about.

like SERIOUS cheese, you know? not just crafty cheese. i still might have to go to italy or france for my wine and belgium and germany for my beer, but u.s. cheese is creepin' up there quality-wise...

my understanding is that the TTIP is a proposed trade agreement between the US and the EU to normalize a lot of trading standards, remove tariffs & install more investor protection

there is a lot of popular discontent in europe about it cf. https://stop-ttip.org/what-is-the-problem-ttip-ceta/, including concerns about increased corporate influence esp in the justice system, privatization, employee rights, the way it is being negotiated, & most colourfully, food standards, which has included a lot of talk about chlorinated chicken & genetically modified food

national sovereignty too. and democracy. this is a v dry & complicated subject and could be a good test of whether or not ilx has really reached 'peak opinion'

would a post TTIP world see an increase in this sort of thing:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/485529b0-b559-11e1-ad93-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3LKJhNmvd?

given that china has agreed to police what is sold as scotch - http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/11/09/scotch-in-china-single-malt-single-country/ - are we headed towards globally protected food names anyway?

pembrokeshire potatoes only have a french wiki page

The rule of law is undermined by the introduction of a parallel justice system. Canadian and US companies receive the right to sue for damages if they believe that they have suffered losses because of laws or measures of the EU or of individual EU member states. This can also affect laws which were enacted in the interest of the common good, such as environmental and consumer protection. Instead of public courts, private arbitration tribunals meeting in secret make the decision about compensation payments for damages. Payment is made from the public budget, i.e. using taxpayers’ money. By means of similar clauses in other agreements, companies have already fought a number of times for damages of millions, sometimes billions, of euro. [Thus, for example, the energy company Vattenfall sued the Federal Republic of Germany for damages of 3.7 billion euro because two sickly nuclear reactors were switched off as part of Germany’s withdrawal from nuclear power generation.] Such actions would multiply as a result of CETA and TTIP. Only foreign companies (“investors”) are intended to benefit from the special rights to sue. This legal instrument is not available to domestic companies. The arbitration boards decide definitively; an appeal is not possible – that too contradicts the principles of the rule of law.

yeah theres too much 'corporations uber alles' stuff in tpp that scares me

all three main british parties in favour of signing some form of this

apparently this will be defeated if one country in europe votes against it (?), syriza have said they'll vote against, and there is some plan by european greens to flood luxembourg with no votes but idg the mechanics

lots of reports about the secrecy surrounding the deal, it does seem highly suspicious http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/04/secrets-ttip-corporations-not-citizens-transatlantic-trade-deal

obama using this as the carrot to keep us in the EU not his best work

Depends on who he's trying to influence. Hint - it isn't people on the 38 Degrees mailing list.

I don't think there is any significant contingent who are stirred by the prospect of the v secretive TTIP deal, it's just a few h8rs and then apathy

That's beside the point really, it's the barely concealed subtext of 'we'd value trading with the EU over you'.

that's overtly what he's saying, which is general enough to sound good and allows him to avoid mentioning ttip, which is ofc the approach everyone is taking, but ttip remains the unappetising hidden reality which he's actually offering and ppl are either unaware or hostile, so it seems like a dishonest fudge on his part

can we use this as a general trade agreements thread?

From the Trump Year One thread

can someone tell me why TPP is touted by so many as a complete negative? isn't having no seat at the table when it comes to trade with those pacific nations even worse in the long run? maybe there is another thread on this but idk. sorry for the derail if that's the case

― (•̪●) (carne asada), Monday, January 23, 2017 5:32 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo almost no one really has opinions about or knowledge of specific trade deals a priori, they just have ideological priors on "Trade Deals" in general that they clumsily apply. this applies to Trump (used anti-China language against TPP when TPP is about cornering China, who are now going to pass their own version), the left (who used a NAFTA or PNTR-style 'don't trade with poor countries' argument even though TPP was 95% rich countries US already has trade deals with) and the right (who used Econ 101 wine-and-cloth Ricardian-type arguments even though TPP is more about IP and even moreso about geopolitics). even economists who study trade are surprisingly ignorant about the content of trade deals; it's seen as province of bureaucrats and lawyers. Obama is prob one of the few people who has read the TPP, and just cuz it was his job. recently Clara Jeffreys (the current editor of Mother Jones, reviled by the left for taking some questionable editorial decisions like a profile of pre-punched 'Dapper Young White Supremacist' Richard Spencer but also for being a milquetoast centrist) tweeted a point similar to the one i'm making right now, but in the process confused TTP for TTIP (a trade deal with Europe) (tweet was deleted but photo here) so even the editor of a left-wing magazine who argues that people don't know the contents of trade deals herself doesn't know the contents of trade deals, nor knows how to distinguish them by name! yet we can't resist having opinions on them so u do what u can do

― flopson, Monday, January 23, 2017 8:50 PM (forty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm pretty sure the IP lawyers and multinational technology firms who were given exclusive access to the portions that apply to their businesses knew what was in it

so my ideological prior that I'd like to clumsily apply on trade deals are that they should go down like other rulemaking that has a diplomatic component - with the occasional gasp of transparency in between necessary closed-door sessions with foreign governments

― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Monday, January 23, 2017 9:28 PM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TPP (RIP) was probably terrible because 1. the way we do trade negotiations has traditionally resulted in pretty terrible stuff where 100% of the medium and long term benefits accrue to capital at the expense of workers, the environment and democratic institutions 2. it was done the same old way

― The beaver is not the bad guy (El Tomboto), Monday, January 23, 2017 9:31 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TTIP also RIP, presumably?

One good thing from an aus POV is US pulling out of the TPP. It signalled a potential threat to our generic medicines, copyright laws and some other digital stuff I cant recall off the top of my head bcs I need coffee.

Brad DeLong in Vox

http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/1/24/14363148/trade-deals-nafta-wto-china-job-loss-trump

in anticipation that I've shot my credibility on this topic among ilx posters after post quoted above, here is Doug Henwood posting the piece on fb:

Doug Henwood
16 mins ·
I'm not Brad DeLong's biggest fan—and since he blocked me on every electronic medium I guess he's not mine either—but I think he's mostly right in this piece on how the role of trade in the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs is exaggerated. This is politically important because the indictment of trade as the primary villain set things up for this gross alliance between parts of labor and the Trump admin.

(ftr i'm also blocked by Delong, although i like him a lot and it makes me sad)

From everything I read about TTIP/TPP was that aside from it's trade standardization stuff it included scary stuff like the ability for corporations to sue countries and a further erosion online privacy, letting corporations do a bunch of data collection in ways currently only the NSA & their counterparts in other countries are allowed to.

So, framing this as "it will make it easier to import cheese" is kind of ridiculous.

Yep. We've already had examples/attempts here such as when Phillip Morris (I think it was?) sued the Australian govt for our plain packaging/horrifying images laws on cigarettes.

The TPP would have given them open slather.

How so, if it was already possible?

Handy explainer here(in comics!):

http://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/

Ferd: the court case lost, iirc. They would have had more of an ability to continue to sue under some TPP agreements, though I have to confess I'm not clear on the details. Its also possible our govt wouldnt agree to some of those more contentious parts of the agreements. Its been a few years since I read up on it all.