TPP Multinational Policy Arguments Mimic False Claims Made for Past Pacts as Use of Perennial Trade Deal Sales-Pitch-of-Last-Resort Increases
New Report Debunks Notion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a Bulwark Against China, Catalogues Outcomes of Similar Geopolitical Claims Made About Pacts Since NAFTA
By Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As President Barack Obama’s Asia trip looms and proponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) increasingly pitch the deal as a bulwark against China’s rising influence, a report released today by Public Citizen reveals that nearly identical foreign policy arguments have consistently proven baseless when used to sell trade deals over the past two decades. The report reviews foreign policy claims made to promote the TPP, ranging from the absurd to the counterfactual, to those that repeatedly have been disproved by the actual outcomes of similar claims made for past pacts.
“The same old foreign policy arguments get trotted out to sell trade agreements after the economic case fails,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Repeatedly, Congress has approved bad deals based on dire predictions that failure to do so would mean diminished U.S. power, the takeover of important markets by competitors or foreign instability, only to find that many of those predictions came true in spite of, and sometimes even because of, pacts’ enactment.”
While U.S. concerns about the implications of China’s rising economic power and influence are legitimate, the notion that the establishment – or not – of any specific U.S. trade agreement would control this process is contradicted by the record. Public Citizen’s study examines the outcomes of claims that past trade pacts would counter economic gains by Japan, Europe and China in trade-partner markets; strengthen U.S. foreign policy allies or thwart enemies; and improve U.S. national security.