Neg Supplement

AT: De-Regulation (Enviro/Labor/Food)

De-regulation fears are alarmist hype – empirically disproven and protections solve Washington Post 15 (Editorial Board, “Don’t buy the trade deal alarmism,” March 11, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dont-buy-the-trade-deal-alarmism/2015/03/11/41575fee-c1d5-11e4-9271-610273846239_story.html, CMR)

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is in trouble on Capitol Hill. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says a bill to enable expedited consideration of the pact will be delayed until April because of opposition from liberal Democrats and a few tea party Republicans. The latest rallying cry for TPP foes is that it would allegedly threaten environmental and labor regulations, as well as U.S. sovereignty, for the benefit, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) noted recently, of “the biggest multinational corporations in the world.” The supposed menace is the TPP’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism, similar to language in more than 3,000 agreements among 180 countries , including 50 agreements to which the U nited

States is a party. It would permit companies to challenge unfair or discriminatory treatment by TPP governments in binding arbitration rather than an ordinary court. The useful purpose of the settlement provision is to encourage the free flow of capital by protecting foreign investors from uncompensated expropriation and other abuses in countries where they are, as outsiders, disfavored in court — or in countries that may lack well-developed court systems at all.Contrary to predictions that these processes are stacked in favor of multinationals, the United Nations

reports that governments won 37 percent of cases and business only 25 percent; 28 percent were settled before the arbitrators ruled. In the history of ISDS, 356 cases have been litigated all the way to conclusion. Only 17 complaints were lodged against the United States. The number of such cases has increased in recent years but mainly because foreign investment itself has increased.Critics trumpet ISDS horror stories, but upon closer inspection they generally turn out not to be so horrible. Take the oft-made accusation, repeated by Ms. Warren and others, that a French firm used the provision to sue Egypt “because Egypt raised its minimum wage.” Actually, Veolia of France, a waste management company, invoked ISDS to enforce a contract with the government of Alexandria, Egypt, that it says required compensation if costs increased; the company maintains that the wage increases triggered this provision. Incidentally, Veolia was working with Alexandria on a World Bank-supported project to reduce greenhouse gases, not some corporate plot to exploit the people. The case — which would result, at most, in a monetary award to Veolia, not the overthrow of the minimum wage — remains in litigation.

Obama administration negotiators have sought to minimize the misuse of this settlement provision under the TPP by recognizing each country’s “inherent right” to regulate for health, safety and quality-of-life objectives. The vast majority of TPP countries are legally well-developed (Canada, Australia, New

Zealand) or already free-trade partners with the United States (Mexico, Peru, Chile). So the TPP changes the status quo hardly at all.It seems that the opponents’ real beef is with the administration’s view that the United States and its trading partners should encourage private investment in one another’s economies. On balance, though, free-flowing capital creates more jobs and wealth than it destroys. The TPP would not only increase economic activity but also enhance geopolitical ties between the United States and its East

Asian allies, especially Japan. No amount of alarmism should distract Congress from these benefits .

AT: Offshoring Turn—No Link

TPP is an economic boon – offshoring fears overstated Grados 6/28/15 (Frank, “TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Is Not the New World Order,” 2015, http://guardianlv.com/2015/06/tpp-trans-pacific-partnership-is-not-the-new-world-order/, CMR)

It seems like there is always a conspiracy going on within the government – that they are secretly out to harm the American people. Lately, the banning of confederate flags has stirred up controversy and attention in the online world. Soon after, SCOTUS had declared marriage equality is a constitutionally protected right, which henceforth allowed homosexuals the right to wed. According to various “reliable” sources, those two coincidentally timed instances were just a distraction for a very sinister bill to pass. A bill that “outright surrenders U.S. sovereignty to multinational corporations,” and kills American jobs. Despite the convincing argument, the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) is not the New World Order, as many are claiming.There was paranoia spreading that this would cause major job loss, as well as give corporations the ultimate power. Allegedly, a handle of corporations are conspiring against the world for total control. The TPP is not meant to transfer ruling power to a big business. Although there will be some jobs outsourced to another country, it will not cause such a big damage as is being portrayed.

Free trade agreements have been proven to work. Despite arguments that people at home will lose jobs, the agreements work at a bigger scale. The entire economy benefits as a whole, and international business is encouraged. NAFTA was one of the most successful ones, and numbers do not lie. It created the world’s biggest area of free trade between United States, Canada and Mexico. The economic output of these

countries was greater than the entire 28-country European Union. When trade barriers are removed, business will be encouraged.

The TPP is not the New World Order, and should cause no fear in anyone. It is an agreement between 12 rapidly developing countries, designed to reduce trade barriers amongst one another. If only three countries managed to create the world’s largest economic powerhouse, then the possibilities for twelve countries is exponentially larger.TPP will encourage the export of U.S-made goods. Normally, to ship out products to other countries, the costs not only includes the shipping but also includes tariffs imposed by other countries. Those tariffs then force the producer to drive up the price of the product or goods, which will reduce the likelihood of it being bought. When those tariffs are reduced, or dropped altogether, it allows the exporter to better compete with businesses in the importing country. A lot of small business owners, who sell their products online, will be able to provide better pricing for overseas clients.

Jobs will most likely be outsourced because of the TPP, but it should not be something that people become overly dramatic over. It is basic economic knowledge that an enterprise’s main goal is to reduce cost, as well as maximize profit – if

resources can be found cheaper elsewhere, then why should the entrepreneur not choose the option? Cheaper resources allow lower prices for the consumers. The outsourcing jobs will provide employment opportunity for the other countries in the

agreement. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the TPP will “enforce fundamental labor rights,” which means there should be no fear of evil business owners making slaves of employees .

AT: Offshoring Turn—Impact Turn

Offshoring good for company growth – solve reasons offshoring might be badBALASUBRAMANIVAN 04 general manager at Wipro Technologies, a global IT services provider [S.M. Balasubramaniyan, Offshoring's positives outweigh its negatives, http://www.networkworld.com/article/2323783/software/offshoring-s-positives-outweigh-its-negatives.html]

Organizations all over the world are under constant pressure to provide value to their customers and meet the challenges of competition. In globalized free economies, this is truer today than ever. The primary factor that directly or indirectly contributes toward a company's business success is the cost of production and operation.Among the many initiatives that have succeeded in reducing the cost of producing goods and services is the outsourcing/offshoring model. This model has taken many forms and its characteristics have been refined over a period of time.Before enumerating the benefits of offshoring, it must be acknowledged that its success does not come without pain, mainly in the form of job cuts and the phasing out of low-earning products and services. However, organizations that take a well-planned and articulated approach to offshoring succeed in managing this situation better than ones that rush in without due consideration.Offshoring happens through two means: outsourced offshoring through vendor partners, or in-house offshoring. In the former, the work is performed at the offshore partner's premises, using the partner's resources. In the latter, a U.S. company establishes its own global centers in other countries.Perhaps the greatest benefit of offshoring is the cost advantage it produces, which directly affects the company's bottom line. In tight fiscal situations, any savings in operating costs will contribute toward the company's sustenance and

growth. Companies in recession segments sustain themselves and grow through innovation. Lower operating costs means they have more money to invest in innovation, resulting in a stabilized domestic workforce.In the service sectors, the cost saving from offshoring enables companies to create new service lines, many of which had been deferred for want of investment. New services increase customer satisfaction and become new revenue streams, as well as growth paths for companies.The geographic nature of offshoring brings its own advantages. It helps the company expand its reach, thereby helping the company grow. This growth mitigates any negative effects of offshoring.

Offshoring also helps a company be closer to its global customers, thereby providing appropriate offerings to its regional market and ensuring speedier problem resolution. Developers and support personnel in the relevant geographies have a better understanding of customers' needs, regulatory compliances and regional preferences, and can better implement the product or provide the service.

IT outsourcing good for the US economyMiller, chief information officer at Ziff Brothers investments, 04[Michael J. Miller, The Benefits of Offshore Outsourcing4/28/14, Offshoring is lowering costs and actually creating jobs by fostering a more efficient economy. Also: IT jobs are changing, and Adobe's CEO speaks his mind, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1573729,00.asp]

As more companies transfer programming and call- center jobs offshore, the topic of offshore outsourcing is raging throughout the information technology industry. I understand the frustration of workers whose jobs have moved

and of customers who fail to get their technical-support questions answered. But the backlash may be overblown. One of the latest studies indicates that the trend may actually be creating more jobs. At least that's the conclusion of a recent study by Global Insight, sponsored by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA).

Given our global economy, the globalization of the IT industry is inevitable. Most big IT companies do much of their business overseas and naturally want to have some of their employees in those markets. Lower wages in some countries are also a huge incentive to move operations, especially since high-speed communication removes many of the barriers to dealing with U.S.-based colleagues and customers.

I think that some of the criticism of offshore outsourcing is misplaced. According to the Global Insight study, from 1998 through 2003 offshore IT software and services spending increased from $2.5 billion to $10 billion; the figure could reach $31 billion by 2008. It also estimates that as of 2003 nearly 104,000 IT software and services jobs were displaced. The same study says that 372,000 IT jobs have been lost in this country since 2000, accounting for about 10 percent of the total number of such jobs in the U.S. The main reasons for the loss: the dot-com bust, the recession, and the growth in productivity.Interestingly, Global Insight says that rather than reducing the number of jobs in the U.S., offshoring is lowering costs for everyone and actually creating jobs, thanks to a more efficient economy. It says that about 194,000 new jobs—both IT and non-IT—were created in 2003 thanks to offshore IT outsourcing, and by 2008 the number will reach over 589,000.According to a study by Gartner, fewer than 5 percent of U.S. IT jobs have moved offshore. But analysts predict that by 2010 25 percent will be in developing countries. They urge companies to proceed carefully, as such moves could result in the loss of future talent, intellectual assets, and organizational performance.

AT: Enviro Turn—TPP Solves

TPP solidifies protections – even environmentalists agree Deese 15 (Brian, Senior Advisor to the President, and Christy Goldfuss is the Managing Director for the Council on Environmental Quality, “What They're Saying: Environmental Advocates Point to the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a Historic Opportunity to Protect Our Oceans, Forests, and Wildlife,” March 31, https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/03/31/what-theyre-saying-environmental-advocates-point-trans-pacific-partnership-historic-, CMR)

Through TPP, the Obama administration is doubling down on its commitment to use every tool possible to address the most pressing environmental challenges. We aren’t just talking about holding trading partners accountable for protecting wildlife, forests, and oceans; we plan to make those environmental commitments fully enforceable in the core of the TPP agreement , on equal footing with the economic obligations our trading partners take on.TPP is on track to provide protections for wildlife that will commit countries to implementing, strengthening, and enforcing laws that protect threatened species, and to matching new protections with new cooperative tools that will spur and support regional action. The U nited S tates is also seeking first-ever provisions to prohibit some of the most harmful fisheries subsidies, including those that contribute to overfishing, as well as pioneering commitments by the TPP countries to combat illegal fishing, promote sustainable fisheries management, and encourage conservation of marine resources, including sharks, whales, and turtles among other threatened marine species.In the last two months, these commitments have been front and center in both the President’s National Strategy to Combat Wildlife Trafficking and the Action Plan to implement the Task Force on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Seafood Fraud. These milestone blueprints will help us lead the world in establishing verifiable, ambitious efforts to track and crack down on illegal wildlife and fishing. They also allow us to leverage global action by harnessing TPP and the power of trade as a tool to advance environmental protections. And they earned the support of some of the world’s foremost environmental NGOs and stakeholders. These leading environmental advocates affirm that if we can deliver on the commitments within reach in TPP, it may be one of the potential “game-changing solutions” to environmental issues across the Asia-Pacific region.

Trade leadership key to “rules of the road” – environmental destruction Froman 14 (Michael B, USTR, “The Strategic Logic of Trade,” Nov/Dec 2014, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142198/michael-b-froman/the-strategic-logic-of-trade, CMR)

RULES OF THE ROAD With some of the most innovative companies and productive workers in the world, the United States can compete in the global marketplace and win -- if the playing field is level. The Obama administration has made enforcement of the rules governing trade a top priority , and every time the administration has brought a dispute before the World Trade Organization and

the WTO has made a decision, the United States has won. Preventing China from restricting access to rare-earth minerals and stopping Argentina from wrongly restricting imports of agricultural products -- to cite just two examples -- not only benefits U.S. workers, farmers, and businesses but also reinforces the rules-based trading system itself. The Trans-Pacific Partnership presents an unprecedented opportunity to update the rules of the road. An ambitious and comprehensive trade agreement that the United States is currently negotiating with 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the TPP represents a main pillar of the Obama administration’s broader strategy of rebalancing toward Asia. Taken together, the parties negotiating the TPP represent nearly 40 percent of the world’s GDP and account for roughly a third of all global trade. This agreement would level the playing field of international trade by establishing the strongest environmental and labor standards of any trade agreement in U.S. history. For example, the United States is pressing other countries to address forced labor and child labor and to maintain acceptable working conditions. The U nited S tates has also broken new ground with proposals that would address illicit wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and

subsidies that contribute to dangerous overfishing. Rules limiting such activities would help ensure that trade remains sustainable and that its benefits are broadly shared. The TPP countries are also working to ensure fair competition between private firms and state-owned enterprises that receive subsidies or other preferences. And Washington is pushing to protect unrestricted access to the Internet and the free flow of data so that small and medium-sized businesses around the world will be able to access global markets efficiently.

AT: Enviro Turn—No Impact

Biodiversity is resilient and inevitable Sagoff 8 Mark, Senior Research Scholar @ Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy @ School of Public Policy @ U. Maryland, Environmental Values, “On the Economic Value of Ecosystem Services”, 17:2, 239-257, EBSCO

What about the economic value of biodiversity? Biodiversity represents nature's greatest largess or excess since species appear nearly as numer ous as the stars the Drifters admired, except that "scientists have a better understanding of how many stars there are in the galaxy than how many species there arc on Earth ."70 Worldwide the variety of biodiversity is effectively infinite ; the myriad species of plants and animals, not to mention microbes that arc probably more important, apparently exceed our ability to count or identify them . The "next" or "incremental" thousand species taken at random would not fetch a market price because another thousand are immediately available , and another thousand after that. No one has suggested an economic application, moreover, for any of the thousand species listed as threatened in the United States.77 To defend these species - or the next thousand or the thousand after that - on economic grounds is to trade convincing spiritual, aesthetic, and ethical arguments for bogus, pretextual, and disingenuous economic ones.78 As David Ehrenfeld has written,

We do not know how many [plant] species are needed lo keep the planet green and healthy, but it seems very unlikely to be anywhere near the more than quarter of a million we have now . Even a mighty dominant like the American chestnut, extending over half a continent, all but disappeared without bring¬ing the eastern deciduous forest down with it. And if we turn to the

invertebrates, the source of nearly all biological diversity, what biologist is willing t o find a value - conventional or ecological - for all 600,000-plus species of beetles?7*

The disappearance in the wild even of agriculturally useful species appears to have no effect on production. The last wild aurochs, the progenitor of dairy and beef cattle, went extinct in Poland in 1742, yet no one believes the beef industry is threatened . The genetic material of crop species is contained in tens of thousands of landraces and cultivars in use - rice is an example - and doe s not depend on the persistence of wild ancestral types. Genetic engineering can introduce DNA from virtually any species into virtually an y other - which allows for the unlimited creation of biodiversity . A neighbor of mine has collected about 4,000 different species of insects on his two-acre property in Silver Spring, Maryland. These include 500 kinds of Lepidoptera (mostly moths) - half the number another entomologist found at his residence.80 When you factor in plants and animals, the amount of "backyard biodiversity" in suburbs is astounding and far

greater than you can imagine.8' Biodiversity has no value "at the margin" because nature provides far more of it than anyone could possibly administer . If one kind of moth flies off, you can easily attract hundreds of others.

AT: Food Safety Turn

Food safety concerns overblown Harrop 15 (Froma, “Discerning risk from alarm over food safety,” Feb 24, http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20150224/OPINION04/150229664, CMR)

As things now stand, the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees steaks, chicken thighs and eggs out of their shells. The Food and Drug

Administration keeps an eye on salmon, apples and eggs in their shells. Fifteen government entities now supervise food safety, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (seafood).President Obama wants to consolidate all these food monitoring functions in a yet-to-be-created Food Safety Administration. Makes sense.It's not unusual to find inspectors from several agencies trooping through the same processing plants and other facilities. Some duplicate what others are doing — or don't do what they think others are doing — or do what the person who came through the week before could have done. Streamlining food safety could also save the taxpayers and consumers some money.This could be done with no loss — and perhaps some improvement — in this country's admirable food safety record. But that may not stop food alarmists from sowing panic. There's a business in spreading fear about what we eat, often promoting myths of danger — much as the anti-vaccination movement has done.And there are government employees who see their jobs as threatened. Of Obama's proposal, a USDA inspector and the head of a government meat inspectors union complained, “This would drag us down to (the FDA's) minuscule standards.”What a good opportunity to revisit the nonexistent mad cow crisis of 10 years ago. Mad cow disease affects the animal's brain and spinal cord. Americans don't generally eat those parts, which is one reason the few who died from the infected cows were mostly Europeans.The other reason is that almost no American cow had the disease. At the time of maximum hysteria, only one cow, in Washington state, was found to be infected — and it had come from Canada.Nonetheless, columnist Paul Krugman spoke of a “declining credibility of U.S. food regulation” and asked, “How did America find itself back in The Jungle?” That was a reference to Upton Sinclair's 1906 expose of Chicago meat processors.Eric Schlosser, author of “Fast Food Nation,” wrote that mad cow disease “confronts the United States with perhaps its most serious and complex food-safety threat.”Actually, no one — not one person — had ever contracted the human variant of mad cow disease by eating from an American cow before then (or has since). But in a 2004 op-ed for The New York Times, Schlosser jumped all over the USDA secretary's spokeswoman for issuing a press release titled “Mad Cow Disease Not a Problem in the U.S.”This was not about reality, not any more than are the reports of vaccines causing profound mental disorders in children.If one dislikes the aesthetics of industrialized food production, if one objects to mistreatment of many farm animals, if one does not care to eat meat — we hear you. But keep the arguments honest. They are rarely about food safety.For the record, fruits and vegetables typically account for twice as many cases of food poisoning in this country as does meat, according to the CDC. In recent years, though 29 percent of the foodborne illnesses leading to death have come from eating meat, 23 percent have been tied to produce.Americans aren't great at assessing risks. Social media magnify the significance of anecdotes, and many stories, even untrue ones, go viral because they are colorful.Any plans to change the system for keeping food safe will bring out a variety of economic interests. Bear in mind that some of the economic interests have nothing to do with food production.

No food wars – conflicts are more likely when resources are abundantSalehyan 07 (Idean, assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, “The New myth about climate change,” August, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3922)These claims generally boil down to an argument about resource scarcity. Desertification, sea-level rise, more-frequent severe weather events, an increased geographical range of tropical disease, and shortages of freshwater will lead to violence over scarce necessities. Friction between haves and have-nots will increase, and governments will be hard-pressed to provide even the most basic services. In some scenarios, mass migration will ensue, whether due to desertification, natural disasters, and rising sea levels, or as a consequence of resource wars. Environmental refugees will in turn spark political violence in receiving areas, and countries in the “global North” will erect ever higher barriers to keep culturally unwelcome—and hungry—foreigners out. The number of failed states, meanwhile, will increase as governments collapse in the face of resource wars and weakened state capabilities, and transnational terrorists and criminal networks will move in. International wars over depleted water and energy supplies will also intensify. The basic need for survival will supplant nationalism, religion, or ideology as the fundamental root of conflict. Dire scenarios like these may sound convincing, but they are misleading. Even worse, they are irresponsible, for they shift liability for wars and human rights abuses away from oppressive, corrupt governments. Additionally, focusing on climate change as a security threat that requires a military response diverts attention away from prudent adaptation mechanisms and new technologies that can prevent the worst catastrophes. First, aside from a few anecdotes, there is little systematic empirical evidence that resource scarcity and changing environmental conditions

lead to conflict. In fact, several studies have shown that an abundance of natural resources is more likely to contribute to conflict. Moreover, even as the planet has warmed, the number of civil wars and insurgencies has decreased dramatically. Data collected by researchers at Uppsala University and the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo shows a steep decline in the number of armed conflicts around the world. Between 1989 and 2002, some 100 armed conflicts came to an end,

including the wars in Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Cambodia. If global warming causes conflict, we should not be witnessing this downward trend. Furthermore, if famine and drought led to the crisis in Darfur, why have scores of environmental catastrophes failed to set off armed conflict elsewhere? For instance, the U.N. World Food Programme warns that 5 million people in Malawi have been experiencing chronic food shortages for several years. But famine-wracked Malawi has yet to experience a major civil war. Similarly, the Asian tsunami in 2004 killed hundreds of thousands of people, generated millions of environmental refugees, and led to severe shortages of shelter, food, clean water, and electricity. Yet the tsunami, one of the most extreme catastrophes in recent history, did not lead to an outbreak of resource wars. Clearly then, there is much more to armed conflict than resource scarcity and natural disasters.

AT: Pharma Turn—IP Good

Turn: IP protections key to pharma innovations – that’s a pre-requisite to generics Ezell 7/6 (Stephen, Vice President of Global Innovation Policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, with a focus on innovation policy, international information technology competitiveness, trade, and manufacturing and services issues, “TPP Poised to Improve, Not Diminish, Health Outcomes Across Asia-Pacific Nations,” 2015, http://www.innovationfiles.org/tpp-poised-to-improve-not-diminish-health-outcomes-across-asia-pacific-nations/, CMR)

In a not-so-shocking revelation last week, a leaked draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) intellectual property (IP) chapter turned up the fact that…surprise…the United States is fighting for its domestic industries in a trade agreement.No real news there, especially since that’s exactly what our trade representatives should be doing, namely bringing home the strongest possible deal that protects and creates jobs and fosters the kind of innovation that will secure 21st century prosperity for Americans. What is extremely disconcerting, however, is that special interest groups and the generic drug industry are lobbying for drastic cuts to intellectual property protections for innovative medicines that could have lasting consequences for both global patient health as well as U.S. jobs and economic competitiveness.These groups are (wrongly) asserting that the IP provisions being negotiated in the TPP will weaken competition from generics and raise drug prices by establishing protections that go beyond U.S. law.

But, as usually happens, groups that oppose free trade agreements never let minor inconveniences like facts get in the way of their arguments.For instance, it’s telling when the head of one of the world’s largest generic drug companies distorts, confuses, or ignores the truth to score political points, as the CEO of Mylan did when claiming that “patent linkage” for innovative medicines constitutes “a recipe for indefinite evergreening of pharmaceutical monopolies.” Patent linkage simply means that a generic can’t be marketed until the patent of the underlying innovation expires, and ensures patents are not infringed upon. This is quite different from what critics refer to as “evergreening,” which involves the patenting of a new innovation related to an existing medicine, oftentimes consisting of improvements such as a more effective delivery system, smaller dosages, or fewer side effects. Again, critics ignore the fact that generic companies are free to market an innovative drug as soon as its original patent runs out.Because the United States is a global leader in many of the industries being impacted by the TPP, from agriculture to automobiles to biopharmaceuticals, it stands to reason that other nations are trying to wrangle concessions. But free trade only works when there’s a level playing field among partners, and in the case of intellectual property the floor, or starting point, for any negotiation must be current U.S. law.

The U nited S tates has one of the most sophisticated and forward-thinking IP regimes in the world. Not only should our partner nations aspire to such standards, but weakening them puts U.S. innovation at a disadvantage. Our IP ecosystem is a significant reason why the U nited S tates can lead the world in scientific discovery of new medicines yet still allow fierce competition from generics, which now comprise nearly 85 percent of all prescriptions written.Yet according to an article in POLITICO last week, critics say the TPP could “dump trillions of dollars of additional health care costs on patients, businesses and governments around the Pacific Rim.” First, that’s not really the point. This would be like saying that TPP will dump costs on a nation because they buy U.S. exports. Moreover, as ITIF’s March 2015 report, The Imperative of Protecting Life Sciences Innovation In the TPP, points out, IP protections that foster innovative biologics and pharmaceutical drugs have the potential to pump trillions of dollars in savings into TPP countries’ health-care systems . For example, a 1 percent reduction in mortality from cancer would deliver roughly $500 billion in benefits, while a cure would deliver $50 trillion in present and future benefits . For Alzheimer’s, an effective treatment could save $220 billion in the first

five years alone just in the United States. So rather than “dumping trillions of additional dollars in health care costs” the TPP is primed to create the conditions through which biomedical innovation can flourish throughout the TPP region, delivering trillions of dollars in health care systems savings .Indeed, it’s not a coincidence that the United States, fielding one of the world’s best systems for rewarding risk and innovation by protecting intellectual property, leads the world in biomedical advancements. And with the promise of biologic drugs, which may help us find answers for some of the world’s most intractable diseases , now is the time to double-down on innovation, not stifle it by weakening global IP standards. It’s why the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering wrote, “It is critical that a balance be struck in finding an appropriate period of exclusivity such that innovation is stimulated and sustained but patients have access to generic drug pricing structures” and recommended that this data exclusivity period should be “at least 10 to 11 years.”

Some researchers think that number should be even higher, up to 16 years. That’s why the U.S. Congress—on a bipartisan basis and after extensive deliberation—settled on 12 years and enacted that standard in the Affordable Care Act. And that’s precisely why the U.S. Trade Representative should continue to push for 12 years of data protection for biologics in the TPP.Lastly, it’s important to remember that innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and that the generics industry—which by

definition could not exist but for innovators assuming the risks of developing novel new drugs—relies on innovative biopharmaceutical companies for its success. Striking the appropriate balance between allowing innovation to flourish and ensuring a healthy generics industry is at the heart of U.S. policy, and that should be reflected in the TPP. As U.S. Trade Representative Michael

Froman recently noted, “I think what we’ve found around the world is that you only have generics if you have innovative medicines …. You have to have a pipeline of innovative medicines to feed the generic pipeline, which is critical to controlling health care costs in the U nited S tates and around the world.”

If the TPP is going to live up to its full promise, the U nited S tates cannot afford to back down from its positions on intellectual property issues at this point in the negotiations.

AT: Pharma Turn—No Impact No extinction Gladwell, ‘95Malcolm Gladwell, The New Republic, July 17 and 24, 1995, excerpted in Epidemics: Opposing Viewpoints, 1999, p. 31-32

Every infectious agent that has ever plagued humanity has had to adapt a specific strategy but every strategy carries a corresponding cost and this makes human counterattack possible. Malaria is vicious and deadly but it relies on mosquitoes to spread from one human to the next, which means that draining swamps and putting up mosquito netting can all hut halt endemic malaria. Smallpox is extraordinarily durable remaining infectious in the environment for years, but its very durability its essential rigidity is what makes it one of the easiest microbes to create a vaccine against. AIDS is almost invariably lethal because it attacks the body at its point of great vulnerability, that is, the immune system, but the fact that it targets blood cells is what makes it so relatively uninfectious. Viruses are not superhuman. I could go on, but the point is obvious. Any microbe capable of wiping us all out would have to be everything at once : as contagious as flue, as durable as the cold, as lethal as Ebola, as stealthy as HIV and so doggedly resistant to mutation that it would stay deadly over the course of a long epidemic. But viruses are not , well, superhuman. They cannot do everything at once . It is one of the ironies of the analysis of

alarmists such as Preston that they are all too willing to point out the limitations of human beings, but they neglect to point out the limitations of microscopic life forms .

Disease won’t cause extinction Krauss 3-16-12[Lawrence, Professor of physics and director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Co-president of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Member of the board of directors of the Federation of American Scientists. "Countdown to the Man-Made Apocalypse," Slate.com, March 16, 2012, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2012/03/the_doomsday_clock_from_the_bulletin_of_atomic_scientists_tackles_biotechnology_.html download date: 3-19-2012, CMR]

We can all (at least those of us who, unlike some of the dominant presidential candidates, accept the reality of both evolution and an old earth) take solace in the robustness of life itself, evolved over 4.5 billion years in the presence of remarkably ingenious viruses , which have also competed for survival. It is unlikely that a new organism , without the benefit of all of this

“learned experience,” could outmaneuver all the mechanisms that life has developed to outwit constant biological invaders .

Pivot Good—China Impact

Renewed pivot key to soft-balance violent China Pei 14 (Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, “America's Pivot Paradox: Ukraine, Syria, and Beyond,” April 24, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/americas-pivot-paradox-ukraine-syria-beyond-10306?page=2)

Now facing a more concerned and skeptical audience in the region who wants concrete evidence of Washington’s continued commitment to the pivot, Obama will have to inject fresh momentum into the implementation of this strategy. Conceptually

and geopolitically, the “Asia Pivot” serves America’s long-term interests well. What will determine the world’s peace and prosperity in the coming decades will not be a revanchist Russia or the fate of Ukraine, but Asia’s economic development and geopolitical rivalry. With more than 40 percent of the world’s population and a third of the global GDP (in PPP terms), Asia (excluding the Middle East), is the logical focus of the American

national-security strategy. Pivoting to Asia is not a choice, but a necessity . Despite the perceived loss of momentum in

Obama’s Asia Pivot, the underlying strategic dynamics in the region continue to favor the United States. With some adjustments, Washington should be able to maintain its strategic initiative. An overwhelming majority of Asian countries continue to count on the United States to perform its role as the region’s strategic balancer . With rising Chinese power and assertiveness, these countries have nowhere to turn except Washington to counter Chinese efforts to turn Asia into its sphere of influence. What the Obama administration can do will not require excessive resources or attention. The Asia Pivot consists of three fronts: diplomatic engagement, military redeployment, and trade integration. At the moment, progress on all three fronts has either slowed down or stalled. However, despite its strategic distractions, the United States has the ability to reinvigorate the pivot. The Obama visit to Asia should rekindle the hope that the pivot is not a diplomatic slogan, but a real national security strategy. This is a good first step. Let us hope that he and his team will follow up with substantive efforts on the other two fronts—soon.

Nuclear war Walton ’07(C. Dale Walton, Lecturer in International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, 2007, Geopolitics and the Great Powers in the 21st Century, p. 49)

Obviously, it is of vital importance to the United States that the PRC does not become the hegemon of Eastern Eurasia. As noted above, however, regardless of what Washington does, China's success in such an endeavor is not as easily attainable as pessimists might assume. The PRC appears to be on track to be a very great power indeed, but geopolitical conditions are not favorable for any Chinese effort to establish sole hegemony ; a robust multipolar system should suffice to keep China in check, even with only minimal American intervention in local squabbles. The more worrisome danger is that Beijing will cooperate with a great power partner , establishing a very muscular axis. Such an entity would present a critical danger to the balance of power , thus both necessitating very active American intervention in Eastern Eurasia and creating the underlying conditions for a massive, and probably nuclear, great power war. Absent such a "super-threat," however, the demands on American leaders will be far more subtle; creating the conditions for Washington's gentle decline from playing the role of unipolar quasi-

hegemon to being "merely" the greatest of the world's powers , while aiding in the creation of a healthy multipolar system that is not marked by close great power alliances.

Pivot Good—AT: China Containment Turn

Pivot doesn’t cause China conflictCampbell & Ratner ‘14Kurt is Chair and CEO of the Asia Group. From 2009 to 2013, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and Ely is is a Senior Fellow in and Deputy Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, “Far Eastern Promises,” Foreign Affairs, Volume 93, Issue 3, May, pages 106-116

Opponents of the pivot have raised three main objections. First, some worry that the pivot will unnecessarily antagonize China. This misperception ignores the fact that deepening engagement with Beijing has been a central and irrefutable feature of the

rebalancing policy. Examples of the new approach include the establishment of the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, a comprehensive set of meetings chaired by the U.S. secretaries of state and the treasury and their Chinese counterparts, and the Strategic Security Dialogue, through which the two countries have held unprecedented high-level discussions on such sensitive matters as maritime security and cyber-security. Tensions might rise due to the increased U.S. military presence in Asia and Washington's more robust outreach to China's neighbors. But bilateral ties are developing in such a way that any disagreements produced by the pivot will be addressed in the broader context of a more stable and cooperative U.S.-Chinese relationship.

We will be thought of as containing China no matter what- question if the credibility of that pivot Schiavenza 2013 (Matt Schiavenza, editor of the Atlantic Monthly, April 15, 2013, “What Exactly Does It Mean That the U.S. Is Pivoting to Asia?,” The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/what-exactly-does-it-mean-that-the-us-is-pivoting-to-asia/274936/)During his confirmation hearings in January, Kerry famously expressed ambivalence about the pivot to Asia, leading some to speculate that he might wish to "unpivot" back to Europe and the Middle East. Though the Chinese would surely love it if Washington retreated from the region, this is unlikely: Kerry ultimately doesn't call the shots in American foreign policy -- Obama does. And Obama, according to Justin Logan of the Cato Institute, is a firm believer in the pivot: he even prefers the term to the more neutral "re-balancing" introduced as a softer touch by his administration. ¶ But, as Logan cautions, second-term U.S. presidents have long been tempted by solving problems in the Middle East, particularly the Israel-Palestine crisis. And with the Syrian civil war, the Afghanistan pull-out, and a teetering Egypt, there's certainly enough going on in the region to merit the administration's attention. ¶ Nevertheless, the "pivot to Asia" isn't just whimsy -- for all the trite sloganeering around the "Asian Century", the continent will play an increasing role in American foreign policy going forward. So no- the pivot isn't reversible , even as the rest of the world continues to matter, too.

__**TPP Bad—Trade/Jobs

2AC Offshoring

TPP devastates trade and growth – ensures rapid offshoring Hiltzik 2-7-15 (Michael, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of five books, “'Free trade' isn't what Trans-Pacific Partnership would deliver,” http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20150206-column.html#page=1, CMR)

In principle, almost everyone's in favor of free trade. It promotes international harmony, raises wages, helps economies grow. It's an article of historical faith that the enactment of harsh protective U.S. tariffs in 1930 contributed to the Great Depression. And who wants that? But "free trade" has little to do with the trade deal that President Obama hopes will be a high-water mark for his administration's foreign

policy: the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, which now involve the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim countries — Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The pact — which has been under negotiation virtually since the turn of the century — is in trouble on Capitol Hill, where its enemies include conservatives and liberals. The overall problem may be that the TPP, as it's

known in shorthand, has become a symbol of everything that's wrong with free trade agreements today. The pact is being negotiated in secret, although U.S. trade negotiators have given big industries nice long looks behind the curtain. The White House is demanding "fast-track" approval from Congress, which limits the say lawmakers will have and requires them to ratify in haste. And public interest advocates say it could undermine rules and

regulations governing the environment, health, intellectual property and financial markets (to name only a few topics). "Most of these provisions have nothing to do with trade or jobs," says liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz , a leading critic of the deal and the secrecy of the talks. On the other side of the argument is the trade pact's potential to foster economic

growth and job creation — "650,000 jobs in the U.S. alone," as Secretary of State John F. Kerry asserted last month. But that widely challenged figure is extrapolated from a 2012 report by the Peterson Institute of International

Economics, which didn't offer a jobs estimate. In fact, the report said the TPP might dislocate workers and drive older people out of the workforce — and that any benefits might be canceled out by the resulting costs to workers and society. Evidence from earlier trade pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement,

suggests that the benefits for developing countries among the treaty signatories are similarly oversold. "Trade liberalization on average has not brought economic growth for emerging economies," Stiglitz said. "The idea that it's necessarily mutually beneficial is just wrong." Doubts about the TPP fall into three main categories. •Overreach.

Domestic policies and regulations shouldn't be treated as trade barriers subject to international negotiation, such as patent and copyright terms, wage and working conditions, even environmental regulations. But provisions in the TPP would protect brand-name pharmaceuticals from competition from generics in developing countries, forcing up the cost of healthcare, and would impose the overly strict copyright terms of the U.S., where copyright lasts 70 years after the death of a copyright

holder, on signatory countries. Critics fear that bringing such issues into a trade pact will encourage a race to the bottom , favoring the most business-friendly regulations. "Some of these provisions roll back important public interest policies on issues like food safety, product safety and access to drugs," says Lori Wallach, the global trade watchdog at the public interest organization Public Citizen. "This is

diplomatic legislating on things that affect our day-to-day lives that have nothing to do with trade." Especially worrisome is a procedure allowing corporations to file claims in arbitration courts against sovereign countries over changes in their laws and regulations. As is the case in some previous trade agreements, commercial interests will be able to seek compensation for "injuries" from anything from minimum-wage increases to environmental and health regulations. Mexican truckers filed a $30-billion case objecting to safety and environmental rules on U.S. roads; Eli Lilly & Co. is seeking $481 million from Canada for its invalidation of Lilly patents on several drugs; and Philip Morris has sued Australia because its rule requiring plain packaging for cigarettes deprives the company of its property rights in trademarks and logos. Even conservatives who otherwise favor the TPP detest this provision. The Cato Institute has urged that it be "purged" from the pact. By giving special privileges to corporations operating abroad, Cato said, the provision allows them to undermine domestic sovereignty and " effectively encourages outsourcing ." •Secrecy. U.S.

Trade Representative Michael Froman, who is conducting the talks, has been stingy with the text, critics say, out of fear of public nitpicking. Most of what the public knows of the TPP's drafts and the U.S. negotiating position has come via Wikileaks. Froman told the House Ways and Means Committee last month that he has taken "unprecedented steps to increase

transparency" by keeping Congress and the public in the loop, but most observers say disclosure has been nowhere near

adequate. In 2012, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) was so frustrated at being stonewalled by the USTR that he introduced a bill requiring that all lawmakers with oversight on trade policy be given access to key documents. •"Fast-tracking." Fast-tracking allows the administration to present Congress with a completed trade pact, which lawmakers must vote up or down within 90 days, without amendments and with limited debate and no filibustering in the Senate. The White House argues that fast-tracking allows negotiators to reassure trade partners that "the

administration and Congress are on the same page," as Froman told the House Ways and Means Committee. The system "puts Congress in the driver's seat," he said, because the lawmakers can "define U.S. negotiating objectives and priorities." But the opposite is true: The congressional directives aren't binding, and the result can be jammed through the House and Senate. GOP leaders such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) favor fast-tracking, but opposition is growing from conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats alike. Combined with secrecy, fast-tracking encourages the overreach that makes the TPP so much more than a trade pact, and so dangerous. If fast-tracking is turned down , the TPP will have to be widely published and openly debated , says Public

Citizen's Wallach. "That will bring out all the skunks that have been invited to the secret picnic," she says.

"Some of these things that should never have been in that agreement in the first place aren't going to fare very well when they're exposed to sunshine. And that's good."

That guts US military power and causes terrorism *offshoring’s the key internal link Hira ‘8 – PhD [Ron, recognized expert on outsourcing, Anil Hira, specialist in international econ development and innovation issues, “Outsourcing America”, page number below]The Potential Impacts Are Far-Reaching The stakes are enormous, not just for our economic future but also for ail other aspects of our

quality of life. Without good, high-paying jobs there are no tax revenues to fund our education, health, infrastructure, and social security systems. Economists want to claim dogmatically that workers will simply retrain for other

jobs, but where are those jobs going to come from? Retraining has never proven itself reliable. More important, can an outsourced IT worker or engineer, who has been forced to train her overseas replacement, find comparable work with comparable salary to support her family and pay for her kids' education? The answer is clearly not, as the growing multitude of devastated, overqualified workers has been crying out. Outsourcing is not just about jobs. Its potential impact is not only on our quality of life but also on our national competitiveness and national security. Our competitive edge—the reason, until now, America has been the

beacon for immigrants to come and achieve the American Dream—has been our ability to create new high-wage jobs. And a good part of that job creation has been in technology, with government and private support for developing the most highly skilled workforce and the most innovative products. The IT, the aerospace, and the biotechnology industries, to name a few, depend on a careful partnership among publicly funded research, our leading-edge universities, the private sector, and the most productive workers in the world. Outsourcing is taking away the workforce that has been a key part of our winning formula . Once we lose the high-tech jobs, then why would our most capable minds study engineering, computer science, biotechnology, or any of the other promising fields that will create national competitiveness in the future? Already we are seeing record unemployment rates in these occupations and

a major drop in enrollments in these fields, in good part owing to outsourcingMoreover, our national security is based in large

part on this technological edge . Our soldiers depend upon a solid core of engineers, computer technicians, and research and development scientists to provide the equipment and logistical support that protect our country . Now that terrorist forces are using technology , including the Internet and high-tech

communications equipment, we need to maintain the national capability to stay ahead of their technological knowledge. If we allow outsourcing to wipe out our base of technical workers, we will leave the nation vulnerable to foreign powers , much as unhappy consumers have found their personal, medical, and tax information in the hands of overseas computer technicians.<8-9>

Nuclear war Khalilzad 11 Zalmay Khalilzad was the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations during the presidency of George W. Bush and the director of policy planning at the Defense

Department from 1990 to 1992, “ The Economy and National Security”, 2-8-11, http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/259024, CMR The stakes are high. In modern history, the longest period of peace among the great powers has been the era of U.S. leadership. By contrast, multi-polar systems have been unstable, with their competitive dynamics resulting in frequent crises and major wars among the great powers . Failures of multi-polar international

systems produced both world wars. American retrenchment could have devastating consequences. Without an American security blanket, regional powers could rearm in an attempt to balance against emerging threats. Under this scenario, there would be a heightened possibility of arms races , miscalc ulation, or other crises

spiraling into all-out conflict . Alternatively, in seeking to accommodate the stronger powers, weaker powers may shift their geopolitical posture away from the United States. Either way, hostile states would be emboldened to make aggressive moves in their regions.

1AR Offshoring—UQ

Uniqueness – re-shoring now – broad trend Rob Johnson, 1-17-15, “'Reshoring' brings jobs back to U.S., including Pensacola,” http://www.pnj.com/story/news/2015/01/17/reshoring-brings-jobs-back-us-including-pensacola/21929659/, CMRNow, moving jobs back to the United States from global manufacturing meccas like China is a nascent trend called "reshoring." The strategy is becoming more popular , especially among companies such as U.S. Block Windows. Its acrylic product line, ranging from picture windows to interior systems that make up walls and doors, is sold mainly to residential home builders. Murphy's retail customers include Home Depot and Lowe's. Crated windows ready for shipping at Murphy's on a recent day were addressed to customers from North Carolina to California. The success of U.S. Block Windows' reshoring represents "a business model that may apply to other companies in our area. It's something we are monitoring as an emerging opportunity," said Scott Luth, head of economic development for Escambia County. He said there are databases from public and private sources that detail the number and kinds of jobs being outsourced overseas by local companies. "We'll look at these on a case-by-case basis to see if those jobs are in our target industries," Luth said. More than 50,000 jobs have been returned by domestic employers during the last three years, according to Harry Moser, president of the Reshoring Initiative, a Chicago area nonprofit that consults with companies on the benefits of doing business at home. "Companies that take a hard look at the numbers are often realizing they haven't considered all the costs of doing business offshore," Moser told the News Journal in a phone interview. Indeed, the reshoring of Pensacola jobs at

U.S. Block Windows is based on the bottom line, Murphy said. Like an increasing number of companies, U.S. Block Windows discovered that rising wages in China, along with gradually higher international shipping costs, are making American plant locations more financially viable.

1AR Offshoring—Link

The link’s one direction – status quo is free trade and growth – only a risk TPP upsets the balance Krugman 14 (Paul, American economist, Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, Distinguished Scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, “No Big Deal,” 2-27, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/opinion/krugman-no-big-deal.html)

And you know what? That’s O.K. It’s far from clear that the T.P.P. is a good idea. It’s even less clear that it’s something on which

President Obama should be spending political capital. I am in general a free trader, but I’ll be undismayed and even a bit relieved if the

T.P.P. just fades away. The first thing you need to know about trade deals in general is that they aren’t what they used to be. The glory days of trade negotiations — the days of deals like the Kennedy Round of the 1960s, which sharply reduced tariffs around the world — are long behind us. Why? Basically, old-fashioned trade deals are a victim of their own success: there just isn’t much more protectionism to eliminate . Average U.S. tariff rates have fallen by two-thirds since 1960. The most recent report on American import restraints by the International Trade Commission puts their total cost at less than 0.01 percent of G.D.P . Implicit protection of services — rules and regulations that have the effect of, say, blocking

foreign competition in insurance — surely impose additional costs. But the fact remains that, these days, “trade agreements” are mainly about other things. What they’re really about, in particular, is property rights — things like the ability to enforce patents on

drugs and copyrights on movies. And so it is with T.P.P. There’s a lot of hype about T.P.P., from both supporters and opponents.

Supporters like to talk about the fact that the countries at the negotiating table comprise around 40 percent of the world

economy, which they imply means that the agreement would be hugely significant. But trade among these players is already fairly free, so the T.P.P. wouldn’t make that much difference . Meanwhile, opponents portray the T.P.P. as a huge plot, suggesting that it would destroy national sovereignty and transfer all the power to corporations. This, too, is hugely overblown. Corporate interests would get somewhat more ability to seek legal recourse against government actions, but, no, the Obama administration isn’t secretly bargaining away democracy. What the T.P.P. would do, however, is increase the ability of certain corporations to assert control over intellectual property. Again, think drug patents and movie rights. Is this a good thing from a global point of view? Doubtful. The kind of property rights we’re talking about here can alternatively be described as legal monopolies. True, temporary monopolies are, in fact, how we reward new ideas; but arguing that we need even more monopolization is very dubious — and has nothing at all to do with classical arguments for free trade. Now, the corporations benefiting from enhanced control over intellectual property would often be American. But this doesn’t mean that the T.P.P. is in our national interest. What’s good for Big Pharma is by no means always good for America. In short, there isn’t a compelling case for this deal, from either a global or a national point of view. Nor does there seem to be anything like a political consensus in favor, abroad or at home. Abroad, the news from the latest meeting of negotiators sounds like what you usually hear when trade talks are going nowhere: assertions of forward movement but nothing substantive. At home, both Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House, have come out against giving the president crucial “fast-track” authority, meaning that any agreement can receive a clean, up-or-down vote. So what I wonder is why the president is pushing the T.P.P. at all. The economic case is weak, at best, and his own party doesn’t like it. Why waste time and political capital on this project? My guess is that we’re looking at a combination of Beltway conventional wisdom — Very Serious People always support entitlement cuts and trade deals — and officials caught in a 1990s time warp, still living in the days when New Democrats tried to prove that they weren’t old-style liberals by going all in for globalization. Whatever the motivations, however, the push for T.P.P. seems almost

weirdly out of touch with both economic and political reality. So don’t cry for T.P.P. If the big trade deal comes to nothing, as seems likely, it will be, well, no big deal.

TPP is a corporatized agreement irrelevant to trade – their authors epistemology is suspect Shrouded in secrecy TPA precludes revision and amendment Nontariff barriers, irrelevant to trade

Flawed epistemology – NEG authors are implicated Key to check corporate excess Stiglitz 14 (Joseph, American economist and a professor at Columbia University, “On the Wrong Side of Globalization,” March 15, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/joseph-e-stiglitz/, CMR)

Trade agreements are a subject that can cause the eyes to glaze over, but we should all be paying attention. Right now, there are trade proposals in the works that threaten to put most Americans on the wrong side of globalization. The conflicting views about the agreements are actually tearing at the fabric of the Democratic Party, though you wouldn’t know it from President Obama’s rhetoric. In his State of the Union address, for example, he blandly referred to “new trade partnerships” that would “create more jobs.” Most immediately at issue is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which would bring together 12 countries along the Pacific Rim in what would be the largest free trade area in the world. Negotiations for the TPP began in 2010, for the purpose, according to the United States Trade Representative, of increasing trade and investment, through lowering tariffs and other trade barriers among participating countries. But the TPP negotiations have been taking place in secret, forcing us to rely on leaked drafts to guess at the proposed provisions. At the same time, Congress introduced a bill this year that would grant the White House filibuster-proof fast-track authority, under which Congress simply approves or rejects whatever trade agreement is put before it, without revisions or amendments . Controversy has erupted, and justifiably so. Based on the leaks — and the history of arrangements in past trade pacts — it is easy to infer the shape of the whole TPP, and it doesn’t look good. There is a real risk that it will benefit the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else . The fact that such a plan is under consideration at all is testament to how deeply inequality reverberates

through our economic policies. Worse, agreements like the TPP are only one aspect of a larger problem: our gross mismanagement of globalization. Let’s tackle the history first. In general, trade deals today are markedly different from those made in the decades following World War II, when negotiations focused on lowering tariffs. As tariffs came down on all sides, trade expanded, and each country could develop the sectors in which it had strengths and as a result, standards of living would rise. Some jobs would be lost, but new jobs would be created. Today, the purpose of trade agreements is different. Tariffs around the world are already low . The focus has shifted to “nontariff barriers,” and the most important of these — for the corporate interests pushing agreements — are regulations. Huge multinational

corporations complain that inconsistent regulations make business costly. But most of the regulations, even if they are imperfect, are there for a reason: to protect workers, consumers, the economy and the environment. What’s more, those regulations were often put in place by governments responding to the democratic demands of their citizens. Trade agreements’ new boosters euphemistically claim that they are simply after regulatory harmonization, a clean-sounding phrase that implies an innocent plan to promote efficiency. One could, of course, get regulatory harmonization by strengthening regulations to the highest standards everywhere. But when corporations call for harmonization, what they really mean is a race to the bottom . When agreements like the TPP govern international trade — when every country has agreed to similarly minimal regulations — multinational corporations can return to the practices that were common before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts became law (in 1970 and 1972, respectively) and before the latest financial crisis hit. Corporations everywhere may well agree that getting rid of regulations would be good for corporate profits. Trade negotiators might be persuaded that these trade agreements would be good for trade and corporate profits. But

there would be some big losers — namely, the rest of us. These high stakes are why it is especially risky to let trade negotiations proceed in secret. All over the world, trade ministries are captured by corporate and financial interests . And when negotiations are secret, there is no way that the democratic process can exert the

check s and balances required to put limits on the negative effects of these agreements .

TPP kills jobs and encourages offshoring Frankel 6/18 (Judy, Founder and CEO, Writeindependent.org, “What Is the Trans Pacific Partnership?,” 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-frankel/what-is-the-trans-pacific_b_7594950.html, CMR)

2. Jobs - If the TPP passes, member corporations can enjoy the benefits of suing governments to allow for less stringent worker practices. "The corporation could skirt Vietnam's laws and demand

compensation at an international tribunal for any government policy or action (such as a hike in the minimum wage) that undermined its 'expected' profits," write Jim Hightower and Phillip Fraser. The TPP would incentivize offshoring of good-paying jobs by offering special benefits to firms that relocate to low-wage nations.

TPP outsources American jobs and exploits Asian laborersMarsden 5/6/14Rachel Marsden, a conservative political columnist, university lecturer. She teaches at Sciences Po University in Paris. She is also the CEO of Rachel Marsden Associates, which describes itself as "an international firm headquartered in Paris, France, and Toronto, Canada, with extensive experience in Defense, Intelligence, Politics, Media and Public Affairs issues,” 5/6/14, Chicago Tribune, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-05-06/opinion/sns-201405061300--tms--amvoicesctnav-b20140506-20140506_1_trans-pacific-partnership-trade-agreement-tppPARIS -- The good news is that the Obama administration plans to create a lot of new jobs. The bad news is that those jobs will mostly be in Asia. President Obama's recent trip to Asia revived debate about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the cornerstone of this administration's so-called pivot to Asia. The controversial agreement -- not likely to be finalized anytime soon -- currently involves the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. Other countries expressing interest include China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Laos, Colombia, Cambodia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Tell you what: Why don't we just effectively erase all the borders in Asia and turn it into one giant pool of exploitable labor, because that's exactly what this agreement would achieve . The White House won't say that, though. Instead, the Obama administration is promoting the idea that the TPP will result in higher labor standards. "The president has always made clear that he will only support trade agreements that include fully enforceable labor standards, which we are pursuing in TPP," according to a February statement from the Office of the United States Trade Representative. "TPP will offer new tools to fight exploitative child labor and forced labor, deter employment discrimination, and will embed fundamental labor standards in our trade agreement with Mexico and Canada." What utter nonsense. The U.S. government isn't even capable of following through on such guarantees at home. In fact, its policies promote the precise opposite. The whole idea of temporary foreign worker programs in the United States, Canada and other developed countries is to establish a legal mechanism for importing and subsequently exploiting foreigners in domestic labor markets. They're forced to work long hours for low pay, differentiating them from the entitled teenagers who would otherwise be filling these positions. Foreign workers are effectively tethered to their jobs, lest they face unemployment and the loss of their immigration status. Sure, they can probably file a grievance with some government agency, but even if it's addressed, the aggrieved worker is apt to be cut loose. Are we supposed to believe that governments of these same developed nations are going to suddenly care about labor standards in foreign nations? Who's going to police labor standards in other TPP countries -- U.S. government workers? Civil servants in America are going to ensure workplace compliance for American firms operating in Indonesia and Bangladesh? Really? That's already worked so well in China, where a major supplier of Apple Inc. installed suicide nets around employee dormitories after a number of workers jumped to their death. Whatever President Obama is telling Americans, he can't guarantee a thing in this regard. International trade and foreign direct investments are positive things -- if done right. Free trade and comprehensive duty-free access should only be conducted between parties that are relatively equal in all respects, and this is virtually impossible to ensure across so many nations with different labor standards. Besides, when a company from a developed nation sets up operations in a foreign country with cheaper labor and lax standards, the cost of doing business should, in fact, include some customs and excise levies. Granted, foreign direct investments by American companies in Asia are important to offset the ever-increasing influence of China, but that cannot consist entirely of outsourcing American operations abroad. Such operations should complement the domestic workforce, not replace it -- but history suggests that this rarely ends up being the case. If Obama were truly concerned about America bleeding jobs, he wouldn't be looking to create jobs in Asia, but instead tackling the taxation, red tape and labor issues in the U.S. that render America a less attractive place to do business than some Third World nations. It's not a question of gutting labor standards in developed nations, but it's hard not to see that the pendulum has swung too far. Unions now exist to justify their own existence. In France, for example -- the Mecca of unions in the developed world -- labor unions at stores such as Sephora and Virgin (now shuttered across France) have made a big deal over late-night (9 p.m. to midnight) work hours, even though the workers themselves were keen to work those hours. Where there are people who are passionate about their jobs and genuinely want to work, unions have stepped in to stop the love-in between employer and employee, and have worked relentlessly to enshrine systemic discrimination against entrepreneurial contractors. It's these sorts of things that make cheap labor and foreign markets attractive. The focus should be on improving the U.S. regulatory system so that the outsourcing of American jobs to places with appalling labor conditions doesn't look so enticing .

1AR Offshoring—AT: Econ Turn

Offshoring doesn’t boost the economyBivens, Research and Policy Director at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 05[L. Josh Bivens, Truth and consequences of offshoring, Recent studies overstate the benefits and ignore the costs to American workers, Briefing Paper #155, http://www.epi.org/publication/bp155/]

ConclusionThe issue of offshoring demands a careful response by policy makers, with the great challenge being to make sure any potential benefits are equitably distributed among firms and workers. Any policy response must therefore be well informed about the costs and benefits of offshoring. Proponents of offshoring and many economists have claimed that its negative impact on the U.S. economy over the past four years has been exaggerated by politicians and others. Even if true, this ignores the fact that offshoring is likely to grow rapidly in the future and could well have large effects on the U.S. economy in years to come. Therefore, balanced analyses about what these effects would be are needed. The three reports examined in this paper exaggerate the size of the benefits offered to American workers by offshoring and gloss over the more troubling distributional consequences.While offshoring has clearly provided substantial cost savings and improved profits for a number of firms that have engaged in it, one cannot assume that these benefits will scale up for the broader economy.

Mainstream international economics teaches that deepening international integration usually increases national income, but not always. The offshoring of white-collar work and its consequences

(i.e., foreign productivity growth in what is an export sector for the United States) fits in with many of the characteristics of the exceptions.Further, even if this offshoring does increase national income, American workers will still likely miss out on many of the benefits. Mainstream international economics is equally clear that international integration redistributes more income than it creates. If total U.S. GDP is raised by offshoring, but American workers lose at the expense of corporate profits, then workers are

wholly justified in resisting offshoring, at least until they receive some compensation for their losses. Good economic policy should not rest on insisting that American workers sacrifice their own self-interest in terms of lower wages to the larger national interest of increased national income. Policy should also not be driven by studies that mask the costs of offshoring while providing inflated estimates of its benefits. If proponents of offshoring want to reap the potential efficiency gains it offers, a new social contract needs to be proffered to American workers to insure them against the very real risks offshoring poses to their living standards.

2AC Econ/Manufacturing

TPP is a corporate sell-out – collapse the economy and manufacturing Beachy 14 (Ben Beachy is Research Director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, former research fellow with Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, investment analyst for the Tellus Institute in Boston, agriculture researcher for ActionAid in India and labor rights investigator for the Worker Rights Consortium in Central America, B.A. from Goshen College and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, “The Rising Use of the Trade Pact Sales Pitch of Last Resort: TPP Foreign Policy Arguments Mimic False Claims Made for Past Deals,” April, http://www.citizen.org/documents/TPP-foreign-policy.pdf, CMR)

Missing in this distorted “us” versus “them” narrative is the reality that many of the draft TPP rules would undermine U.S. national interests by increasing income inequality here ; raising medicine , natural gas and electricity prices ;

jeopardizing financial stability and further gutting the U.S. manufacturing base that is essential for our national security and domestic infrastructure. T he TPP is not some pre - ordained extension of the U.S. Constitution that inherently reflects “American values,” as Biden suggests . T he current terms of the TPP are just one version of possible rules for Pacific Rim countries – one written largely at the behest of U.S. corporate interests, not broader national interests. The draft TPP text was crafted in a closed - door process that granted privileged access to more than 600 official U.S. trade advisors, most of

them explicitly representing corporations. 26 It is little surprise then that leaked TPP terms include new monopoly patent rig hts for pharmaceutical companies that would increase healthcare costs, limits on efforts to reregulate Wall Street, a deregulation of U.S. gas expor ts that could increase domestic energy prices for industry and consumers , maximalist copyright terms that could thwart innovation and restrict Internet freedom , new investor protections that incentivize offshoring and more. T he draft TPP

rules not only jeopardize U.S. domestic priorities , but threaten to undermine U.S. interests abroad by weakening U.S. allies. The pact , for example, would bar TPP countries from enacting capital controls, endorsed by the International Monetary Fund as legitimate policy tools for preventing or mitigating financial crises . 27 It does not serve U.S. economic interest s to forbid TPP countries from using common - sense macroprudential measures . Financial crises in TPP countries with strong U.S. economic ties (e.g. Mexico) or financial linkages (e.g. Canada and Japan ) could have a boomerang effect at home . And it does not serve U.S. political interests to

insist on rules that would expose our Pacific Rim allies to greater potential for financial instability. A wave of anti - American sentiment accompanied the 1997 Asian financial crisis even absent the United States directly imposing such limits on financial stability measures. It is because the TPP would lock into place many harmful non - trade policies that many congressional Democrats and much of the Obama administration’s political base oppose the pact. 28 Th e opposition includes organizations that have never engaged in a “trade” debate before, but see their non - trade policy goals as being undermined by the TPP’s sweeping rules. Similarly , economists that have supported past agreements that actually focused on trade – l ike Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman – have

recently raised warnings about the significant threats that the TPP’s non - trade rules would pose to U.S. interests. In a February 2014 op - ed in The New York Times , Krugman writes : I am in general a free trader , but I’ll be undismayed and e ven a bit relieved if the TPP just fades away... What the TPP would do ... is increase the ability of certain corporations to assert control over intellectual property. Again, think drug patents and movie rights. Is this a good thing from a global point of view? Doubtful. The kind of property rights we’re talking about here can alternatively be described as legal monopolies...Now, the corporations benefiting from enhanced control over intellectual property would often be American. But t his doesn’t mean that the TPP is in our national interest. What’s good for Big Pharma is by no means always good for America. 29 Stiglitz offers an even more scathing critique of the pact in a March 2014 op - ed in the Times : When agreements like the TPP govern international trade – when every country has agreed to similarly minimal regulations – multinational corporations can return to the practices that were common before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts became law (in 1970 and 1972, respectively) and before the latest financial crisis hit. Corporations everywhere may well agree that getting rid of regulations would be good for corporate profits. Trade negotiators might be persuaded that these trade agreements would be good for trade and corporate profits. But there would be some big losers – namely, the rest of us. 30 As Krugman and Stiglitz make clear, the choice over the TPP is not a choice between the United States setting the rules or China setting the rules. It is a choice over whether to allow m ulti n ational c orporation s to set rules that serve their own narrow interests at the expense of the interests of the U.S. majority. To borrow from Third Way, policymakers have a simple choice to make – do we want to define our national interests, or do we leave it to the corporations?

Manufacturing checks all global war --manufacturing capabilities key to technology necessary for U.S. deterrenceO’Hanlon 12 (Mackenzie Eaglen, American Enterprise Institute Rebecca Grant, IRIS Research Robert P. Haffa, Haffa Defense Consulting Michael O'Hanlon, The Brookings Institution Peter W. Singer, The Brookings Institution Martin Sullivan, Commonwealth Consulting Barry Watts, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments “The Arsenal of Democracy and How to Preserve It: Key Issues in Defense Industrial Policy January 2012,” pg online @ http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/1/26%20defense%20industrial%20base/0126_defense_industrial_base_ohanlon)

The current wave of defense cuts is also different than past defense budget reductions in their likely industrial impact, as the U.S. d efense i ndustrial b ase is in a much different place than it was in the past . D efense industrial issues are too often viewed through the lens of jobs and pet projects to protect in congressional districts. But the overall health of the firms that supply the techn ologies our armed forces utilize does have national security resonance . Qualitative superiority in weaponry and other key military tech nology has become an essential element of American military power in the modern era—not only for winning wars but for deterring them . That requires world-class scientific and

manufacturing capabilities — which in turn can also generate civilian and military export opportunities for the United States in a globalized marketplace.

1AR Trade/Econ D

Tariffs already toast – solves their impact *TPA not key to trade or growth – tariffs already eliminated – TPA just deals with non-tariff barriers that benefit evil corporations Stiglitz 14 (Joseph, American economist and a professor at Columbia University, “On the Wrong Side of Globalization,” March 15, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/joseph-e-stiglitz/, CMR) Trade agreements are a subject that can cause the eyes to glaze over, but we should all be paying attention. Right now, there are trade proposals in the works that threaten to put most Americans on the wrong side of globalization. The conflicting views about the agreements are actually tearing at the fabric of the Democratic Party, though you wouldn’t know it from President Obama’s rhetoric. In his State of the Union address, for example, he blandly referred to “new trade partnerships” that would “create more jobs.” Most immediately at issue is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, which would bring together 12 countries along the Pacific Rim in what would be the largest free trade area in the world. Negotiations for the TPP began in 2010, for the purpose, according to the United States Trade Representative, of increasing trade and investment, through lowering tariffs and other trade barriers among participating countries. But the TPP negotiations have been taking place in secret, forcing us to rely on leaked drafts to guess at the proposed provisions. At the same time, Congress introduced a bill this year that would grant the White House filibuster-proof fast-track authority, under which Congress simply approves or rejects whatever trade agreement is put before it, without revisions or amendments . Controversy has erupted, and justifiably so. Based on the leaks — and the history of arrangements in past trade pacts — it is easy to infer the shape of the whole TPP, and it doesn’t look good . There is a real risk that it will benefit the wealthiest sliver of the American and global elite at the expense of everyone else . The fact that such a plan is under consideration at all is testament to how deeply inequality reverberates

through our economic policies. Worse, agreements like the TPP are only one aspect of a larger problem: our gross mismanagement of globalization. Let’s tackle the history first. In general, trade deals today are markedly different from those made in the decades following World War II, when negotiations focused on lowering tariffs . As tariffs came down on all sides, trade expanded, and each country could develop the sectors in which it had strengths and as a result, standards of living would rise. Some jobs would be lost, but new jobs would be created. Today, the purpose of trade agreements is different. Tariffs around the world are already low . The focus has shifted to “nontariff barriers,” and the most important of these — for the corporate interests pushing agreements — are regulations. Huge multinational

corporations complain that inconsistent regulations make business costly. But most of the regulations, even if they are imperfect, are there for a reason: to protect workers, consumers, the economy and the environment. What’s more, those regulations were often put in place by governments responding to the democratic demands of their citizens. Trade agreements’ new boosters euphemistically claim that they are simply after regulatory harmonization, a clean-sounding phrase that implies an innocent plan to promote efficiency. One could, of course, get regulatory harmonization by strengthening regulations to the highest standards everywhere. But when corporations call for harmonization , what they really mean is a race to the bottom .

Err affirmative – their authors are captured by corporate interests Stiglitz 14 (Joseph, American economist and a professor at Columbia University, “On the Wrong Side of Globalization,” March 15, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/joseph-e-stiglitz/, CMR)

When agreements like the TPP govern international trade — when every country has agreed to similarly minimal regulations — multinational corporations can return to the practices that were common before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts became law (in 1970 and 1972, respectively) and before the latest financial crisis hit. Corporations everywhere may well agree that getting rid of regulations would be good for corporate profits. Trade negotiators might be persuaded that these trade agreements would

be good for trade and corporate profits. But there would be some big losers — namely, the rest of us. These high stakes are why it is especially risky to let trade negotiations proceed in secret. All over the world, trade ministries are captured by corporate and financial interests . And when negotiations are secret, there is no way that the

democratic process can exert the check s and balances required to put limits on the negative effects of these agreements.

1AR Econ D

Doesn’t solve the econKrugman 2/3/15—he's pretty good at economics (Paul, "Beware of False Rationales for Supporting Trade Deals." Truth Out. truth-out.org/opinion/item/28905-beware-of-false-rationales-for-supporting-trade-deals,)I am in general a free trader. There is, I would argue, a tendency on the part of some people with whom I agree on many issues to demonize trade agreements, to make them responsible for evils that have other causes. And my take on both of the trade agreements currently under negotiation - the T rans- P acific P artnership and the T ransatlantic T rade and I nvestment P artnership - is that there's much less there than meets the eye. ¶ But my hackles and suspicions rise when I listen to the advocates.¶ In his recent "State of American Business" speech, Thomas Donohue, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warned against economic populism, which he says is really about a push to create a "state-run economy." Yep - so much as mention rising income inequality, and you're Joseph Stalin (unless you're Mitt Romney). But what really gets me is the Chamber's supposed agenda for growth. Topping the list - the No. 1 priority - is completing those trade agreements.¶ This is absurd, and disturbing.¶ Think about it. The immediate problem facing much of the world is inadequate demand and the threat of deflation . Would trade liberalization help on that front? No , not at all. True, to the extent that trade becomes easier, world exports would rise, which is a net plus for demand. But world imports would rise by exactly the same amount, which is a net minus. Or to put it a bit differently, trade liberalization would change the composition of world expenditure - with each country spending more on foreign goods and less on its own - but there's no reason to think that it would raise total spending . So this is not a short-term economic boost. ¶ Could these trade agreements be about the supply side, about raising efficiency and productivity? Well, standard economic models do say that liberalization should have that effect, in principle - but the effects are only large when you start from high levels of protectionism .

1AR Manufacturing

TPP kills American Manufacturing Speers, ’15 (Craig, 7/18/15, president of the New York State Public Employees Federation, Retirees, Region 1. “TPP trade agreement is yet another disaster for American manufacturing” http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/another-voice/tpp-trade-agreement-is-yet-another-disaster-for-american-manufacturing-20150718)

The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement is an ill-conceived pact that will surely visit destructive forces on the American industrial

heartland on a grander scale than we have ever witnessed. Tragically, this wrongheaded policy is consistent with past detrimental trade agreements lobbied for by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The recent and ill-fated NAFTA and Korean Trade Agreements are proof that these agreements do great damage to our basic manufacturing sector in Western New York and the nation as a whole. For example, the South Korean Trade Agreement is showing a trend of approximately 13 to 1 against American exports to the Republic of South Korea, obviously causing even larger trade deficits and job losses for the United States, even after the agreement was sold to the public as a sure winner. We have yet to see even a hint of domestic economic benefit in awarding China Most Favored Nation trading status. Indeed, our nation is currently running a $350

billion yearly trade deficit with that communist nation. However, the all-time negative impact award goes to the North American Free Trade Agreement. It, too, was sold as a huge positive,

yet became a huge net negative. Not only were millions of American manufacturing and industrial jobs sacrificed on the altar of “free trade,” but the Mexican agricultural economy was

also radically altered. The end result was that millions of Mexican workers formerly employed in agricultural either became unemployed or underemployed to the point where they sought

a better economic outlook by attempting, through no fault of their own, illegal entry into the United States. That sounds like some very dire economic impacts where I am from. The fallacy

and moral corruption of these trade agreements is no more evident that in our own Great Lakes Basin region, upstate New York and New England, where once mighty industrial centers

have been struggling, stripped clean of manufacturing, employment and hope. The very fabric of these urban communities, large and small, whether they be Detroit or Salamanca, Gary or

Medina, Cleveland or Buffalo, Milwaukee or Lackawanna, have been diminished by an acquiescent Congress and presidents willing to sacrifice our jobs base for the sake of the intellectual

intoxicant of “free trade.” A more flawed economic policy has never been inflicted on our nation and its citizens. It is due time that American workers and America-based businesses stand up for our jobs, and fight against this massive TPP injustice, an injustice that threatens the very existence of a sound American economy and its ability to provide for a good-paying job and earned benefits for every able-bodied citizen. Reject the TPP now.

2AC No Protectionism

No chance of rising protectionismGTN, 2014 (Global Tax News, “Global Trade: Protectionism on the rise?” April 8, http://www.tax-news.com/features/Global_Trade_Protectionism_On_The_Rise__571705.html)It remains to be seen if the scale of the ambition to build regional free trade agreements like the TPP, the TTIP and the RCEP is matched by political will in all of the participating nations . Certainly, these are extremely complex and delicate negotiations covering some sensitive economic areas and it is no surprise that numerous lobby groups have emerged to fight their corner, often backed by politicians. The TTIP negotiations have already entered choppy waters over non-tariff issues such as regulation, while the Democrats’ reluctance to give President Obama the authority to fast-track free trade agreements through Congress could make it virtually impossible for the US to ratify new deals as complicated as the TTIP and the TPP. What’s more, the inclusion of Japan, with its tightly protected agricultural and automotive sectors, could prove a step too far for the expanded TPP negotiations. Overall however, fears that the world would descend into a downward spiral of ‘beggar thy neighbour’ trade protectionism as the financial crisis began to bite have been largely unfounded . The use of trade barriers as an economic management tool by emerging economies remain s a problem, but when weighed against the total volume of global trade these infractions are relatively minor. Generally speaking however, there seems to be an acceptance in most countries that international trade is better free than unfree , even if is often politically-problematic for leaders and government ministers to say so.

Trade wars are out of styleDePillis, 2014 (Lydia, “Has the developed world stopped waging trade wars?” June 26, Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/26/has-the-developed-world-stopped-waging-trade-wars/)This most recent downturn , however, seems to have come and (sort of) gone without countries entirely walling themselves in . At least, that's what it looks like to the World Bank, which has been tracking temporary trade barriers since 2004 and finds today that the percentage of goods covered by import restrictions decreased in 2013 after a small recessionary bump. Now, there is a line in there that increased more than others: developing economies, most notably India and Turkey. There's a reason for that increase. Not long ago, emerging nations more often had permanent high tariffs, so they didn't need to layer on additional restrictions, such as anti-dumping duties (which the World Trade Organization allows, as long as it can be proven the target of the measure has been selling goods at below the market price in its own country). Over the past few decades, though, international pressure toward liberalization has prompted them to open up dramatically, which means there's more room to clamp back down when they feel their native industries are threatened. Developed nations , though, have pretty much kicked the protectionist habit. Though the number of trade investigations did rise through the recession -- they're usually initiated in response to complaints from businesses and labor groups -- they didn't get nearly as high as in previous recessions . Here's just the United States, over the past 30 years: So, why did the United States appear to be less aggressive about protecting itself in the face of the latest economic meltdown? It's learned from experience. "We designed the current system in response to what happened in the 1930s," says Chad Bown, a World Bank economist who maintains the database of temporary trade barriers. For one thing, the United States is able to target products more specifically rather than entire sectors. "That helps blow off some political steam and not have overall increases in protection," Bown says.

__** TPP Bad—Environment/Food Safety/Pharma

2AC Environment

TPP CRUSHES the environment and results in overfishing *uniquely worse than previous trade pacts Howard 14 (Brian Clark, “4 Ways Green Groups Say Trans-Pacific Partnership Will Hurt Environment,” Jan 17, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140117-trans-pacific-partnership-free-trade-environment-obama/)

A leaked draft of a major free trade agreement among the United States, Canada, Mexico, and nations on the Pacific Rim raises alarming questions about environmental protections, several leading green groups say. "If the environment chapter is finalized as written in this leaked document, President Obama's environmental trade record would be worse than George W. Bush's," Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement after a draft of

the agreement was published Wednesday on WikiLeaks. "This draft chapter falls flat on every single one of our issue s—

oceans, fish, wildlife, and forest protections—and in fact, rolls back on the progress made in past free trade pacts," he said. The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is a huge pact that would govern about 40 percent of the world's gross domestic product and one-third of world trade, said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The agreement involves a sprawling cast of countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. The NRDC joined with the Sierra Club and WWF in criticizing the leaked draft of the environment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange said proved the chapter was "a toothless public relations exercise with no enforcement mechanism." The White House has pushed back against such criticisms. In a blog post responding to the leak this week, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) wrote that "stewardship is a core American value, and we will insist on a robust, fully enforceable environment chapter in the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) or we will not come to agreement." Here are four grievances voiced by environmental groups over the leaked chapter: 1. They say the pact lacks basic environmental provisions. This is all about what's not in the proposed pact. The NRDC's Schmidt says that environmental groups are asking for "some pretty basic environmental provisions. "We're saying don't subsidize unsustainable fisheries and don't do illegal things," he said. Environmentalists say that the Obama White House has hinted that it will not support an agreement without enforceable environmental provisions, in recent remarks by some of the administration's key environmental players. But the "overarching" problem with the leaked draft, Schmidt says, is that

"there's no enforcement ." The leaked document mentions that trade partners should take steps to protect the environment, but

Schmidt says that "there are many caveats that effectively allow countries to not make these enforceable. "References to the word 'shall' are very rarely used," he says, "and are often paired with 'seek to' or 'attempt,' which are not legally

enforceable." 2. Green groups say the draft agreement does not discourage overfishing. The nations considering the T rans- P acific

P artnership have a "responsibility" to provide adequate protection against overfishing, but the draft agreement fails to provide that, said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF. The countries negotiating the agreement account for about a third of global fisheries production, Roberts notes, so the stakes are high. Those countries have a range of direct and indirect subsidies for their fishing fleets, including payments, discounted loans, reduced prices on fuel, and so on. "What we have been pushing for is for countries to phase out harmful subsidies ... that lead to greater harvest of fishing stocks than can be sustained," said Schmidt. "We're not saying end all fishing programs and support, but you need to make sure that any support is targeted at programs that don't lead to overconsumption of fish stocks." For its part, the U.S. Trade Representative's office responded that the U.S. is "proposing that the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] include, for the first time in any trade or environment agreement, groundbreaking prohibitions on fish subsidies that set a new and higher baseline for fisheries protections." 3. The pact does not take a strong enough stance against illegal wildlife products, activists say. Green groups would like to see stronger enforcement of international laws on products made from endangered species , such as elephant ivory or tiger pelts, as part of a new trade agreement. "The lack of fully-enforceable environmental safeguards means negotiators are allowing a unique opportunity to protect wildlife and support legal sustainable trade of renewable resources to slip through their fingers," WWF's Roberts said in a statement.

Biodiversity solves extinction – food crises and genetic irreplaceability Mittermeier 11(et al, Dr. Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist. He holds Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological Anthropology and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has conducted fieldwork for over 30 years on three continents and in more than 20 countries in mainly tropical locations. He is the

President of Conservation International and he is considered an expert on biological diversity. Mittermeier has formally discovered several monkey species. From Chapter One of the book

Biodiversity Hotspots – F.E. Zachos and J.C. Habel (eds.), DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_1, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011. This evidence also internally references Norman Myers, a very famous British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity. available at: http://www.academia.edu/1536096/Global_biodiversity_conservation_the_critical_role_of_hotspots)

Extinction is the gravest consequence of the biodiversity crisis , since it is ¶ irreversible. Human activities have elevate d the rate of species extinctions to a ¶ thousand or more times the natural background

rate (Pimm et al. 1995). What are the¶ consequences of this loss? Most obvious among them may be the lost opportunity¶ for future resource use. Scientists have discovered a mere

fraction of Earth’s species¶ (perhaps fewer than 10%, or even 1%) and understood the biology of even fewer¶ (Novotny et al. 2002). As species vanish, so too does the health security of every ¶ human . Earth’s species are a vast genetic storehouse that may harbor a cure for¶ cancer, malaria, or

the next new pathogen – cures waiting to be discovered.¶ Compounds initially derived from wild species account for more than half of all¶ commercial medicines – even more in developing nations (Chivian and Bernstein¶ 2008). Natural forms, processes, and ecosystems provide blueprints and inspiration¶ for a growing array of new materials, energy sources, hi-tech devices, and¶ other innovations (Benyus 2009). The current loss of species has been compared¶ to burning down the world’s libraries without knowing the content of 90% or¶ more of

the books. With loss of species, we lose the ultimate source of our crops¶ and the genes we use to improve agricultural resilience, the inspiration for¶ manufactured products, and the basis of the structure and function of the ecosystems¶ that support humans and all life on Earth (McNeely et al. 2009). Above and beyond¶ material welfare and livelihoods, biodiversity contributes to security, resiliency,¶ and freedom

of choices and actions (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).¶ Less tangible, but no less important, are the cultural, spiritual, and moral costs¶ inflicted by species extinctions. All societies value species for their own sake,¶ and wild plants and animals are integral to the fabric of all the world’s cultures¶ (Wilson 1984). The road to extinction is made even more perilous to people by the loss of the broader ecosystems that underpin our livelihoods, communities, and economies(McNeely et al.2009). The loss of coastal wetlands and mangrove forests, for example, greatly exacerbates both human mortality and economic damage from tropical cyclones (Costanza et al.2008; Das and Vincent2009), while disease outbreaks such as the 2003 emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in East Asia have been directly connected to trade in wildlife for human consumption(Guan et al.2003). Other consequences of biodiversity loss, more subtle but equally damaging, include the deterioration of Earth’s natural capital. Loss of biodiversity on land in the past decade alone is estimated to be costing the global economy $500 billion annually (TEEB2009). Reduced diversity may also reduce resilience of ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them. For example, more diverse coral reef communities have been found to suffer less from the diseases that plague degraded reefs elsewhere (Raymundo et al.2009). As Earth’s climate changes, the roles of species and ecosystems will only increase in their importance to humanity (Turner et al.2009).¶ In many respects, conservation is local. People generally care more about the biodiversity in the place in which they live. They also depend upon these ecosystems the most – and, broadly speaking, it is these areas over which they have the most control. Furthermore, we believe that all biodiversity is important and that every nation,

every region, and every community should do everything possible to conserve their living resources. So, what is the importance of setting global priorities? Extinction is a global phenomenon, with impacts far beyond nearby administrative borders . More practically, biodiversity, the threats to it, and the ability of countries to pay for its conservation vary around the world. The vast majority of the global conservation budget – perhaps 90% – originates in and is spent in economically wealthy countries (James et al.1999). It is thus critical that those globally flexible funds available – in the hundreds of millions annually – be guided by systematic priorities if we are to move deliberately toward a global goal of reducing biodiversity loss.¶ The establishment of priorities for biodiversity conservation is complex, but can be framed as a single question. Given the

choice, where should action toward reducing the loss of biodiversity be implemented first ? The field of conservation planning

addresses this question and revolves around a framework of vulnerability and irreplaceability (Margules and Pressey2000). Vulnerability measures the risk to the species present in a region – if the species and ecosystems that are highly threatened are not protected now, we will not get another chance in the future. Irreplaceability measures the extent to which spatial substitutes exist for securing biodiversity. The number of species alone is an inadequate indication of conserva-tion priority because several areas can share the same species. In contrast, areas with high levels of endemism are irreplaceable. We must conserve these places because the unique species they contain cannot be saved elsewhere. Put another way, biodiversity is not evenly distributed on our planet. It is heavily concentrated in certain areas, these areas have exceptionally high concentrations of endemic species found nowhere else, and many (but not all) of these areas are the areas at greatest risk of disappearing because of heavy human impact.¶ Myers’ seminal paper (Myers1988)

was the first application of the principles of irreplaceability and vulnerability to guide conservation planning on a global scale. Myers described ten tropical forest

“hotspots ” on the basis of extraordinary plant endemism and high levels of habitat loss, albeit without quantitative criteria for the designation of “hotspot” status. A subsequent analysis added eight additional hotspots, including four from Mediterranean-type ecosystems (Myers 1990).After adopting hotspots as an institutional blueprint in 1989, Conservation Interna-tional worked with Myers in a first systematic update of the hotspots. It introduced two strict quantitative criteria: to qualify as a hotspot, a region had to contain at least 1,500 vascular plants as endemics (¶ >¶ 0.5% of the world’s total), and it had to have 30% or less of its original vegetation (extent of historical habitat

cover)remaining. These efforts culminated in an extensive global review (Mittermeier et al.1999) and scientific publication (Myers et al.2000) that introduced seven new hotspots on the basis of both the better-defined criteria and new data. A second systematic update (Mittermeier et al.2004) did not change the criteria, but revisited the set of hotspots based on new data on the distribution of species and threats, as well as genuine changes in the threat status of these regions. That update redefined several hotspots, such as the Eastern Afromontane region, and added several others that were suspected hotspots but for which sufficient data either did not exist or were not accessible to conservation scientists outside of those regions. Sadly, it uncovered another region – the East Melanesian Islands – which rapid habitat destruction had in a short period of time transformed from a biodiverse region that failed to meet the “less than 30% of original vegetation remaining” criterion to a genuine hotspot.

Overfishing tooJackson et al, Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, ’1 (Jeremy, July 27, “Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal Ecosystems” Science, Vol 293 No 5530, p 629-637)Ecological extinction caused by overfishing precedes all other pervasive human disturbance to coastal ecosystems, including pollution, degradation of water quality, and anthropogenic climate change . Historical abundances of large consumer species were fantastically large in comparison with recent observations. Paleoecological, archaeological, and historical data show that time lags of decades to centuries occurred between the onset of overfishing and consequent changes in ecological

communities , because unfished species of similar trophic level assumed the ecological roles of overfished species until they too were overfished or died of epidemic diseases related to overcrowding . Retrospective data not only help to clarify underlying causes and rates of ecological change, but they also demonstrate achievable goals for restoration and management of coastal ecosystems that could not even be contemplated based on the limited perspective of recent observations alone.

1AR Environment—Link

TPP risks “environmental disaster” – it’s unique and Asia’s a key region Solomon 14 (Ilana, Director of the Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Program, “Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership an environmental disaster waiting to happen?,” May 12, http://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/trans-pacific-partnership-environmental-disaster-waiting-happen.html)

President Obama's environmental trade legacy is in deep trouble and in large part will hinge on a trade deal that his administration is discussing in Vietnam the week of May 12. This trade deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) - essentially an expansion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - stands to erode our laws, further empower multinational corporations, and take away protections for our air, water, and climate. If agreed upon by the 12 negotiating countries, including the U.S., Japan, and Vietnam, the TPP could spell out environmental disaster . We know all of this no thanks to the trade negotiators themselves - they're keeping these discussions close to the vest - but because we’ve studied the costs of NAFTA and other similar trade pacts on the environment, and because of WikiLeaks, which has published three chapters of the pact. Most recently, WikiLeaks revealed a draft of the trade pact's chapter devoted to the environment. It was clear from my first reading of this draft text that we were in trouble. The leaked text revealed weak suggestions for environmental protection instead of binding obligations. Since a May 2007 bipartisan consensus on trade by the Bush administration and Congress, the environment chapters of all U.S. free trade agreements have at least been legally enforceable. Not this one - at least not yet. This text fell flat, ignoring existing environmental treaties and enforceability. The Pacific Rim is an area of rich biodiversity that must be preserved. But the natural resources in the region, such as the forests, wildlife, and fish, are threatened by illegal and unsustainable commercial exploitation. Already, the Asia-Pacific region accounts for about one-third of all the threatened species in the world. Populations of several species of oceanic sharks, including reef sharks, are declining rapidly. And illegal logging is a serious problem in many TPP countries, destroying not only natural forests but the communities who live in and rely on the forests. With so many conservation challenges in the Pacific Rim, a trade deal in this region must include strong and binding rules to avoid more environmental destruction. But the leaked chapter was completely unenforceable and did not include provisions that would, for example, ban shark finning or ban trade in illegally harvested timber, wildlife, and fish. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative seems to be pushing for a stronger chapter, but all of the other countries - including Vietnam - seem to oppose strong and binding provisions to protect our trees, fish, and wildlife. As U.S. trade representatives head to Vietnam, they must not make any compromises on the environment chapter -- there's too much at risk . The TPP environment chapter must include strong, binding language including the elimination of harmful subsidies that lead to overfishing; a ban on shark finning and commercial whaling; and ban on trade in illegally taken timber, fish and wildlife.

TPP crushes the economy and environment Scott Banbury, “U.S. Trade Policy Is on Course for Disaster,” THE TENNESSEAN, 12—26—13, www.tennessean.com/article/20131227/OPINION03/312270025/U-S-trade-policy-course-disaster, accessed 12-30-13.

The agreement is being developed behind closed doors with little public input. None of the texts are available, with the exception of those recently released by WikiLeaks. The only people with access, apart from trade officials, are the more than 600 business representatives who serve as official U.S. trade advisers. Even members of Congress are left in the dark on the actual contents of the agreement. According to leaked texts, the Trans-Pacific Partnership poses a major threat to our environmental , consumer and public health laws. It would extend patent rights, keeping pharmaceutical prices high, and undermine efforts to re-regulate the unsound financial practices that led to the 2008 stock market crash . The agreement would outlaw “buy American” procurement policies, and encourage offshoring of millions of U.S. jobs through foreign investment privileges and benefits. The chapter on investment would allow foreign corporations to sue governments directly — for unlimited cash compensation — over almost any domestic environmental or other law that the corporation believes is hurting its ability to profit. These so-called “investor-state cases” are heard in private and nontransparent tribunals without public participation.

TPP harms the environment Page, May 15, 2015 (Samantha, a climate reporter for ThinkProgress. Previously, she launched a hyperlocal Patch site in Los

Angeles, and reported for the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, and GlobalPost. She has also

worked for the solar industry’s trade association as a press officer. She attended Carleton College and the Annenberg School for

Journalism at the University of Southern California. “The TPP Could Have Disastourous Results for the Climate, Environmental

Groups Warn” 7/14, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/15/3658901/the-tpp-could-be-bad-for-the-climate/)

A wide-reaching trade agreement between the United States and several Asian nations could have catastrophic repercussions for climate change, including giving corporations the power to sue governments that try to limit polluting industries, environmental groups say.

In order to avoid dangerous climate change, scientists estimate that 80 percent of the world’s fossil fuels need to remain in the ground . But coal, natural gas, and oil left in the ground means profits left on the table for fossil fuel companies. And under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), corporations will likely be able to sue governments that interfere with their business — even if

it’s by enacting carbon reduction goals and passing environmental legislation. “Creating a corporate bill of rights to protect investors is

incredibly undermining to our ability to protect the environment,” Ben Schreiber, the climate and energy program director for Friends of the

Earth, told ThinkProgress. P revious trade deals have, in fact, led to lawsuits over fossil fuels . An American mining company, Lone Pine Resources, sued the Canadian province of Quebec in 2013 for passing a ban on fracking . The company says the ban cost them $250 million and that under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Quebec is liable for the lost revenue. That lawsuit is ongoing. In another lawsuit, Chevron alleged that Ecuadorian activists had defrauded the

company, after it was ordered to pay $18.2 billion in damages for environmental contamination. Stories like those have not allayed

environmentalists’ concerns, and neither has the Obama administration’s approach to the negotiations over the TPP. The administration has

been criticized for a lack of transparency — specific details of the TPP remain largely unknown, even to members of Congress, although

WikiLeaks has published some chapters, including one dealing with environmental regulations.

The Senate voted Tuesday against fast-tracking the deal, which would have allowed the administration to present the TPP to Congress as a

straight up and down vote. Politics make strange bedfellows. Earlier this week, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace released a television

ad rebuking longtime environmental ally Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) for his vote in favor of fast-tracking the TPP. And the issue has split both

parties. House and Senate leadership has mostly endorsed fast-tracking the deal, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-

MA) have come down firmly against it. “When you have Exxon, President Obama, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and John Boehner on one

side,” Schreiber said, “that’s a signal that the president is in the wrong place.” Ironically, the Obama administration has been one of the most

active ever in combatting climate change. The proposed Clean Power Plan, for example, would limit emissions from power plants and is

considered a key component of Obama’s final years in office. “[The TPP] just contradicts the president’s climate policy,” Bill Waren, a trade analyst with Friends of the Earth, told ThinkProgress. “One hand takes

away from the other.” And the threat of corporate litigation is not the only climate-related concern the TPP — along with the other massive

trade deal being proposed, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would be between the U.S. and European Union

— raises, Waren said. As the United States cuts down on its coal use, coal producers are looking for new markets. The TPP would likely encourage more coal mining in the United States, and new coal ports on the west coast. There are currently export bans on both crude oil and gas from the United States, but with those bans lifted on exports to Asia and Europe, fracking would likely increase across the country . The trade agreements would “provide huge market incentives for additional coal

mining, oil drilling, mining of tar sands oil, and extraction of natural gas for LNG,” Waren said.

Waren also outlined a number of other environmental concerns the TPP and TTIP raise, such as limits on food labels, lessened restriction on chemical companies, restrictions on green procurement policies, and “ bio-piracy .” Already, opponents to the trade agreements say they have seen an impact from the proposed

agreements. Some say the European Union changed its proposed fuel directive due to pressure from Canada and the United States.

Canada reportedly has tried to convince the EU to treat oil from tar sands no differently than conventional oil, despite the differences

in carbon emissions. And others claim the EU amended proposed biofuel regulations get rid of language that included land use

considerations, largely because of pressure from the United States. Still, some trade experts disagree with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth,

the Natural Resources Defense Council, and other environmentalists who have come out against the TPP. “Any sort of general purpose

environmental law or regulation that a government wants to enact will not be successfully litigated,” Josh Meltzer, a global development fellow

at the Brookings Institute, told ThinkProgress. He said the laws that end up being challenged are usually protective in nature — or just poorly

designed — and that the TPP specifically says that a government cannot reduce its environmental regulations in order to attract business. “The

TPP really, in so many different ways, is trying to take a step forward in building commitments and rules,” Meltzer said. “[It] is going to have

rules, for instance, that try to get at over-fishing, which we don’t have anywhere.” The TPP is likely to be passed by Congress, so we’ll soon find

out what its global business and climate change ramifications are. While tens of thousands of Europeans have protested the EU-United States

deal, the TPP has not attracted the same vitriol in the United States. The Senate, just two days after its last vote on the issue, put the fast-track

option back on the table Thursday. If the TPP goes to Congress as an up-and-down vote, it is expected to pass.

The environment chapter of the TPP will not go far enoughSolomon, May 15, 2015 (Ilana, director of the Sierra Club Responsible Trade Program. “Far From a ‘Progressive’ Trade Deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Harm Our Environment”, 7/14, http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2015/05/far-progressive-trade-deal-trans-pacific-partnership-would-harm-our-environment) Proponents of the TPP often talk about the benefits of the pact based exclusively on the environment chapter. However, as House Ways and Means Ranking Democrat Sandy Levin (D-MI) recently wrote, while the environment chapter will cover a broad range of issues, including shark

finning and illegal timber trade, the obligations—what countries are actually required to do—are often weak. For example, rather than prohibiting commercial whaling and shark fin trade--major issues in TPP countries like Japan and Singapore --the TPP is likely to include vague and toothless language that stops far short of requiring countries to stop these harmful practices. The deal will also likely fall short of prohibiting trade in illegally taken timber and wildlife and will not even mention the words “climate change.”

The environment chapter is unlikely to be enforced.Solomon, May 15, 2015 (Ilana, director of the Sierra Club Responsible Trade Program. “Far From a ‘Progressive’ Trade Deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Harm Our Environment”, 7/14, http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2015/05/far-progressive-trade-deal-trans-pacific-partnership-would-harm-our-environment) Here is another reason to be skeptical that the environment chapter will lead to any meaningful protection of land, air, water, and wildlife. The United States Trade Representative (USTR) has never once brought a trade dispute against another country for failing to live up to its environmental obligations in trade deals, even when there is documented evidence of non-compliance with environmental safeguards. Let’s take Peru, for example. The United States-Peru free trade deal included a section aimed at stopping the illegal timber trade between Peru and the United States. Think it has worked? Think again. Here’s the story. In April 2012, the Environmental Investigation Agency published a multi-year investigative report which documented that at least 112 illegal shipments of cedar and mahogany wood – laundered with fabricated papers and approved by the Peruvian government – arrived in the US between 2008 and 2010.As EIA noted, these shipments alone accounted for over 35 percent of all trade in these protected species between the U.S. and Peru. Just days after the report was released, EIA formally petitioned the USTR to take action under the U.S.-Peru trade deal and investigate and verify the legal origin of shipments from at least two Peruvian companies and to audit dozens more. The Sierra Club and other environmental, labor, and industry partners sent a letter to the USTR joining the call for action. The result? Not much of anything. The USTR never used the tools available in the trade pact to hold Peru accountable for violating the agreement. Instead, it put together a five-point action plan which simply reiterated obligations that Peru undertook in the trade deal—obligations which Peru consistently failed to implement. In other words, Peru’s punishment for violating the trade deal was having the deal they signed read back to them. That’s not even a slap on the wrists -- it’s a whisper in the ear. To date, no one has been held accountable for these violations of the U.S.-Peru trade deal and no enforcement action has been taken. As a result, illegal logging and associated trade continues to threaten communities and our environment. As the New York Times reported in late 2013, “But large quantities of timber, including increasingly rare types like mahogany, continue to flow out [of Peru], much of it ultimately heading to the United States for products like hardwood flooring and decking sold by American retailers.” So the story here is clear. Having obligations on paper is one thing, but without enforcement, those obligations are meaningless. It’s hard to believe the proponents of the TPP who say the deal will raise up environmental standards if even the clearest of violations of environmental rules in past trade deals continue to go unpunished.

New Rights to Big Polluters, More Fossil Fuel Exports Solomon, May 15, 2015 (Ilana, director of the Sierra Club Responsible Trade Program. “Far From a ‘Progressive’ Trade Deal, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Harm Our Environment”, 7/14, http://www.sierraclub.org/compass/2015/05/far-progressive-trade-deal-trans-pacific-partnership-would-harm-our-environment)

Here is the last key point. Any potential benefits of the environment chapter would be overwhelmed by other dangerous provisions of the deal. For example, corporations including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Occidental have used rules in the investment chapters of trade pacts and bilateral investment treaties to bring more than 600 investor-state cases against nearly 100 governments . More and more, these cases are directly challenging policies designed to protect our air, water, and climate including Quebec, a and new coal-fired power plant standards in Germany, and requirement for a pollution clean-up in Peru. And corporations are winning. In March 2015, a NAFTA tribunal found that Canada violated NAFTA’s investment rules because of an environmental impact assessment that led Canada to reject a U.S. company’s controversial mining project from moving forward in an important cultural and ecological area in Nova Scotia. The TPP would expand this harmful system of corporate privilege, offering broad new rights to thousands of corporations, including major polluters, when we should be reigning in the power of the fossil fuel industry to combat the climate crisis. JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation from Japan and BHP Billiton Limited from Australia, both with significant investments in coal, oil, and gas in the United States, are just two of the 9,000 subsidiaries of companies that would be newly empowered to challenge U.S. climate and energy policies as a result of the TPP. (And, more than 19,000 subsidiaries based in the United States would be newly empowered to challenge the laws and policies of the other 11 countries in the pact.) And there’s more. The TPP would also require the U.S. Department of Energy to automatically approve exports of liquefied natural gas to countries in the agreement which includes Japan, the world’s biggest natural gas importer. The TPP, therefore, would pave the way to more natural gas exports, more fracking, and more climate-disrupting emissions. Does this sound like a progressive trade

deal? Hardly. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is shaping up to be all risk and no reward for our families, our economy, and our planet. It’s time to create a new model of trade that puts communities and the environment above corporate profits.

TPP Causes Illness Opar, May 20, 2015 (Alisa, Earthwire's Western correspondent. She is also the articles editor at Audubon magazine, and has written for many publications about science and the environment. “5 Ways the Trans-Pacific Partnership Could Ruin the Environment”, 7/14, http://www.alternet.org/environment/5-ways-trans-pacific-partnership-could-ruin-environment)

With increased fossil-fuel development comes more water and air pollution. Fracking, for instance, has been shown to aquifer sand drinking water . Adding insult to injury, considering the four-year drought gripping the West, the

drilling method is also a water-intensive process. Fracking sullies the air, too; one of the by-products released, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, has been linked. Coal production comes with its own set of toxic consequences , including degraded waterways, habitat fragmentation, and health risks like pulmonary disease. And, of course, whatever fossil fuels we pull out of the ground will contribute to global carbon emissions (and that ginormous climate change problem whose effects we’re already).

TPP Bad for EnvironmentSamantha Page, 5-15-2015, "The TPP Could Have Disastrous Results For The Climate, Environmental Groups Warn," ThinkProgress, http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/15/3658901/the-tpp-could-be-bad-for-the-climate/A wide-reaching trade agreement between the U nited S tates and several Asian nations could have catastrophic repercussions for climate change, including giving corporations the power to sue governments that try to limit polluting industries, environmental groups say . In order to avoid

dangerous climate change, scientists estimate that 80 percent of the world’s fossil fuels need to remain in the ground . But coal, natural gas, and oil left in the ground means profits left on the table for fossil fuel companies . And under the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP ), corporations will likely be able to sue governments that interfere with their business — even if it’s by enacting carbon reduction goals and passing environmental legislation. “Creating a corporate bill of rights to protect investors is incredibly undermining to our ability to protect the environment,” Ben Schreiber, the climate and energy program director for Friends of the Earth, told ThinkProgress. Previous trade deals have, in fact, led to lawsuits over fossil fuels. An American mining company, Lone Pine Resources, sued the Canadian province of Quebec in 2013 for passing a ban on fracking. The company says the ban cost them $250 million and that under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Quebec is liable for the lost revenue. That lawsuit is ongoing. In another lawsuit, Chevron alleged that Ecuadorian activists had defrauded the company, after it was ordered to pay $18.2 billion in damages for environmental contamination. Stories like those have not allayed environmentalists’ concerns, and neither has the Obama administration’s approach to the negotiations over the TPP. The administration has been criticized for a lack of transparency — specific details of the TPP remain largely unknown, even to members of Congress, although WikiLeaks has published some chapters, including one dealing with environmental regulations. The Senate voted Tuesday against fast-tracking the deal, which would have allowed the administration to present the TPP to Congress as a straight up and down vote. Politics make strange bedfellows. Earlier this week, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace released a television ad rebuking longtime environmental ally Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) for his vote in favor of fast-tracking the TPP. And the issue has split both parties. House and Senate leadership has mostly endorsed fast-tracking the deal, while Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have come down firmly against it. “When you have Exxon, President Obama, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and John Boehner on one side,” Schreiber said, “that’s a signal that the president is in the wrong place.” Ironically, the Obama administration has been one of the most active ever in combatting climate change. The proposed Clean Power Plan, for example, would limit emissions from power plants and is considered a key component of Obama’s final years in office. “[The TPP] just contradicts the president’s climate policy,” Bill Waren, a trade analyst with Friends of the Earth, told ThinkProgress. “One hand takes away from the other.” And the threat of corporate litigation is not the only climate-related concern the TPP — along with the other massive trade deal being proposed, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would be between the U.S. and European Union — raises, Waren said. As the United States cuts down on its coal use, coal producers are looking for new markets. The TPP would likely encourage more coal mining in the United States, and new coal ports on the west coast . There are currently export bans on both crude oil and gas from the United States, but with those bans lifted on exports to Asia and Europe, fracking would likely increase across the country. The trade agreements would “provide huge market incentives for additional coal mining, oil drilling, mining of tar sands oil, and extraction of natural gas for LNG , ” Waren said. Waren also outlined a number of other environmental concerns the TPP and TTIP raise, such as limits on food labels, lessened restriction on chemical companies, restrictions on green procurement policies, and “bio-piracy.” Already, opponents to the trade agreements say they have seen an impact from the proposed agreements. Some say the E uropean U nion changed its proposed fuel directive due to pressure from Canada and the United States . Canada reportedly has tried to convince the EU to treat oil from tar sands no differently than conventional oil, despite the differences in carbon emissions. And others claim the EU amended proposed biofuel regulations get rid of language that included land use considerations, largely because of pressure from the United States. Still, some trade experts disagree with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and other environmentalists who have come out against the TPP. “Any sort of general purpose environmental law or regulation that a government wants to enact will not be successfully litigated,” Josh Meltzer, a global development fellow at the Brookings

Institute, told ThinkProgress. He said the laws that end up being challenged are usually protective in nature — or just poorly designed — and that the TPP specifically says that a government cannot reduce its environmental regulations in order to attract business. “The TPP really, in so many different ways, is trying to take a step forward in building commitments and rules,” Meltzer said. “[It] is going to have rules, for instance, that try to get at over-fishing, which we don’t have anywhere.” The TPP is likely to be passed by Congress, so we’ll soon find out what its global business and climate change ramifications are. While tens of thousands of Europeans have protested the EU-United States deal, the TPP has not attracted the same vitriol in the United States. The Senate, just two days after its last vote on the issue, put the fast-track option back on the table Thursday. If the TPP goes to Congress as an up-and-down vote, it is expected to pass

2AC Food Safety

TPP mandates international tribunals – causes mass de-regulation of food safety and the environment Reich 15 (Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, “Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a pending disaster,” 1-6, http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-why-the-transpacific-partnership-is-a-pending-disaster-20150106-story.html)

The TPP also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation's legal system, who can order compensation for any " unjust expropriation " of foreign assets . Even better for global companies, the tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation's regulations. Philip Morris is using a similar provision against Uruguay (the provision appears in a bilateral trade treaty between Uruguayand Switzerland), claiming that Uruguay's strong anti-smoking regulations unfairly diminish the company's profits. Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans, take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits -- say , a regulation protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods , investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of

Wall Street, or the environment from toxic emissions .

Crushes global supply chains Agiwal 8 (Swati, Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, “Risk mitigating strategies in the food supply chain,” April, http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/6248/2/469380.pdf, CMR)

Food safety is a credence 2 characterisitc and hence the credibility of the food product needs to be established by some forms of food safety po licies, if the market fails to provide su ffi cient information about this attribute (Cho and Hooker, 2002). While there are some mandated safety and security practices for the fi rms in the food supply chain the issue of economic incentives for the fi rms to actively address food safety throughout the supp ly chain is unclear. These practices often require signi fi cant investments in capital 3 and labor 4 too, but do not have tangible returns. It is di ffi cult to estimate the value of preventing a safety inciden t. However, a risk that is realized can potentially

bankrupt the firm 5 . Some high-pro fi le cases of food safety outbreaks have had substantial economic consequences such as, lost

sales, recall and compe nsation costs, damaged goo dwill and hence impact on future business. Although such incidents can lead the fi rms

out of business, the impact is not contained just at the fi rm level but also felt throughout the food supply chain .

Supply chains are often faced with various risks of supply disruptions and uncertain demand conditions, these food safety events and

security events arising from eithe r intentional or unintentional events pose risks that are above and beyond the common operational and

market risks, bringing the overall level of risk to unprecedented new levels . There is a greater emph asis in highlighting the role of product safety, especially in the food industry, given the recent spate of several high pro fi le food safety incidents (such as recalls for ground beef, pet food, green onions and spinach scare, etc.) and decreasing consumer con fi dence in food supply (Degene ff e et al., 2007).As a result, a supply chain manager’s "best practice" model today is to strive to achieve not only a fully integrated and e ffi cient supply chain, capable of creating and sustaining competitive advantage (Christopher and Towill, 2002), but also one with su ffi cient fl exibility and redundancy to enable the fi rm to respond to extreme events (She ffi 2005). Natural calamities, port lock-outs, labor disputes, terrorist events, major recalls, outbreaks and epidemics are examples of such intentional and unintentional events that lie beyond market uncertainties and could cripple

not just firms but entire supply chains . There is a strong argument for building robust and fl exible systems that e ff ectively handle contamination incidents and increase the buoyance of the fi rm in the wake of an event (She ffi , 2005).

Nuclear war Future Directions International ’12 (“International Conflict Triggers and Potential Conflict Points Resulting from Food and Water Insecurity Global Food and Water Crises Research Programme”, May 25, http://www.futuredirections.org.au/files/Workshop_Report_-_Intl_Conflict_Triggers_-_May_25.pdf, CMR)

This view is also shared by Julian Cribb, who in his book, The Coming Famine, writes that if “large regions of the world run short of food, land or water in the decades that lie ahead, then wholesale, bloody wars are liable to follow .” He continues: “An

increasingly credible scenario for World War 3 is not so much a confrontation of super powers and their allies,

as a festering, self-perpetuating chain of resource conflicts.” He also says: “The wars of the 21st Century are less likely to be global conflicts with sharply defined sides and huge armies , than a scrappy mass of failed states, rebellions, civil strife, insurgencies, terrorism and genocides, sparked by bloody competition over dwindling resources .” As another workshop participant put it, people do not go to war to kill; they go to war over resources , either to protect or to gain the resources for themselves. Another observed that hunger results in passivity not conflict.

Conflict is over resources, not because people are going hungry. A study by the International Peace Research Institute indicates that where

food security is an issue, it is more likely to result in some form of conflict . Darfur, Rwanda, Eritrea and the Balkans

experienced such wars. Governments, especially in developed countries, are increasingly aware of this phenomenon. The UK Ministry of Defence, the CIA, the US Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Oslo Peace Research Institute, all identify famine as a potential trigger for conflicts and possibly even nuclear war .

1AR Food Safety—Link

TPP waters down food safety standards Frankel 6/18 (Judy, Founder and CEO, Writeindependent.org, “What Is the Trans Pacific Partnership?,” 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-frankel/what-is-the-trans-pacific_b_7594950.html, CMR)

1. Food Safety - According to the TPP, transnational companies can sue our states or federal government if our food safety laws stand in the way of expected future profits. Instead, lax international food standards will apply, making GMO labeling a thing of the past, even if we win labeling laws against the wishes of the giant seed and chemical companies. Currently, our laws mandate evaluating such things as pesticide levels, bacterial contamination, fecal exposure, toxic additives, and non-edible fillers. A company that proves our safety regulations to be a barrier to profits can sue our government, then only the tribunal has to decide between keeping our food safe or allowing the multinational company to sell tainted food.

2AC Pharma Turn

Low protectionism now means TPA won’t change tariffs enough to impact trade- passage guts the US economy and locks in big pharma, killing generic salesReich 1/6/15 (Robert-, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley) “Why the Trans-Pacific partnership agreement is a pending disaster” http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax-VOX/2015/0106/Why-the-Trans-Pacific-partnership-agreement-is-a-pending-disaster Republicans who now run Congress say they want to cooperate with President Obama, and point to the administration’s Trans-Pacific

Partnership, or TPP, as the model. The only problem is the TPP would be a disaster . If you haven’t heard much about the TPP, that’s

part of the problem right there. It would be the largest trade deal in history — involving countries stretching from Chile to

Japan, representing 792 million people and accounting for 40 percent of the world economy – yet it’s been devised in secret. Lobbyists from America’s biggest corporations and Wall Street’s biggest banks have been involved but not the American public. That’s a recipe for fatter profits and bigger paychecks at the top, but not a good deal for most of us, or even for most of the rest of the world. First some background. We used to think about trade policy as a choice between “free trade” and “protectionism.” Free trade meant opening our borders to products made elsewhere. Protectionism meant putting up tariffs and quotas to keep them out. In the decades after World War II, America chose free trade. The idea was that each country would specialize in goods it produced best and at least cost. That way, living standards would rise here and abroad. New jobs would be created to take the place of jobs that were lost. And communism would be contained. For three decades, free trade worked. It was a win-win-win. But in more recent decades the choice has become far more

complicated and the payoff from trade agreements more skewed to those at the top. Tariffs are already low . Negotiations now involve such things as i ntellectual p roperty, financial reg ulations, labor laws , and rules for health, safety, and the environment . It’s no longer free trade versus protectionism .

Big corporations and Wall Street want some of both. They want more international protection when it comes to their i ntellectual p roperty and other assets. So they’ve been seeking trade rules that secure and extend their patents, trademarks, and copyrights abroad, and protect their global franchise agreements, securities, and loans. But they want less protection of consumers, workers, small investors, and the environment, because these interfere with their profits . So they’ve been seeking trade rules that allow them to override

these protections. Not surprisingly for a deal that’s been drafted mostly by corporate and Wall Street lobbyists, the TPP provides exactly this mix . What’s been leaked about it so far reveals, for example, that the pharma ceutical industry gets stronger patent protections , delaying cheap er generic versions of drugs . That will be a good deal for Big Pharma but not necessarily for the inhabitants of developing nations who won’t get certain life-saving drugs at a cost they can

afford. The TPP also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any

nation’s legal system, who can order compensation for any “unjust expropriation” of foreign assets. Even better for global companies, the tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation’s regulations. Philip Morris is using a similar provision against Uruguay (the provision appears in a bilateral trade treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland), claiming that Uruguay’s strong anti-smoking regulations unfairly diminish the company’s profits. Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits – say, a regulation protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods, investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of Wall Street, or the environment from toxic emissions. The administration says the trade deal will boost U.S. exports in the fast-growing Pacific basin where the United States faces

growing economic competition from China. The TPP is part of Obama’s strategy to contain China’s economic and strategic prowess. Fine. But the deal will also allow American corporations to outsource even more jobs abroad. In other words, the TPP is a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom , giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits. At a time when corporate profits are at record highs and the real median wage is lower than it’s been in four decades, most Americans need protection – not from international trade but from the political power of large corporations and Wall Street. The Trans Pacific Partnership is the wrong remedy to the wrong problem. Any way you look at it, it’s just plain wrong.

Collapsing patent revenue incentivizes new business models – encourages outreach to emerging markets, crucial to solve infectious diseaseBennett 14 (Shannon, member of the Thomson Reuters API Intelligence team, http://lsconnect.thomsonreuters.com/author/shannon-bennett/#sthash.9kuO5xdy.dpuf, “Current Trends in the Pharmaceutical Industry: Emerging Markets,” 10-28-14)One of the largest pharmaceutical trade shows, CPhI Worldwide, recently concluded in Paris. The event brought together companies from an expanse of geographical regions and played host to countless meetings where industry professionals worked to identify potential suppliers, partners and opportunities for growth. Much of the discussion and presentations during the event focused on the increasingly globalized industry, and new markets presenting interesting opportunities. As the industry evolves in the wake of the patent cliff, and small

molecule opportunities in mature markets wane, more companies are scouting emerging markets for prospects. Business models for both innovators and generics are changing ; strategic partnering and outsourcing for specific capabilities are becoming integral decisions as firms strive to gain or maintain a competitive edge . There has been an

increase in the presence of companies exhibiting from Latin America , Africa , Russia, Middle

East and South East Asia . These regions with large , thriving populations and increasing personal wealth are at the forefront of strategic planning for many companies . The potential for novel research and development programs as well as large populations of treatment-naive candidates for clinical trials command the attention of innovators. Meanwhile, expanded sales and marketing opportunities appeal to the industry as a whole. These regions, excluding Russia, are comprised of a number of countries with separate governments, laws and regulations; navigating the requirements of each country can be cumbersome. Many of these emerging regions are heavily dependent on the importation of medicines, and while various governments are enacting legislation encouraging and even requiring local

manufacturing, the challenges in many areas continue to dissuade many companies from fully investing. Pharmaceutical companies assessing the potential and challenges of these markets may find partnering with local manufacturers a successful option. Partnering for marketing, manufacturing or product licensing is a strategy a number of foreign companies have used to enter emerging markets allowing entrance without a tremendous amount of financial gambling. Partnering with local companies can offer value through familiarity with regulatory requirements, and governmental policies; as well as aid in market access through distribution to an existing customer network and knowledge of cultural aspects of the customer base. These partnerships can also offer insight into the deeper challenges of succeeding in that particular market. Companies entering emerging markets must evaluate not only their potential return on investment but also the populations they will be serving . Companies may find their pricing structure incompatible with these markets as middle class income, affordability of medicines and healthcare have different definitions in developing economies than in more mature markets. While many emerging markets are looking to strengthen access to essential medicines and fight infectious disease , the mature markets are seeing business models changing. Western medical treatments are becoming increasingly specialized, personalized, and targeted to specific therapies. The shift in drug portfolios has impacted not only the innovation landscape, but also the generic drug and the active ingredient landscape. Understanding how these shifts will impact business strategies, partnerships, and potential competition is critical for any company’s long term growth and success.

Disease spread causes extinction.Keating, Foreign Policy Web Editor, 2009(Joshua, “The End of the World”, 11-13, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/13/the_end_of_the_world?page=full)

How it could happen: Throughout history, plagues have brought civilizations to their knees . The Black Death killed more off more than half of Europe's population in the Middle Ages. In 1918, a flu pandemic killed an estimated 50

million people, nearly 3 percent of the world's population, a far greater impact than the just-concluded World War I. Because of globalization, diseases today spread even faster - witness the rapid worldwide spread of H1N1 currently unfolding. A global outbreak of a disease such as ebola virus -- which has had a 90 percent fatality rate during its flare-ups in rural Africa -- or a mutated drug-resistant form of the flu virus on a global scale could have a devastating , even

civilization-ending impact .How likely is it? Treatment of deadly diseases has improved since 1918, but so have the diseases. Modern industrial farming techniques have been blamed for the outbreak of diseases, such as swine flu, and as the world’s population grows and humans move into previously unoccupied areas, the risk of exposure to previously unknown pathogens increases . More than 40 new viruses have emerged since the 1970s, including ebola and HIV. Biological weapons experimentation has added a new and just as troubling complication.

1AR Pharma Turn

The TPP trade deal is a threat to public healthCulbert, ’15 (Heather, 7/17/15, president of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, “Why the TPP trade deal is a threat to public health” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/why-the-tpp-trade-deal-is-a-threat-to-public-health/article25548162/) In 2004, I travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with the medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) as part of an exciting new program: We would be treating HIV-positive patients with life-saving antiretroviral medication.

Affordable AIDS treatments had only recently become available, thanks to the hard work of a group of HIV patients and activists who had helped negotiate access to generic medicines for low-income countries such as Congo. Generics were low-cost versions of the high-priced branded medicines that, thanks to efforts by pharmaceutical companies to protect their patents, had been

inaccessible to many of the world’s poorest people. I saw my patients transformed: People who had been facing certain death now had a chance to live, to care for their families and to thrive. Today, more than 12 million people in developing countries are using HIV treatments, most of them dependent on affordable, generic versions of the medications they need. Sadly, more than 10 years since I helped treat those

patients, the right to manufacture and distribute generic antiretroviral medications seems to have been an isolated victory. The pharmaceutical industry has been working hard to ensure that generic versions of other life-saving medicines remain unavailable – subject to the full restrictions of international patent protection and therefore far less affordable. The list of inaccessible medicines resulting from these restrictions includes newer antiretroviral drugs, vaccines and treatments for tuberculosis and hepatitis C. Since 2010, Canada has been in negotiations with the United States and 10 other Pacific Rim countries to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a massive trade deal with potentially far-reaching implications. Although the contents of the TPP have not been made public, leaked documents suggest the deal will significantly increase the scope and duration of patent and other monopoly protections for medicines . These changes go well beyond the minimum requirements set by the World Trade Organization and create a new high-water mark for intellectual property rights – and another barrier to accessing affordable medicines for the world’s poor. Do the intellectual property protections of patent-holders take precedence over the public-health needs of societies? As a physician, I am firmly rooted on the side of the patient. Canadian and U.S. governments have also shown themselves willing to overrule patent-holder rights when faced with serious public health threats, such as the anthrax scare in 2002 or the “swine flu” pandemic in 2009-2010. During the latter case, Ottawa was clear that protecting the health of Canadians was its primary responsibility. In the developing countries where MSF does most of its work, the public health needs are often huge. Even some countries participating in the TPP negotiations, such as Peru and Vietnam, are places where many people still cannot afford the medicines they need.

Under the TPP, not only would pharmaceutical patents be expanded and extended, but international trade disputes would be addressed by third-party tribunals that lack either transparency or an appeals mechanism. Many countries will feel they have no choice but to comply, even though most of their citizens will have no hope of accessing potentially life-saving medications. But it is not just people in low-income countries who will be affected by the TPP. Canadians will also face extended patent provisions and increased costs for medications. Pharmaceutical companies don’t hesitate to protect their commercial interests, as demonstrated by a $500-million lawsuit by Eli Lilly against the Canadian government (and taxpayers) for the rejection of two drug patents and for allowing competitors to enter the market. The TPP would put even more of this type of leverage in the hands of pharmaceutical companies against the rights of governments. The time to address these issues is now. On June 23, the U.S. Congress voted to authorize the government to fast-track the TPP negotiations. Trade ministers from all countries involved are now preparing for meetings at the end of July in Hawaii, and a final deal could be signed by year’s end. A number of organizations, including MSF, are concerned that without transparency or public

consultation, the TPP will create damaging trade-agreement precedents that would further restrict access to life-saving medicines for millions of people. Fortunately there are signs that some countries, including Canada, have reservations about the provisions on medical patents proposed by the United States and may be willing to push back. It is crucial

that our government hears from Canadians concerned about the impact of the TPP. Access to medicines cannot be reduced to simple economics. New trade deals that extend patent rights and promote abuses of the patent system ultimately have major

public-health consequences. There is a life attached to every calculation of supply and demand for medicines: For every vaccine not

given, and every antiretroviral that is too expensive, a real patient pays the price. Many of the world’s poor already lack access to life-saving medications. We cannot erect more barriers again.

**great card to extend and do impact calc on, emphasize real people suffering from TPP**

The TPP undermines public health.Rowden, ‘15 (Rick, 7/7/15, doctoral candidate in economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Previously he worked as an inter-regional advisor for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva and as a senior policy analyst for ActionAid. “9 Ways the TPP is Bad for Developing Countries” http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/07/9-ways-the-tpp-is-bad-for-developing-countries/) Many health groups such as Doctors Without Borders have campaigned against the TPP because its rules on intellectual property rights (IPR) would keep cheaper generic drugs out of reach for millions of poor people in developing countries. According to a leaked draft of the IPR chapter, the TPP would greatly extend existing patents and copyrights on essential drugs and expand the scope of patents and copyrights beyond finished products to include coverage of many components of finished goods. If enacted, such rules would considerably undermine developing countries’ ability to address public health needs — meaning that more people would die.

TPP Bad for Consumers regarding PharmaceuticalsEd Silverman, 6-19-2015, "Will the Trans-Pacific Partnership Pact Really be Bad for Your Health?," WSJ, http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2015/06/19/will-the-trans-pacific-partnership-pact-really-be-bad-for-your-health/Will the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement really be bad for your health? The trade pact is under negotiation to lower tariffs and open markets by 12 countries in the Asia and Pacific regions. But over the past several months, portions of the text have been leaked – courtesy of WikiLeaks – and each disclosure has raised fresh questions about the extent to which the pharmaceutical industry might benefit at the expense of consumers. The agreement remains a work in progress, but patient advocates say the drafts indicate drug makers may have more time to exclusively market certain expensive medicines and hold sway over formularies, or list of preferred drugs, maintained by government programs . Another provision would restrict the ability of countries to set limits on patent laws or make low-cost generic drugs available. “We only have leaks from certain chapters of the agreement. But one possibility is it will increase the power the pharmaceutical industry has to set prices and influence access [to medicines] in developing countries and the U.S ., ” says Amy Kapczynski, a professor at Yale Law School, where she heads the Global Health Justice Partnership program. “Some of the dots are beginning to be connected.” The U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment. But one person familiar with the matter says “the provisions being discussed in TPP relate to procedural measures. These provisions do not prejudge any particular decisions. Rather, they ensure that everyone gets a voice and fair shake in the process, while recognizing that every country must determine its own health care priorities.” For its part, the pharmaceutical industry has avoided discussing the extent to which any of its officials have been privy to the details. But a representative of the main industry trade group argues that he views the trade pact as a needed means for shoring up intellectual property and, therefore, ensuring that drug makers are able to churn out new medicines without fear of unfair competition. “Medicines will enter markets faster with strong patent

protection and countries will see stronger economics thanks to more investment” from drug makers, says Jay Taylor, vice president of international affairs at the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America. “And the TPP is a fantastic vehicle for that. So it’s a win-win.” But one consumer group disagrees and maintains the leaked documents suggest drug makers will be able to insert themselves into the decision making that determines pricing and access. “These are likely to be the rules we’re all going to have to live by if [the trade pact] is passed,” says Peter Maybarduk, who heads the access to medicines program at Public Citizen. Of course, the pact is not yet finalized, so it remains possible such concerns will not materialize. Just the same, one former industry official and U.S. trade negotiator says the outcry might have been mitigated if the substance of the negotiations was not kept under wraps. Compounding the problem, says this official, is that the Obama administration insisted on fast-track approval from Congress. “As I understand it, the administration is asking for fast track before an agreement has been fully negotiated,” says Harvey Bale, who once headed the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations and worked for the U.S. Trade Representative. “It’s an ass backwards approach and would tend to raise legitimate suspicion this is an agreement in favor of the few.”

TPP Bad for Consumer RightsDan Gillmor, 11-13-2013, "Thanks to WikiLeaks, we see just how bad TPP trade deal is for regular people," Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/13/trans-pacific-paternership-intellectual-propertyAmong the many betrayals of the Obama administration is its overall treatment of what many people refer to as "intellectual property" – the idea that ideas themselves and digital goods and services are exactly like physical property, and that therefore the law should treat them the same way. This corporatist stance defies both reality and the American Constitution, which expressly called for creators to have rights for limited periods, the goal of which was to promote inventive progress and the arts. In the years 2007 and 2008, candidate Obama indicated that he'd take a more nuanced view than the absolutist one from Hollywood and other interests that work relentlessly for total control over this increasingly vital part of our economy and lives. But no clearer demonstration of the real White House view is offered than a just-leaked draft of an international treaty that would , as many had feared, create draconian new rights for corporate "owners" and mean vastly fewer rights for the rest of us. I'm talking about the appalling Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, a partial draft of which WikiLeaks has just released. This treaty has been negotiated in secret meetings dominated by governments and corporations. You and I have been systematically excluded, and once you learn what they're doing, you can see why. The outsiders who understand TPP best aren't surprised. That is, the draft "confirms fears that the negotiating parties are prepared to expand the reach of intellectual property rights, and shrink consumer rights and safeguards," writes James Love a longtime watcher of this process. Needless to say, copyright is a key part of this draft. And the negotiators would further stiffen copyright holders' control while upping the ante on civil and criminal penalties for infringers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says TPP has "extensive negative ramifications for users' freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate " . It's Hollywood's wish list. Canadian intellectual property expert Michael Geist examined the latest draft of the intellectual property chapter. He writes that the document, which includes various nations' proposals, shows the US government, in particular, taking a vastly different stance than the other nations. Geist notes: [Other nations have argued for] balance, promotion of the public domain, protection of public health, and measures to ensure that IP rights themselves do not become barriers to trade . The opposition to these objective[s] by the US and Japan (Australia has not taken a position) speaks volumes about their goals for the TPP . The medical industry has a stake in the outcome, too, with credible critics saying it would raise drug prices and , according to Love's analysis, give surgeons patent protection for their procedures .

Advertisement Congress has shown little appetite for restraining the overweening power of the corporate interests promoting this expansion. With few exceptions, lawmakers have repeatedly given copyright, patent and trademark interests more control over the years. So we shouldn't be too optimistic about the mini-flurry of Capitol Hill opposition to the treaty that emerged this week. It's based much more on Congress protecting its prerogatives – worries about the treaty's so-called "fast track" authorities, giving the president power to act without congressional approval – than on substantive objections to the document's contents. That said, some members of Congress have become more aware of the deeper issues. The public revolt against the repugnant "Stop Online Piracy Act" two years ago was a taste of what happens when people become more widely aware of what they can lose when governments and corporate interests collude. If they become aware – that's the key. One of TPP's most abhorrent elements has been the secrecy under which it's been negotiated. The Obama administration's fondness for secret laws, policies and methods has a lot to do with a basic reality: the public would say no to much of which is done in our names and with our money if we knew what was going on. As Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out, in a letter to the White House: I have heard the argument that transparency would undermine the administration's policy to complete the trade agreement because public opposition would be significant. If transparency would lead to widespread public opposition to a trade agreement, then that trade agreement should not be the policy of the United States. I believe in transparency and democracy and I think the US Trade Representative should too. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have at least partial transparency today. The more you know about the odious TPP, the less you'll like it – and that's why the administration and its corporate allies don't want you to know.

2AC Internet Freedom

TPP crushes internet freedom Frankel 6/18 (Judy, Founder and CEO, Writeindependent.org, “What Is the Trans Pacific Partnership?,” 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judy-frankel/what-is-the-trans-pacific_b_7594950.html, CMR)

8. Internet Freedom - The TPP imposes similar restrictions to SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). Currently, if you download a recipe from a website and print it, it's free. But if the TPP passes, then you may be assessed a fine of up to ten thousand dollars for violating copyright laws. The folks who are crafting the TPP say they won't do this, but they've already lifted language from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) that lays the groundwork for collecting data from individuals sufficient to bill and prosecute Internet users later for use of material. The Electronic Frontier Foundation states that the TPP legislation "is likely to further entrench controversial aspects of U.S. copyright law [such as the DCMA] and restrict the ability of Congress to engage in domestic law reform to meet the evolving IP needs of American citizens and the innovative technology sector." The TPP opens the door to set up policies that:a. Ban you from Internet use if you violate copyright, which will be set at 120 years by the TPP.b. Require you to have your blogs or content filtered by an Internet intermediary for possible copyright infringement.c. Block websites if they might be infringing on copyright.d. Force Internet Service Providers to hand over your identity should you infringe on someone's copyright.

1AR Internet Freedom—Link

TPP bad- it will reduce jobs and American internet freedomGautney 2/3/15Heather Gautney, Associate Professor of Sociology, Fordham University, 2-3-2015, "Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Bad for Workers, and for Democracy," Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-gautney/why-the-transpacific-part_1_b_6598604.htmlThe TPP aims to increase commerce and investment through reducing trade barriers among participating countries. Such barriers typically include import tariffs, but also environmental and labor regulations, known as "nontariff barriers to trade," or NBTs. Economists vary widely in their assessments of the TPP, but there's general agreement across ideological stripes that tariffs are already low. In fact, some reports claim that only five of the 29 draft chapters in the agreement actually relate to lowering tariffs. The protest-worthy part of the deal regards the NBTs--the reduction of regulatory measures, and "freeing" of market activity, in the name of standardizing rules and lowering costs. Free market trade liberalization efforts like the TPP are not new. In the 1970s and 80s, catchphrases like "trickle-down economics" and the "Washington Consensus" named the series of policy prescriptions pushed by supranationals like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that combined trade liberalization with privatization and deregulation schemes, and fiscal austerity, under the rubric of structural adjustment. As economic crisis left much of the developing world in dire straights, IMF and World Bank debt programs helped pry open their markets for foreign investment, undermining indigenous industries and placing them in a sisyphean struggle against default. In some cases, like Chile, it was not the IMF that brought free markets, but the iron fist of dictators like Augusto Pinochet, in collusion with U.S. corporate and political leadership, and laissez faire economists like Milton Friedman. Critics of the TPP reference the failures of NAFTA, which was first conceived during this period by the original champion of trickle-down, Ronald Reagan. Leading up to the 1994 elections, NAFTA garnered bipartisan support, but lone wolf, Independent candidate Ross Perot warned of the "giant sucking sound" that America would hear if NAFTA passed and American jobs were drawn south. Global Trade Watch's assessment of NAFTA's "20 year legacy" demonstrates just how right Perot was. An estimated one million jobs have been lost to NAFTA. It's put downward pressure on wages, and exacerbated America's income gap. And while pre-NAFTA, the U.S carried a trade surplus with Mexico, and was just $26 billion in the hole with Canada--as of 2014, we had a combined trade deficit with both countries of $177 billon. The TPP repeats many of NAFTA's mistakes, as well as those of other bilateral trade treaties, like the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost some 2.7 million U.S. jobs, and the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which failed to deliver the 70,000 jobs its brokers promised. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that under the TPP we stand to lose more than 130,000 jobs to Vietnam and Japan alone, with American workers having to compete with their counterparts in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour. It's not just jobs and trade deficits, however. The TPP also threatens Internet freedoms and civil liberties, collective bargaining rights, public and environmental health, food safety, financial stability--and American democracy. The closed-door nature of the negotiation process has positioned Congress and the American people as passive recipients of public policy, rather than agents of it - and left us out of decision-making processes that will have broad and deep implications in our everyday lives. Meanwhile, 500-plus corporations have been seated at the TPP negotiation table from the start. The good news is that some lawmakers, union leaders, and grassroots activists are voicing their opposition. Because of WikiLeaks, public advocates and journalists have been able to assess contradictions between what Executive leadership has disclosed about the TPP and what's actually in the agreement. Progressive Senators like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have written letters to the U.S. Trade Representative in protest against the secret negotiation process, and the TPP's adverse effects on financial regulation. Sanders has also said that he would introduce legislation to require disclosure of all future trade agreement negotiations. Street protests are also gearing up, echoing the large-scale demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization in the late 90s. These spurred a global movement against corporate-driven globalization, and for "fair" as opposed to "free" trade, spanning many of the environmental, health, and labor concerns that the TPP is now raising. In Latin America, particularly hard hit by structural adjustment, a regional trade alliance emerged among leftwing countries in opposition to Bill Clinton's Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or "ALBA," now accounts for over 10 percent of Latin America and the Caribbean's GDP and has produced a broad range of social and economic programs, from literacy and hunger relief to health and medical interventions and oil-trading, as well as telecom initiatives like TeleSur. In a radical departure from U.S.-brokered trade agreements, ALBA emphasizes public, rather than private ownership, domestic development over exports,

and cooperation over competition. Progressive regional partnerships like ALBA may not provide an immediate answer to our TPP troubles, especially given Venezuela's current instability. But they do suggest more people-centered values for shaping the global economy over the long haul. In the meantime, the vote to fast-track the TPP is coming soon. Let's learn our lessons from NAFTA, and avoid the "giant sucking sound" of fleeting jobs, and basic human freedoms, that's looming over the Pacific.

__**Asia Pivot Bad

2AC Pivot Fails

Pivot fails---too diluted and doesn’t solve US leadershipRod Lyon 15, fellow at Australian Strategic Policy Institute and executive editor of The Strategist, “The Real Problem With America's Rebalance to Asia: A Crisis of Expectations,” 1/16/15, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-real-problem-americas-rebalance-asia-crisis-expectations-12050In Work’s view, the rebalance is occurring but its effects are somewhat diluted by an even larger global shift within the US defense force—after Afghanistan and Iraq, a smaller emphasis on forward -deployed forces and a larger one on reconstitution of US surge-force capabilities.¶

The second source is the majority staff report prepared for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee back in April 2014. That report looked in greater detail at the non-military side of the rebalance —including diplomacy and aid—and in

general found a set of policy instruments that were even less well-resourced than the military effort . The East

Asia and Pacific Bureau in the State Department, for example, had 12% less funding in 2014 than it had back in 2011.¶ So yes, the rebalance exists . But it struggles for oxygen , in part because of the broader strategic baggage carried by the president. Moreover, substantial parts of the rebalance will take time to unfold—it’s not designed to address allies’ and partners’ demands for instant gratification and constant assurance. And, even when it’s run its course, the rebalance isn’t going to restore the region al status quo ante China’s rise .¶ ¶ It’s that last point that highlights the extent to which the rebalance faces what

we might call a crisis of expectations. Since different people believe it was meant to do different things, they judge it by different standards. Some of those metrics strike me as unrealistic. For example, it’s perfectly true that even after the rebalance is

completed, the US’ position in the region won’t be restored to what it was in the glory days of the 1990s. But the rebalance was never intended to do that. It wasn’t meant to reverse the rise of the Asian great powers, nor to roll back the tides of history.¶ Similarly, the rebalance was never intended to suggest that the US was happy to ignore what went on in Europe and the Middle East. Washington might have thought it was overweight in those areas, but it certainly didn’t think they were irrelevant. So have events in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq distracted the US from Asia? Of course. But the US is a global player, not

just a regional one.¶ The rebalance, even if successful, is merely one variable in a shifting strategic landscape . By itself, it won’t return the US to the position of the ‘indispensable player’ in Asia. Still, its principal value lies in the fact that the policy strengthens Washington’s ties to Asia. And that’s why Australia should want the rebalance to succeed: because its various components—including a comprehensive TPP agreement, a military reorientation into the region, and US membership of key regional institutions—will mean a US more closely engaged with both our and the region’s strategic future.

1AR Pivot Fails

Even if they win that the deal overcomes that, it doesn’t matter because the shift gets us nowhere Francis 14, Fiscal Times national correspondent, 1-9-14, David, “Why Obama’s Big Pivot to Asia Is a Myth”, http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/01/09/Why-Obama-s-Big-Pivot-Asia-Myth“It’s really more rhetoric than reality and more rhetoric than resources ,” says Bruce Klingner, senior research fellow on Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation. “On the one hand it’s a good strategy as it’s important to prioritize Asia for the United States because Asia is so

vital to U.S. interest, diplomatically, economically and militarily. That said, there’s not a lot of meat behind it.” Benjamin H. Friedman, a research

fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the CATO Institute, concurs with this assessment. He said that the pivot is more of an effort to draw attention away from military pullbacks in Europe and the Middle East than it is a true effort to make Asia more strategically important . “All strategies tend to have … sort of a combination of public relations and speeches and

documents to steer the foreign policy enterprise of the U.S. in a new direction. It puts a gloss on things … but we don’t see a lot of big changes being made that show a

commitment to Asia,” he said. A closer look at actions on all three fronts shows why the pivot is a myth. Military - The United States already has 28,000 troops in South Korea, so adding 800 doesn’t substantially change the force. According to Friedman, the real proof of DOD spending priorities is in their budget. While it might appear that the Air Force and Navy -- the two forces who would benefit from the pivot - are making out better than the Army in the coming years, that’s not the case. The funding formula that DOD uses to allocate its annual budget hasn't changed; any

extra cash the Army got during the Afghan and Iraq wars came out of supplemental war spending. “We’re not seeing a fundamental shift in budget from the Army to the Air Force and Navy. If we were doing a serious pivot we would see that shift,” Friedman said. Friedman added that many of the exercises that the Pentagon touts in the region have been ongoing for years. Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one was paying attention. Economically - The Obama administration likes to tout the Trans-Pacific Partnership meant to increase trade with Asian nations of evidence of the economic pivot. But in reality,

TPP talks precede the Obama presidency by years. “The economic aspect was left from the Bush administration. The reality is contrary to Obama’s assertion. We are not back in Asia. The reality is we never left Asia,” Klingner said. Diplomatically - The White House often says evidence of its diplomatic shift to Asia is the number of meetings held between U.S. and Asian diplomats. Klingner said this is a ploy. “But anyone who’s even been in a meeting can tell you: attending more meetings doesn’t mean success. There’s a lack of tangible successes that the admin can point to rather than attendance,” he said. In a recent paper, Friedman said that State Department planning documents also reveal lack of action. “As the State Department’s

Inspector General Office recently noted, the pivot has had no obvious organizational or budgetary manifestation in the State Department, aside from the creation of an Ambassadorship and permanent mission for [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations]. Foreign assistance to the region is actually down almost 20 percent since 2010 ,” Friedman wrote.

2AC Pivot Bad—China

TPP perceived as containment by China Backer 14 (Larry Cata Backer, Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar & Prof essor of Law, Professor of International Affairs, 2012–13 Chair, University Fa culty Senate, The Pennsylvania State University, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership,” http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1473&context=law_globalstudies, CMR) Indeed, Wen Jin Yuan notes the sense among Chinese academic and policy circles that “the main reason behind the Obama Administr ation’s support for the TPP agenda is the US’s desire to use the TPP as a tool to economically

contain China’s rise .” 128 Wen notes, for example, reports published in the People’s Daily , the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, that refer to TPP as “superficially an economic agreement but contain[ing] an obvious political purpose to constrain China’s rise.” 129 More importantly, a successfully negotiated TPP would result, according to other Chinese scholars, in trade diversion to the detriment of Chinese economic interests. 130 Yet, according to Wen’s research, United States officials insist that the ultimate goal of the United States was not containment, but incorporation. The “U.S.’s ultimate goal is to integrate China into this regional trade system, rather t han keeping China out, and the TPP initiative is actually similar to the strategy led by several U.S. agencies to incorporate China into the WTO sys tem.” 131 Yet

incorporation can be understood from the Chinese side as another form of containment . Rather than have China lead a new effort at refining the rules and culture of trade in the Pacific, it would be forced to part icipate as a junior partner in a regulatory exercise directed by the United St ates and its principal ally, Japan.

For the Chinese, the substantial effe ct might well be understood as containment , though that view/perception is lost on the United States. 132

Nuclear war Eland 5—MBA in economics, PhD in Public Policy, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute (Ivan, 11 April 2005, Coexisting with a Rising China?, http://www.independent.org/NEWSROOM/ARTICLE.ASP?ID=1494, RBatra)

Instead of emulating the policies of pre-World War I Britain toward Germany, the United States should take a page from another chapter in

British history. In the late 1800s, although not without tension, the British peacefully allowed the fledging United States to rise as a great power, knowing both countries were protected by the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean that separated them.

Taking advantage of that same kind separation by a major ocean, the United States could also safely allow China to obtain respect as a great power, with a sphere of influence to match. If China went beyond obtaining a reasonable sphere of

influence into an Imperial Japanese-style expansion, the United States could very well need to mount a challenge. However, at present, little evidence exists of Chinese intent for such expansion, which would run counter to recent Chinese history. Therefore, a U.S. policy of coexistence, rather than neo-containment, might avoid a future catastrophic war or even a

nuclear conflagration.

1AR Pivot Bad—China UQ

We control UQ – U.S. backing off in the SQUO produces peace and cooperation Gong 2-4-15 (James, associate research fellow at the Institute of International Relations, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, “Will South China Sea stay peaceful in 2015?,” http://forum.china.org.cn/viewthread.php?tid=163145&highlight, CMR)

Tensions in the South China Sea might be eased in 2015, not because of the low oil prices, but due to the strategic shifts laid out by major powers which have crucial interests in this region . Where the conflicts are heading is not decided by the claims of small disputing parties such as Vietnam and the Philippines, but by China and the US. After years of efforts, the US "pivot to Asia" strategy has entered a phase of consolidation and calibration. The White House is unlikely to make big moves in the South China Sea as long as no emergencies take place. With more progress made in

bilateral relations, Washington has realized that too much pressure over Beijing on the South China Sea disputes will not benefit itself in the end . After all, both countries have seen wider space for cooperation and mutual benefits in many other regional and international issues. A face-off with China in the South

China Sea will jeopardize the chance Washington seeks China's cooperation in other issues. China will continue its policy over the region by aligning sovereignty protection with peacekeeping. Beijing won't give up countering other claimants when they try to further encroach on resources and islands, but it will put more efforts in promoting its "One Belt and One Road" project, which refers to the Silk

Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, seeking cooperation with other regional countries .

1AR Pivot Bad—China Link

Obama’s SOU changed the game – TPP signals containment Tiezzi 15 (Shannon, received her A.M. from Harvard University and her B.A. from The College of William and Mary, “The State of the Union: Obama’s Challenge to China,” http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/the-state-of-the-union-obamas-challenge-to-china/, CMR)

Ah, the State of the Union address – that special time each year when analysts spend hours and hours pouring over a speech that will likely have little to no relationship to actual government policy. Fortunately, I can beg off from most of that tedium by virtue of working for an international affairs magazine. In fact, as of yesterday evening I had no plans to write about the speech at all – unless, of course, Obama said something particularly interesting or relevant to U.S.-China relations. And so he did, and here we are. The passage in question reads as follows: But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field. That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but are also fair. It’s the right thing to do. There’s a lot going on here that, unfortunately, will reinforce some of the darker suspicions among Chinese officials. Let’s unpack this paragraph, shall we? First, Obama holds up a stark zero-sum vision of Asia-Pacific trade – something not likely to sit well in Beijing, where leaders constantly bemoan “Cold War thinking” in Washington. If China gets to “write the rules” for Asia-Pacific trade, Obama argues, U.S. companies and workers

will be “at a disadvantage.” The underlying assumption is that a Chinese-led system will be inherently bad for the U.S., and (presumably) vice versa, with a U.S.-led system giving its companies an advantage over their Chinese competitors. The response from China’s foreign ministry was to double-down on Beijing’s model, which stresses cooperation rather than competition. In the words of spokesperson Hua Chunying, “We hope every party, through a common effort, will provide a fair, open, and transparent environment for economic cooperation and make a contribution to perfecting world trade regulations.” Hua also emphasized China’s position of prioritizing “mutual benefits and win-win” cooperation when it comes to trade. Analysts often argue over how sincere China is in its formulation of “win-win” cooperation, but there’s no denying this is Beijing’s preferred rhetoric. To see the possibility of “win-win” cooperation on economic issues tossed aside in favor of an I-win-you-lose formula is troubling for China. Second, another phrase that’s likely to grab Beijing’s attention (and not in a good way) is Obama’s rhetorical question, “Why would we let that happen?” This comes, of course, with the unspoken corollary that the U.S. can choose not to let China have its say in the rules that will govern future trade in the Asia-Pacific – China’s own backyard. This sentence speaks directly to a deep-seated fear in Beijing that the U.S. will never willingly cede any portion of its leadership to China, regardless of how powerful (or even well-behaved) China is. By asking “Why would we let that happen?” Obama is essentially saying: If I have my way, this will not happen. China will not be allowed to “write the rules” or set the agenda for Asia-Pacific trade. In other words, Obama just provided fresh fodder for every Chinese analyst who sincerely believes the U.S. will do its utmost to “contain” China for as long as possible. In saying “we [the U.S.] should write those rules,” Obama is of

course speaking to a domestic audience, but he should also be well aware that observers around the globe are listening. That assumption that the U.S. “should” lead, simply by virtue of being the U.S., is problematic for many countries, not just China. But China, with its new initiatives to create Asian-only (and Chinese-led) economic and security blocs, is perhaps doing more than any other country to turn this

assumption on its head. Third, Obama ties this confrontational rhetoric to the Trans-Pacific Partnership ( TPP ). Specially, Obama argues that he needs trade promotion authority so that negotiations can proceed on “strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe.” When it comes to Asia, that can only mean the vaunted TPP, Washington’s vision for a “high-standard” trade agreement that includes rigorous intellectual property rights and free trade requirements (including restrictions on state-

owned enterprises). China stands little chance of meeting those standards and is thus excluded from the negotiations (which currently include 12 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru,

Singapore, the U.S., and Vietnam). China analysts have long looked askance at the TPP, reading it as another attempt at economic containment by the U.S. Recently, however, there were signs of a shift in position, with some Chinese officials even floating the notion of China eventually joining the trade pact . However, Obama’s State of the Union address will reinforce the negative perceptions some Chinese analysts have of the TPP – that it’s an American-led trade bloc made to serve narrow American interests. By pushing through the TPP, Obama implies, the U.S. can keep China from creating rules of trade that complement its own strengths and weaknesses.

TPP’s Asian pivot bad- it excludes ChinaAhn 1/14/14

Christine Ahn, a policy analyst with expertise in Korea, globalization, militarism, women’s rights and philanthropy. She is co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute (KPI), National Campaign to End the Korean War, and Korean Americans for Fair Trade, 1-14-2014, "Open Fire and Open Markets: The Asia-Pacific Pivot and Trans-Pacific Partnership ," Foreign Policy In Focus, http://fpif.org/open-fire-open-markets-asia-pacific-pivot-trans-pacific-partnership/Ahead of the fall 2011 Asia Pacific Economic Forum (APEC) meeting in Hawaii, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined a plan to transfer U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic resources from the Middle East to the Pacific, in what she called “America’s New Pacific Century.” Describing the pivot in militaristic terms as “forward-deployed diplomacy,” Clinton hailed the TPP as a “benchmark for future agreements” leading to “a free trade area of the Asia- Pacific.” Yet the TPP excludes China, which has become the second largest economy in the world and is poised to outpace the U.S. economy in a matter of years — a fact that is none too pleasing to U.S. elites accustomed to unrivaled hegemony. Like the United States, the future of China’s economic growth lies in the Asia-Pacific region, which by all indicators will be the center of economic activity in the 21st century. By 2015, according to a paper from the conservative Foreign Policy Research Institute, “East Asian countries are expected to surpass NAFTA and the euro zone to become the world’s largest trading bloc. Market opportunities will only increase as the region swells by an additional 175 million people by 2030.” Enter the TPP. By increasing U.S. market access and influence with China’s neighbors, Washington is hoping to deepen its economic engagement with the TPP countries while diminishing their economic integration with China . Obama’s

“Pacific Pivot” also seeks to contain China militarily. By 2020, 60 percent of U.S. naval capacity will be based in the Asia-Pacific, where 320,000 U.S. troops are already stationed. The realignment will entail rebuilding and refurbishing former U.S. facilities in the Philippines, placing 2,500 marines in Australia, transferring 8,000 marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam and Hawai’i, and building new installations like the one on the tiny Pacific island of Saipan. Meanwhile, the U.S. military regularly stages massive joint military exercises involving tens of thousands of troops and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers with its key allies — and China’s neighbors — Japan and South Korea. It has been regularly conducting Cobra Gold exercises with Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and even Myanmar. Official Washington seems to believe that these are necessary precautions. According to the RAND Corporation, for example, 90 percent of U.S. bases in the region are “under threat” from Chinese ballistic missiles because they are within 1,080 nautical miles of China. But who is threatening whom? The Chinese have precisely zero bases in the Asia-Pacific outside of their own borders. Some U.S. analysts insist that a more robust U.S. military presence is necessary to curb China’s ambitious territorial claims in the region. Without a doubt, China has recently taken a more aggressive stance in regional territorial disputes over dwindling natural resources, angering many of its neighbors. But by turning to the United States as a check against China, less powerful nations invite a bargain with the devil as Washington

will advance its own strategic interests. And by getting itself involved, Washington risks encouraging China’s rivals to behave more provocatively, as well as angering China itself. According to Mel Gurtov, “While accepting that the United

States is a Pacific power, Chinese authorities now resist the notion that the United States has some special claim to predominance in Asia and the western Pacific.”

Pivot exacerbates Asian conflict and causes US-China nuclear warO'Reilly 13 (Brendan, China-based writer and educator from Seattle, author of Transcedent Harmony, 1/30/13, "'Pivot' could cost Obama, Asia dearly" Asia Times) www.atimes.com/atimes/China/OA30Ad01.html

Meanwhile, America's "pivot" towards Asia, and backing of Japan in the dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, have provided the Chinese leadership with the perfect foreign threat for distracting their people from China's domestic troubles.The Brooking Institution's open letters to Obama are by no means completely pessimistic regarding relations with China. One "Big Bet" dispatch calls for "Bringing Beijing Back In" by improving and deepening political, military and economic ties between China and the United States. However, this letter by Kenneth G Lieberthal from the very outset reveals the schizophrenic nature of America's China policy: Your rebalancing strategy toward Asia has produced desirable results, including convincing China that the United States is serious, capable and determined to be a leader in the region for the long term. But this strategy is also generating dynamics that increasingly threaten to undermine its primary goals. [3] The Chinese government is indeed convinced that the U nited S tates is committed to being a power in Asia - at the expense of Chinese influence. For the last year, China's state-run media has consistently decried America's overly military "Cold War mentality" towards the People's Republic. Lieberthal further addresses his sensible admission that there are unstable dynamics to America's Asian aspirations: Unfortunately, at this point your current strategy is in danger of actually enhancing rather than reducing bad security outcomes.

Most notably, territorial disputes have become sharper, and Beijing is largely operating under the false assumption that the flare-up of these disputes reflects an underlying US strategy to encourage Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines to push the envelope in the hope that Chinese responses will lead those countries - and ASEAN - to become more united and dependent on the United States. Liberthal is absolutely correct in noting that local territorial disputes have been sharpened in the year since outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for "America's Pacific Century". However, increased tension is an entirely predictable outcome of such a policy. Smaller powers naturally feel emboldened against China by the protection of the world's most advanced military. All sides share a degree of responsibility for the ongoing tensions off of China's territorial waters, but the American military "readjustment" to the region takes the lion's share of the blame. It may be no coincidence that conflicts between China and Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan began to intensify almost immediately in the wake of Clinton's open call for an American "pivot" to Asia. America's strategy exacerbates tensions in the region for two related reasons. First, it gives American allies who have territorial disputes with China added muscle for confronting the rising power. Secondly, it inspires a resolve in elements of the Chinese leadership to test the extent of America's willingness to back up regional allies. Chinese announcements of increased maritime and air patrols around the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands could be related to a desire to see exactly how the United States will react in the event of a military clash. If the increasing possibility of a shooting war between Japan and China is a "desirable result" of America's Asian policy, then by all means America's pivot has been a resounding success. While it may be counterproductive for Japan and China to damage their deep economic ties with mutual threats of military action over a few uninhabited islands,it is downright strategically reckless for the U nited S tates to commit itself to the possibility of universal economic ruin - and indeed, the outside chance of global Armageddon - over the distant and intractable conflict.

1AR Pivot Bad—China Impact Containment causes a self-fulfilling prophecy that guarantees war throughout AsiaKlare 6—professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, 2006 [Michael, “Containing China: The US's real objective”, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HD20Ad01.html]

Accompanying all these diplomatic initiatives has been a vigorous, if largely unheralded, effort by the Department of Defense (DoD) to bolster US

military capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region. The broad sweep of US strategy was first spelled out in the Pentagon's most recent policy assessment, the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), released on

February 5. In discussing long-term threats to US security, the QDR begins with a reaffirmation of the overarching precept first articulated in the DPG of 1992: that the U nited States will not allow the rise of a competing superpower . This country "will attempt to dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable regional hegemony

or hostile action against the United States", the document states. It then identifies China as the most likely and dangerous competitor of this sort.

"Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the U nited States and field disruptive military

technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages" - then adding the kicker - "absent US counter-strategies." According to the Pentagon, the task of countering future Chinese military capabilities largely entails the development, and then procurement, of major weapons systems that would ensure US success in any full-scale military confrontation . "The United States will develop capabilities that would present any adversary with complex and multidimensional challenges and complicate its offensive planning efforts," the QDR explains. These include the steady enhancement of such "enduring US advantages" as "long-range strike, stealth, operational maneuver and sustainment of air, sea and ground forces at strategic distances, air dominance, and undersea warfare". Preparing for war with China, in other words, is to be the future cash cow for the giant US weapons-making corporations in the military-industrial complex. It will, for instance, be the primary justification for the acquisition of costly new weapons systems such as the F-22A Raptor fighter, the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter, the DDX destroyer, the Virginia-class nuclear attack submarine, and a new intercontinental penetrating bomber - weapons that would just have utility in an all-out encounter with another great-power adversary of a sort that only China might someday become. In addition to these weapons programs, the QDR also calls for a stiffening of present US combat forces in Asia and the Pacific, with a particular emphasis on the US Navy (the arm of the military least used in the ongoing occupation of and war in Iraq). "The fleet will have a greater presence in the Pacific Ocean," the document notes. To achieve this, "The navy plans to adjust its force posture and basing to provide at least six operationally available and sustainable [aircraft] carriers and 60% of its submarines in the Pacific to support engagement, presence and deterrence." Since each of these carriers is, in fact, but the core of a large array of support

ships and protective aircraft, this move is sure to entail a truly vast buildup of US naval capabilities in the Western Pacific and will certainly necessitate a substantial expansion of the US basing complex in the region - a requirement that is already receiving close attention from Admiral Fallon and his staff at PACOM. To assess the operational demands of this buildup, moreover, this summer the US Navy will conduct its most extensive military maneuvers in the Western Pacific since the end of the Vietnam War, with four aircraft-carrier battle groups and many support ships expected to

participate. Add all of this together, and the resulting strategy cannot be viewed as anything but a systematic campaign of

containment . No high administration official may say this in so many words, but it is impossible to interpret the recent moves of Rice and Rumsfeld in any other manner. From Beijing's

perspective, the reality must be unmistakable : a steady buildup of US military power along China 's eastern, southern and western boundaries. How will China respond to this threat? For now, it appears to be relying on charm and the conspicuous blandishment of economic benefits to loosen Australian, South Korean, and even Indian ties with the United States. To a certain extent, this strategy is meeting with success, as these countries seek to profit from the extraordinary economic boom now under way in China - fueled to a considerable extent by oil, gas, iron, timber, and other materials supplied by China's neighbors in Asia. A version of this strategy is also being employed by President Hu Jintao during his current visit to the United States. As China's money is sprinkled liberally among such influential firms as Boeing and Microsoft, Hu is reminding the corporate wing of the Republican Party that there

are vast economic benefits still to be had by pursuing a non-threatening stance toward China. China , however, has always responded to perceived threats of encirclement in a vigorous and muscular fashion as well , and so we should assume that Beijing will balance all that charm with a military buildup of its own. Such a drive will not bring China to the brink of military equality with the United States - that is not a

condition it can realistically aspire to over the next few decades. But it will provide further justification for those in the United States who seek to accelerate the containment of China , and so will produce a self-fulfilling loop of distrust, competition and crisis. This will make the amicable long-term settlement of the Taiwan problem and of North Korea's nuclear program that much more difficult , and increase the risk of unintended escalation to full- scale war in Asia . There can be no victors from such a conflagration.

A2: China Influence

Won’t solve Chinese influence – allies opposition & other pacts prove Beachy 14 (Ben Beachy is Research Director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, former research fellow with Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, investment analyst for the Tellus Institute in Boston, agriculture researcher for ActionAid in India and labor rights investigator for the Worker Rights Consortium in Central America, B.A. from Goshen College and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, “The Rising Use of the Trade Pact Sales Pitch of Last Resort: TPP Foreign Policy Arguments Mimic False Claims Made for Past Deals,” April, http://www.citizen.org/documents/TPP-foreign-policy.pdf, CMR)

Even if one assumes that China will not one day enter the TPP (despite the open invitation), the evidence from past U.S. pacts does not support the notion that such agreements limit China’s economic influence. Although the United

States has signed FTAs with 11 countries in Latin America (more than in any other region in the world) , the pacts have not stopped China from increasing its economic presence in the region. From 2000 to 2011 , a period in which U.S. FTAs with eight Latin American countries took effect , China’ s exports to Latin America soared more than 1280 percent , from $10.5 billion to more than $145 billion . U.S. exports to the region during the same period increased by just 30 percent, or $73 billion. As a result, the share of Latin America’s imported goods coming from the United States fell from 25 percent to 16 percent while the share coming from China increased from 1 percent to 7 percent. 14 This trend has held for major U.S. FTA partners. The share of Mexico’s imported goods coming from the United States dropped from 69 perce nt to 49 percent in NAFTA’s first 20 years, while China’s share rose from 1 percent to 1 6 percent. 15 China’s role as an importer for Latin America has also increased. The share of Latin America’s exports destined for China rose from 1 percent in 2000 to 4 percent in 2011, while the share exported to the United States shrank from 28 percent to 19 percent. 16 For some U.S. FTAs, the U.S. economic pres ence in FTA partner countries after the pact’s approval has fallen not just in relative terms, but absolutely. U.S. foreign direct investment

(FDI) in Central America actually decreased after enactment of the U.S. - Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The aggregate level of U. S. FDI in the six CAFTA partner countries dropped 30 percent, or nearly $1 billion, from the year before the FTA took effect in each country to 2012. 17 Mea nwhile , investment in the region from other countries grew , diminishing the U.S. share of Central America ’s FDI even further. This includes growth in FDI in CAFTA countries from Venezuela , undercutting the argument, used by CAFTA proponents to push for the pact’s approval, that CAFTA would counter Venezuela ’s influence in the

region. 18 The evidence from past pacts offers no indication that another FTA would prove effective in keeping China’s economic influence in check. Moreover, many of the closest U.S. allies participating in the TPP reject the “counter China” portrayal of the pact as not only nonsensical, but as a threat to their national interests . For example, t he governments of New Zealand and Australia, both of which maintain strong economic ties with China, have indicated that if the TPP were intended to impede China, they would abandon the pact. 19 In February 2012, New Zealand Trade Minister Tim Groser stated , “ The moment we smelt or sensed that this was an anti - China thing, we’d leave the TPP .” 20 When confronted by the fact that the TPP cannot be a tool to counter Chinese competition if it is comprised of China allies and open to China itself, proponents of the deal often shift to another variety of the argument: t he TPP is a tool for the United States to set international rules before China can do so .

A2: China Rise Violent China’s not expansionist or violent- other regional powers contain it if it isNye 2010 (Joseph S., University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University, The Future of American Power Subtitle: Dominance and Decline in Perspective, Foreign Affairs, November/December, lexis)Some have argued that China aims to challenge the United States' position in East Asia and, eventually,

the world. Even if this were an accurate assessment of China's current intentions (and even the Chinese themselves cannot know

the views of future generations), it is doubtful that China will have the military capability to make this possible

anytime soon. Moreover, Chinese leaders will have to contend with the reactions of other countries and the constraints created by China's need for external markets and resources. Too aggressive a Chinese military posture could produce a countervailing coalition among China's neighbors that would weaken both its

hard and its soft power. The rise of Chinese power in Asia is contested by both India and Japan (as well as other states), and that provides a major power advantage to the United States. The U.S.-Japanese alliance and the improvement in U.S.-Indian relations mean that China cannot easily expel the Americans from Asia. From that position of strength, the United States, Japan, India, Australia, and others can engage China and provide incentives for it to play a responsible role, while hedging against the possibility of aggressive behavior as China's power grows

China’s rise isn’t a threat to U.S. interests.Allin and Jones 12 [Dana H., Editor of Survival and Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Affairs at The International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Erik, Professor and Director of European Studies, Johns Hopkins SAIS Director, Bologna Institute for Policy Research Head of Europe, Oxford Analytica Adelphi Series Conclusion: Realist Dilemmas Version of record first published: 22 Jun 2012 Adelphi Series, 52:430-431, 183-198]

Getting the balance right is obviously an overriding demand on US strategy and diplomacy. Along with the danger of provoking Beijing with a posture that might appear aggressive, the obverse risk is that the spectre of American disarray and decline could embolden nationalists in a still-growing China to demand more aggressive and assertive policies. In theory, such assertiveness would be enabled by the possibility that China’s GDP and military spending could exceed America’s by the middle of the century. Yet, we should not let hypothetical future dangers scare us out of recognising some stabilising realities of the present. ‘China’, Dobbins observes, ‘is seeking neither territorial aggrandise-ment nor ideological sway over its neighbours. It shows no interest in matching US military expenditures, achieving comparable global reach, or assuming defence commit-ments beyond its immediate periphery’.8 Indeed, insofar as Beijing is not eager to be a supplier of global public goods, its grand strategy at least implicitly confers upon the United States a continued leadership role. All of this might change, of course, but the United States would have ample time to observe these changes and adjust its own strategic planning and posture.

But pursuing primacy ensures escalating rivalry.White 12 [Hugh White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU, America’s choices about China August 5th, 2012 http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2012/08/05/america-s-choices-about-china/]

Washington’s message to Beijing is that everything will be fine, as long as China agrees to do things America’s way. If not, America will use ‘every element of America’s power’ to pull it into line. Don’t believe me? Go back and read President Obama’s big speech in Canberra last November, and ask yourself how it sounds to Chinese ears — which are the ones that really matter. The problem is that China will not accept America’s pre-conditions for a good relationship, and the more its wealth and power grows relative to America’s, the more willing Beijing will be to make that plain. The rest of us

might regret that, but we can hardly be surprised by it, and we cannot wish it away. If America insists on maintaining the status quo of US primacy as China’s power and ambitions grow, escalating strategic rivalry with China is close to a certainty.

A2: China Fill-In Worse

China fill-in irrelevant – TPP is net-worse for U.S. interests Beachy 14 (Ben Beachy is Research Director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, former research fellow with Tufts University's Global Development and Environment Institute, investment analyst for the Tellus Institute in Boston, agriculture researcher for ActionAid in India and labor rights investigator for the Worker Rights Consortium in Central America, B.A. from Goshen College and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, “The Rising Use of the Trade Pact Sales Pitch of Last Resort: TPP Foreign Policy Arguments Mimic False Claims Made for Past Deals,” April, http://www.citizen.org/documents/TPP-foreign-policy.pdf, CMR)

Another newly prominent TPP foreign policy spin is that the pact presents a choice between the United

States imposing “our rules” (assumed to be enshrined in the TPP) or China imposing theirs. The problem with this

argument is that many of the rules now included in the TPP represent narrow special interests, and indeed could

undermine the broader U.S. national interest. This includes terms that c ould weaken the U nited S tates

by increasing income inequality, threatening our financial stability , raising energy and healthcare costs, and further

gutting the U.S. manufacturing base that is essential for both our national security and domestic infrastructure . TPP proponents seek to bury these inconvenient facts about the actual terms of the pact by employing a crass “us or them” narrative . Activating Americans’ fears about a rising China serves to distract from the relevant policy question:

would the TPP benefit most Americans? The few chapters of TPP text that have leaked ( and revelations about the chapter

s that remain secret ) offer a clear “no” to that question . W hile China’s rising economic power and foreign influence are legitimate matter s of U.S. interest, the notion that somehow the establishment – or not – of any specific U.S. FTA would control this process is a claim without support in the history of U.S. “ free trade ” agreement outcomes. Indeed, implementing the numerous TPP provisions

promoted by narrow and powerful commercial interests but rejected by the U.S. majority would actually undermine U.S. national interests.

2AC No Asia War

No Asia War *best data proves*state legitimacy, growth, deterrence check *no major war, even if minor disputes Alagappa 12-19-14 (Muthiah Alagappa, Nonresident Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., “International Peace in Asia: Will it Endure?,” http://www.theasanforum.org/international-peace-in-asia-will-it-endure/, CMR)

In contrast to those dire warnings, this article makes two claims. First, Asia has witnessed a substantial reduction in the number of major and minor inter-state wars. After reaching a peak in the 1970s, major inter-state war has declined in number, frequency, and intensity measured in terms of battle deaths. From 1979 to 2014, there were only two major inter-state wars compared to 13 in 1945 to 1979. Connected to earlier wars, the nature, purpose, scope, and outcome of these wars since 1979 reinforce rather than undermine my central claim that Asia has witnessed substantial decline in major wars.6 It has even

enjoyed a long period of peace, comparable in duration, nature, and complexity to the “long peace” of the Cold War in Europe.7

Second, the long peace in Asia will continue in the foreseeable future. Entrenched conflicts will likely remain unresolved with a few becoming even more acute. The Asian strategic environment will become more complex with growing economic interdependence, cross-cutting links, and some new security challenges. And, armed clashes cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, major war in Asia is unlikely in the coming decade or two. I made these claims about a decade ago.8 I am now even more convinced and set them out in this article to balance the growing chorus—now, also in Asia—of conflict and war in Asia. What explains the substantial decline in the frequency of major war in Asia and the claim that the inter-state peace that has endured in Asia since 1979 will continue in the foreseeable future? These are the central questions animating this article, which advances three related arguments: 1. Decline in the number and intensity of inter-state wars in Asia since 1979 is due largely to the growing legitimacy of the Asian political map , rising

nationalism, focus on and success in economic growth, and the development of effective deterrence in relevant dyads. Together, these developments reduced the salience as well as altered the role of force, more specifically war, in the international politics of Asia. 2. Factors that underpinned the decreasing frequency of inter-state war will continue to be salient in the foreseeable future and sustain the long peace in Asia . A development that could substantially alter the strategic environment would be a shift in military technology and strategy from deterrence to offense. Such a shift would make war more costly, but also restore it as a rational instrument of policy in pursuit of certain political objectives. 3. The international peace that has prevailed in Asia, as in Europe during the Cold War, is of the minimal type ( absence of major war but not devoid of competition, conflict, minor war, and military incidents). That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Stronger peace would require resolution of outstanding disputes, which appears unlikely.

1AR No Asia War

Interdependence and institutions check Nick Bisley 14, Professor of IR @ La Trobe University (Australia) and Executive Director of La Trobe Asia, 3/10/14, “It’s not 1914 all over again: Asia is preparing to avoid war,” http://theconversation.com/its-not-1914-all-over-again-asia-is-preparing-to-avoid-war-22875Asia is cast as a region as complacent about the risks of war as Europe was in its belle époque. Analogies are an understandable way of trying to make sense of unfamiliar circumstances. In this case, however, the historical parallel is deeply misleading. Asia is experiencing a period of uncertainty and strategic risk unseen since the US and China reconciled their differences in the mid-1970s. Tensions among key powers are at very high levels: Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe recently invoked the 1914 analogy. But there are very good reasons, notwithstanding these

issues, why Asia is not about to tumble into a great power war. China is America’s second most important trading partner. Conversely, the US is by far the most important country with which China trades. Trade and investment’s “golden straitjacket” is a basic reason to be optimistic . Why should this be seen as being more effective than the high levels of interdependence between Britain and Germany before World War One? Because

Beijing and Washington are not content to rely on markets alone to keep the peace. They are acutely aware of how much they have at stake. Diplomatic infrastructure for peace The two powers have established a wide range of institutional links to manage

their relations. These are designed to improve the level and quality of their communication, to lower the risks of misunderstanding spiralling out of control and to manage the trajectory of their relationship. Every year, around 1000 officials from all ministries led by the top political figures in each country meet under the auspices of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The dialogue has demonstrably improved US-China relations across the policy spectrum, leading to collaboration in a wide range of areas. These range from disaster relief to humanitarian aid exercises, from joint training of Afghan diplomats to marine conservation efforts, in which Chinese law enforcement officials are hosted on

US Coast Guard vessels to enforce maritime legal regimes. Unlike the near total absence of diplomatic engagement by Germany and Britain in the lead-up to 1914 , today’s two would-be combatants have a deep level of interaction and practical co-operation . Just as the extensive array of common interests has led Beijing and Washington to do a lot of bilateral work, Asian states have been busy

the past 15 years. These nations have created a broad range of multilateral institutions and mechanisms intended to improve trust, generate a sense of common cause and promote regional prosperity. Some organisations, like the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), have a high profile with its annual leaders’ meeting involving, as it often does, the common embarrassment of heads of government dressing up in national garb. Others like the ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defence

Ministers’ Meeting Plus Process are less in the public eye. But there are more than 15 separate multilateral bodies that have a focus on regional

security concerns. All these organisations are trying to build what might be described as an infrastructure for peace in the region . While these mechanisms are not flawless, and many have rightly been criticised for being long on dialogue and short on action, they have been crucial in managing specific crises and allowing countries to clearly state their commitments and priorities.

__**Unfinished Mods/Internals Links

2AC Human Rights TPP overlooks human rights- and the public doesn’t know it. Masnick, July 13, 2015 (Mike, American editor and entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Techdirt, a weblog that focuses on technology news and tech-related issues. Masnick is also the founder and CEO of the company Floor64 and a contributor at BusinessWeek  's Business Exchange. Before founding Floor64, Masnick worked in business development and marketing at Release Software, an e-commerce startup, and in marketing at Intel. He has a bachelor's degree in Industrial and Labor Relations and an MBA, both from Cornell University. “White House So Desperate To Get TPP Approved, It Agrees To Whitewash Mass Graves & Human Trafficking In Malaysia”, 7/14, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150713/07085031625/white-house-so-desperate-to-get-tpp-approved-it-agrees-to-whitewash-mass-graves-human-trafficking-malaysia.shtml) At the end of last month, Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), better known as "fast track" for various trade agreements, was approved after a series of back and forth procedural moves by Congress. This means that Congress no longer has the (Constitutionally-provided) power to have a say in the trade deals the administration is creating, other than a single up-or-down vote when everything is set in stone. There was, however, one tiny poison pill that Senator Bob Menendez supposedly hid in the TPA concerning the Trans

Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. And that was that it could not be used if the trade agreement included countries that were listed as a "tier 3 nation" by the State Department when it comes to human rights violations. Malaysia, one of the countries that is a part of the TPP, has been designated a "tier 3 nation" by the State Department for a while now, due to serious human trafficking problems. Some trade deal supporters in

Congress tried to quietly remove this provision, but failed. And that left a big Malaysia-shaped problem in front of the TPP. But, the Obama administration is nothing if not resourceful in trying to make sure the TPP gets approved and big corporations get their

expanded power over national governments around the globe. It just decided to upgrade Malaysia from a tier 3 country to a tier 2 country. Because it could. Not because of anything done by Malaysia to improve its record on human trafficking. But because it was politically necessary. The details are simply nauseating: There

is essentially zero evidence Malaysia has done anything to earn this reclassification. Just two months ago, police found 139 mass graves along the Malaysian border that contained migrant workers that had been trafficked or held for ransom. Since the 2014 TIP report, Malaysia has actually convicted fewer smugglers. As recently as mid-April, the US ambassador to Malaysia publicly criticized the government there for not doing more to combat trafficking. Also sketchy: the State Department's report was actually due out last month, but was mysteriously delayed until after the whole mess with fast track was concluded. It's almost like the State Department chose to wait until it saw whether or not this provision was included to determine what Malaysia's status would be. And if you want further evidence that this late decision to magically upgrade Malaysia to tier 2 wasn't in the cards originally, how about this: Menendez’s office said Friday that an interim report was delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March on Tier 2 countries only, and Malaysia was not included. In short, the State Department does not really think that Malaysia has improved its terrible record on human trafficking. It did not think so in March when it released an interim report. And then it made the political decision to hold off on releasing its June report until the middle of July to see how the fast track path proceeded. Finally, rather than take this tool and use it force Malaysia to actually improve things, it gave the country a total free pass, just for the sake of finalizing TPP. I don't care where you stand on the

various other provisions of the TPP, but this sort of cynical move -- where real lives are at stake -- is horrifying. And it shows the

"who gives a fuck, get it done" attitude of our government right now. This isn't a theoretical issue. This is one where it's clear that people right now are being harmed, and rather than do anything about it, the government has deliberately chosen to turn a blind eye to the problem just so it can get this questionable trade deal passed . This, of course, also is likely to confirm the fears of many who were opposed to the TPP all along. The Obama administration and US Trade Rep Michael Froman keep insisting that the TPP has a number of features to help raise labor standards in various countries. Yet, if they're happily willing to not just look the other way over Malaysia's human trafficking, but to actively whitewash it, what does that say for the seriousness with which it will enforce any labor practice rules?

2AC Democracy

TPP bad for workers and democracy Gautney, April 5, 2015 (Heather, an associate professor of sociology at Fordham University. She is

author of Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era (Palgrave Macmillan) and a former legislative fellow in the Office of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership is Bad for Workers, and for Democracy” 7/14, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-gautney/why-the-transpacific-part_1_b_6598604.html)

Over the past few months, protests have erupted in the halls of the U.S. Capital, and in the streets outside, to thwart the passing of the Trans-

Pacific Partnership (TPP)--a boon to corporate interests, the protesters argue, and an anathema to U.S workers. The TPP is a pending trade

agreement that brings together 12 countries along the Pacific Rim, in what would be the world's largest free trade area, accounting for 40 percent of the global economy. After five years of negotiations, intense lobbying, and heated debate,

the agreement is nearing the finish line, with finalization possible by the end of 2015. President Obama has positioned the TPP as a signature

achievement of his administration. During the 2015 State of the Union, he stressed the importance being economically out front in the Asia

Pacific, and promised that the TPP would create more and better jobs, and benefit small business. He also asked for increased executive

authority: "I'm asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers," he said, "with strong new trade deals

from Asia to Europe that aren't just free, but fair." This means that the President would negotiate and sign the TPP without formal

congressional input until after the fact, and even then, members could not offer amendments. The TPP aims to increase commerce and

investment through reducing trade barriers among participating countries. Such barriers typically include import tariffs, but also environmental

and labor regulations, known as "nontariff barriers to trade," or NBTs. Economists vary widely in their assessments of the TPP, but there's

general agreement across ideological stripes that tariffs are already low. In fact, some reports claim that only five of the 29 draft chapters in the

agreement actually relate to lowering tariffs. The protest-worthy part of the deal regards the NBTs-- the reduction of regulatory measures, and "freeing" of market activity, in the name of standardizing rules and lowering costs. Free market trade liberalization efforts like the TPP are not new . In the 1970s and 80s, catchphrases like "trickle-down economics" and the "Washington Consensus" named the series of policy prescriptions pushed by supranationals like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that combined trade liberalization with privatization and deregulation schemes, and fiscal austerity, under the rubric of structural adjustment. As economic crisis left much of the developing world in dire straights, IMF and World Bank debt programs helped pry open their markets for foreign investment, undermining indigenous industries and placing them in a sisyphean struggle against default. In some cases, like Chile, it was not the IMF that brought free markets, but the iron fist of

dictators like Augusto Pinochet, in collusion with U.S. corporate and political leadership, and laissez faire economists like Milton Friedman.

Critics of the TPP reference the failures of NAFTA , which was first conceived during this period by the original champion of

trickle-down, Ronald Reagan. Leading up to the 1994 elections, NAFTA garnered bipartisan support, but lone wolf, Independent candidate Ross

Perot warned of the "giant sucking sound" that America would hear if NAFTA passed and American jobs were drawn south. Global Trade

Watch's assessment of NAFTA's "20 year legacy" demonstrates just how right Perot was. An estimated one million jobs have been lost to NAFTA. It's put downward pressure on wages, and exacerbated America's income gap. And while pre-NAFTA, the U.S

carried a trade surplus with Mexico, and was just $26 billion in the hole with Canada--as of 2014, we had a combined trade deficit with both

countries of $177 billon. The TPP repeats many of NAFTA's mistakes, as well as those of other bilateral

trade treaties, like the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost some 2.7 million U.S. jobs, and the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which failed to deliver the 70,000 jobs its brokers promised. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that under the TPP we stand to lose more than 130,000 jobs to Vietnam and Japan alone, with American workers having to compete with their counterparts in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour . It's not just jobs and trade deficits, however. The TPP also threatens Internet freedoms and civil liberties, collective bargaining rights, public and environmental health, food safety, financial stability--and American democracy. The closed-door nature of the negotiation process has positioned Congress and the American people as passive recipients of public policy, rather than agents of it - and left us out of decision-making processes that will have broad

and deep implications in our everyday lives. Meanwhile, 500-plus corporations have been seated at the TPP negotiation table from the start. The good news is that some lawmakers, union leaders, and grassroots activists are voicing their

opposition. Because of WikiLeaks, public advocates and journalists have been able to assess contradictions between what Executive leadership

has disclosed about the TPP and what's actually in the agreement. Progressive Senators like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-

Mass.) have written letters to the U.S. Trade Representative in protest against the secret negotiation process, and the TPP's adverse effects on

financial regulation. Sanders has also said that he would introduce legislation to require disclosure of all future trade agreement negotiations.

Street protests are also gearing up, echoing the large-scale demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization in the late 90s.

These spurred a global movement against corporate-driven globalization, and for "fair" as opposed to "free" trade, spanning many of the

environmental, health, and labor concerns that the TPP is now raising. In Latin America, particularly hard hit by structural adjustment, a

regional trade alliance emerged among leftwing countries in opposition to Bill Clinton's Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Bolivarian Alliance

for the Peoples of Our America, or "ALBA," now accounts for over 10 percent of Latin America and the Caribbean's GDP and has produced a

broad range of social and economic programs, from literacy and hunger relief to health and medical interventions and oil-trading, as well as

telecom initiatives like TeleSur. In a radical departure from U.S.-brokered trade agreements, ALBA emphasizes public, rather than private

ownership, domestic development over exports, and cooperation over competition. Progressive regional partnerships like ALBA may not

provide an immediate answer to our TPP troubles, especially given Venezuela's current instability. But they do suggest more people-centered

values for shaping the global economy over the long haul. In the meantime, the vote to fast-track the TPP is coming soon. Let's learn our lessons from NAFTA, and avoid the "giant sucking sound" of fleeting jobs, and basic human freedoms, that's looming over the Pacific.

1AR Democracy

TPP Hurts Americans and Democracy Gautney ‘15 Dr. Heather Gautney is an associate professor of sociology at Fordham University. She is author of Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era (Palgrave Macmillan) and a former legislative fellow in the Office of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Huffington Post “Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Bad for Workers, and for Democracy” 2/3/2015 The TPP repeats many of NAFTA's mistakes, as well as those of other bilateral trade treaties , like the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost some 2.7 million U.S. jobs, and the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which failed to deliver the 70,000 jobs its brokers promised. The Economic Policy Institute estimates

that under the TPP we stand to lose more than 130,000 jobs to Vietnam and Japan alone, with American

workers having to compete with their counterparts in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour. It's not just jobs and trade deficits, however. The TPP also threatens Internet freedoms and civil liberties, collective bargaining rights, public and environmental health, food safety, financial stability--and American democracy. The closed-door nature of the negotiation process has positioned Congress and the American people as passive recipients of public policy, rather than agents of it - and left us out of decision-making processes that will have broad and deep implications in our everyday lives. Meanwhile, 500-plus corporations have been seated at the TPP negotiation table from the start.

TPP hurts the people more than helps themReich ‘15Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the former United States Secretary of Labor. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Huffington Post “Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Is a Pending Disaster” 1/6/15It's no longer free trade versus protectionism. Big corporations and Wall Street want some of both .

They want more international protection when it comes to their intellectual property and other assets . So they've been seeking trade rules that secure and extend their patents, trademarks, and copyrights abroad, and protect their global franchise agreements, securities, and loans. But they want less protection of consumers, workers, small investors, and the environment, because these interfere with their profits. So they've been seeking trade rules that allow them to override these protections. Not surprisingly for a deal that's

been drafted mostly by corporate and Wall Street lobbyists, the TPP provides exactly this mix . What's been leaked about it so far

reveals, for example, that the pharmaceutical industry gets stronger patent protections , delaying cheaper generic versions of drugs. That will be a good deal for Big Pharma but not necessarily for the inhabitants of developing nations who won't get certain life-saving drugs at a cost they can afford . The TPP also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation's legal system, who can order compensation for any "unjust expropriation" of foreign assets. Even better for global companies, the tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation's regulations. Philip Morris is using a similar provision against Uruguay (the provision appears in a bilateral trade treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland), claiming that Uruguay's strong anti-smoking regulations unfairly diminish the company's profits. Anyone believing the TPP is good for Americans take note: The foreign subsidiaries of U.S.-based corporations could just as easily challenge any U.S. government regulation they claim unfairly diminishes their profits -- say, a regulation protecting American consumers from unsafe products or unhealthy foods, investors from fraudulent securities or predatory lending, workers from unsafe working conditions, taxpayers from another bailout of Wall Street, or the environment from toxic

emissions. The administration says the trade deal will boost U.S. exports in the fast-growing Pacific basin where the United States faces

growing economic competition from China. The TPP is part of Obama's strategy to contain China's economic and strategic prowess . Fine. But the deal will also allow American corporations to outsource even more jobs abroad. In other words, the TPP is a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom , giving big corporations and Wall Street banks a way to eliminate any and all laws and regulations that get in the way of their profits.

TPP doesn’t help workersReich ‘15Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the former United States Secretary of Labor. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Salon “Robert Reich: The Trans Pacific Partnership is a corporate hijacking” 5/5/15Now comes the Trans Pacific Partnership. It’s being sold as a way to boost the U.S. economy, expand exports, and contain China’s widening economic influence . In fact, it’s just more trickle-down economics. The biggest beneficiaries would be giant American-based global corporations, along with their executives and major shareholders. Those giant corporations initiated the deal in the first place, their lobbyists helped craft it behind closed doors, and they’re the ones who have been pushing hard for it in Congress – dangling campaign contributions in front of congressional supporters and threatening to cut off funding to opponents.

These corporations made sure the deal contains provisions expanding and protecting their intellectual property around the world, but not protecting American jobs. Supporters of the deal say it contains worker protections. I heard the same thing when, as secretary of labor, I was supposed to implement the worker protections in the

North American Free Trade Act. I discovered such provisions are unenforceable because of how difficult it is to discover if other nations are abiding by them. On the rare occasion when we found evidence of a breach we had no way to force the other nation to remedy it anyway. The Trans Pacific Partnership is far larger than NAFTA – covering 40 percent of America’s global trade.

Secrecy of TPP hurts AmericansKaptur ‘15Marcia Carolyn “Marcy” Kaptur is the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 9th congressional district, who has served since 1983. She is a member of the Democratic Party. The Hill “Secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership is more treaty than trade deal” 5/26/15For six years the U.S. trade representative has kept the TPP buried under a top secret classification. Even members of Congress can only read it in a secure room under the watchful eye of a security monitor. I visited that room last week to review several sections of the deal and was not allowed to make copies, keep notes, take pictures, or share anything I learned with anyone unless they have Top Secret security clearance, all under threat of prosecution. Despite the

secrecy, this deal has provisions the American people need to know about. Something called Investor-State Dispute Settlement would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States to force products into our marketplace. If federal or state health, consumer safety, environmental or labor laws ban a product, a three-person panel of international trade lawyers, not subject to

Senate confirmation or conflict-of-interest restrictions, can impose heavy fines unless those laws are overturned. These decisions cannot be appealed in any U.S. court. The TPP would also nullify many financial safeguards put into place after the Wall Street collapse of 2008 . It ignores currency manipulation, a rampant practice internationally. Importantly, like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the United States-Korea Free Trade Agreement before it , it does not open closed foreign markets, nor does it deal with discriminatory border taxes that increase the costs of importing U.S. products and decrease the cost of foreign exports . And many of the labor and environmental provisions in the deal are entirely unenforceable. The American people need to gauge the TPP’s impact on workers, the economy and our rule of law. Its complicated provisions need to be unpacked in full view. If the

TPP was a good deal for America’s working families, small businesses or manufacturing industries, it wouldn’t be kept secret. Members of Congress would not need to be threatened with prosecution to prevent us from sharing its contents with the American people.

Our Constitution assigns Congress, not the executive, responsibility “to regulate Commerce with foreign nations.” Using “fast-track” is an end run around the Constitution to force us to rubber-stamp a bad deal. The TPP will outsource good jobs, liquidate America’s industries and punch holes in U.S. sovereignty. Congress and its constituents, the American people,

must be allowed access to the TPP — and time to review it. Given the opportunity, Congress could amend this deal and put our economic strength to work for the American people. If Congress agrees to give up our constitutional responsibility and fast-track this secretive deal, we will be cashing out America at the expense of future generations.

TPP only helps big corporationsReich and Trumka ‘15Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the former United States Secretary of Labor. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Richard Louis Trumka is an organized labor leader in the United States. He was elected President of the AFL-CIO on September 16, 2009, at the labor federation's convention in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Los Angeles Times “Demanding A Debate on the Trans-Pacific Partnership – History's Largest Trade Deal” 3/6/2015But American corporations have gone global, and in recent decades the payoffs from trade agreements have mainly gone to those at the top. Now they make many of their products overseas and ship them back to the United States.

Recent trade agreements have protected their intellectual property abroad — patents, trademarks and copyrights — along with their overseas factories, equipment and financial assets. But those deals haven't protected the incomes of most Americans, whose jobs have been outsourced abroad and whose wages have gone nowhere. As for the problems with the TPP? What's been leaked about its proposals reveals, for

example, that the pharmaceutical industry would get stronger patent protections , delaying cheaper generic versions of drugs. The deal also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys , outside any nation's legal system, that can order compensation for lost expected profits resulting from a nation's regulations, including our own. These extraordinary rights for corporations put governments on the

defensive over legitimate public health or environmental rules. The deal would encourage and reward American corporations for outsourcing even more jobs abroad. And it does nothing to prevent other nations from manipulating their currencies to boost their exports and undermine the competitiveness of U.S.-made products . The administration calls the TPP a key part of its strategy to make U.S. engagement in the Asia-Pacific region a priority. It

thinks the TPP will help contain China's power and influence. But the trade pact is likely to make giant U.S. global corporations even more powerful and influential. White House strategists believe such corporations are accountable to the U.S. government. Wrong. At most, they're answerable to their worldwide shareholders.

TPP hurts the US economyZeese ‘12Kevin Zeese is an American political activist who has been a leader in the drug policy reform and peace movements and in efforts to ensure a voter verified paper audit trail. Global Research “Obama’s “Employment Creation” Program: Massive Outsourcing of American Jobs” 9/10/12The Trans-Pacific Partnership will do even more harm to U.S. employment. The treaty is being negotiated in secret by the United States Australia, Brunei, Chile,

New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. The TPP contains an unusual provision, a docking agreement, which allows other countries to join. Right now, the U.S. is attempting to bully smaller, economically desperate countries

with a few allies joining. This October Canada and Mexico will be part of the TPP, but only after key sections are negotiated without them. Later, Japan and China will likely join but it will not stop there. The TPP could set the standard for worldwide trade – a major reshuffling of our social contract without our participation. In comparing job loss from NAFTA to the TPP Economy in Crisis reports the “negative

effects may seem small compared to the damage the TPP could do . Free trade has allowed companies to seek out the lowest standards in wages and

regulatory conditions, and the TPP would give these companies even more low-wage, low-regulation countries to do business in. Americans will either have to lose their jobs, or be willing to work in horrendous conditions for little pay.” It is obvious how the TPP will result in lost jobs and lower wages for Americans. When you are creating a corporate trade agreement with a country like Vietnam, where the

CIA estimates the GDP per capita was $1,400 in 2011 compared to the U.S. where it is $48,400. There is no question that transnational corporations will go to a country where they can pay pennies on the dollar for labor. There is no way for U.S. workers to lower their wages enough to compete.

TPP kills democracy and the ability for government to regulate the environmentOmondi 15Joseph, journalist specializing in international politics, Pub. June 30 2015 http://www.scoopnews.org/usacorporate-capitalism-greed-killing-democracy-and-taking-away-civil-rights/ Acc. July 14 2015As I reported on Wednesday, a deal was worked out in the U.S. Senate on the early afternoon of May 13th to “Fast-Track” through to approval U.S. President Barack

Obama’s proposed trade deals, TPP with Asia, and TTIP with Europe . (It should have been reported on the nightly TV news programs, but most of them ignored it

then, and reported the news only the next day when the Senators made it official.) TPP and TTIP have been represented in America’s press as “trade” deals, but instead they’re actually about sovereignty. They’re about America and the other participating countries handing their democratic sovereignty — on regulation of the environment , consumer protection, worker protection, and finance — over to panels, all of whose members will be selected by the large international corporations that for

years have been working with U.S. President Obama’s Trade Representative to draft these “trade” treaties. If some corporation “C” under these ‘trade deals’ then brings a case to one of those panels and says that country “X” has any regulations regarding the environment, consumer protection, worker protection, or finance, that are stricter than the ones that are set forth in TPP and TTIP, then country X will be assessed to pay a fine to corporation C, for “unfair trade practices ” against that corporation. In other words: these corporate panels will constitute a new international government, with the power to fine countries for exceeding the regulations that are set forth in these international ‘trade’ treaties.

TPP is bad for workers and democracyGautney ‘15Gautney ’15- Heather, Associate Professor of Sociology (at Lincoln Center) B.A., University of Pittsburgh, M.A., St. John's University; Ph.D., CUNY, 2006 Heather Gautney is Associate Professor of Sociology at Fordham University, Lincoln Center. She has authored books and articles on politics and a variety of social movements, including Occupy Wall Street, the Alternative Globalization Movement, the Anti-Iraq War Movement, and the World Social Forum. “Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Bad for Workers, and for Democracy,” 2/3/2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heather-gautney/why-the-transpacific-part_1_b_6598604.html

Over the past few months, protests have erupted in the halls of the U.S. Capital, and in the streets outside, to thwart the passing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)--a boon to corporate interests, the protesters argue, and an anathema to U.S workers. The TPP is a pending trade agreement that brings together 12 countries along the Pacific Rim, in what would be the world's largest free trade area, accounting for 40 percent of the global economy. After five years of negotiations, intense lobbying, and heated debate, the agreement is nearing the finish line, with finalization possible by the end of 2015. President Obama has positioned the TPP as a signature achievement of his administration. During the 2015 State of the Union, he stressed the importance being economically out front in the Asia Pacific, and promised that the TPP would create more and better jobs, and benefit small business. He also asked for increased executive authority: "I'm asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers," he said, "with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren't just free, but fair." This means that the President would negotiate and sign the TPP without formal congressional input until after the fact, and even then, members could not offer amendments. The TPP aims to increase commerce and investment through reducing trade barriers among participating countries. Such barriers typically include import tariffs, but also environmental and labor regulations, known as

"nontariff barriers to trade," or NBTs. Economists vary widely in their assessments of the TPP, but there's general agreement across ideological stripes that tariffs are already low. In fact, some reports claim that only five of the 29 draft chapters in the agreement actually relate to lowering tariffs. The protest-worthy part of the deal regards the NBTs--the reduction of regulatory measures, and "freeing" of market activity, in the name of standardizing rules and lowering costs. Free market trade liberalization efforts like the TPP are not new. In the 1970s and 80s, catchphrases like "trickle-down economics" and the "Washington Consensus" named the series of policy prescriptions pushed by supranational like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) that combined trade liberalization with privatization and deregulation schemes, and fiscal austerity, under the rubric of structural adjustment. As economic crisis left much of the developing world in dire straights, IMF and World Bank debt programs helped pry open their markets for foreign investment, undermining indigenous industries and placing them in a Sisyphean struggle against default. In some cases, like Chile, it was not the IMF that brought free markets, but the iron fist of dictators like Augusto Pinochet, in collusion with U.S. corporate and political leadership, and laissez faire economists like Milton Friedman. Critics of the TPP reference the failures of NAFTA, which was first, conceived during this period by the original champion of trickle-down, Ronald Reagan. Leading up to the 1994 elections, NAFTA garnered bipartisan support, but lone wolf, Independent candidate Ross Perot warned of the "giant sucking sound" that America would hear if NAFTA passed and American jobs were drawn south. Global Trade Watch's assessment of NAFTA's "20 year legacy" demonstrates just how right Perot was. An estimated one million jobs have been lost to NAFTA. It's put downward pressure on wages, and exacerbated America's income gap. And while pre-NAFTA, the U.S carried a trade surplus with Mexico, and was just $26 billion in the hole with Canada--as of 2014, we had a combined trade deficit with both countries of $177 billon. The TPP repeats many of NAFTA's mistakes, as well as those of other bilateral trade treaties, like the Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, which cost some 2.7 million U.S. jobs, and the Korea Free Trade Agreement, which failed to deliver the 70,000 jobs its brokers promised. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that under the TPP we stand to lose more than 130,000 jobs to Vietnam and Japan alone, with American workers having to compete with their counterparts in Vietnam, where the minimum wage is just 56 cents an hour. It's not just jobs and trade deficits, however. The TPP also threatens Internet freedoms and civil liberties, collective bargaining rights, public and environmental health, food safety, financial stability--and American democracy. The closed-door nature of the negotiation process has positioned Congress and the American people as passive recipients of public policy, rather than agents of it - and left us out of decision-making processes that will have broad and deep implications in our everyday lives. Meanwhile, 500-plus corporations have been seated at the TPP negotiation table from the start. The good news is that some lawmakers, union leaders, and grassroots activists are voicing their opposition. Because of WikiLeaks, public advocates and journalists have been able to assess contradictions between what Executive leadership has disclosed about the TPP and what's actually in the agreement. Progressive Senators like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have written letters to the U.S. Trade Representative in protest against the secret negotiation process, and the TPP's adverse effects on financial regulation. Sanders has also said that he would introduce legislation to require disclosure of all future trade agreement negotiations. Street protests are also gearing up, echoing the large-scale demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organization in the late 90s. These spurred a global movement against corporate-driven globalization, and for "fair" as opposed to "free" trade, spanning many of the environmental, health, and labor concerns that the TPP is now raising. In Latin America, particularly hard hit by structural adjustment, a regional trade alliance emerged among leftwing countries in opposition to Bill Clinton's Free Trade Area of the Americas. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or "ALBA," now accounts for over 10 percent of Latin America and the Caribbean's GDP and has produced a broad range of social and economic programs, from literacy and hunger relief to health and medical interventions and oil-trading,

as well as telecom initiatives like TeleSur. In a radical departure from U.S.-brokered trade agreements, ALBA emphasizes public, rather than private ownership, domestic development over exports, and cooperation over competition. Progressive regional partnerships like ALBA may not provide an immediate answer to our TPP troubles, especially given Venezuela's current instability. But they do suggest more people-centered values for shaping the global economy over the long haul. In the meantime, the vote to fast-track the TPP is coming soon. Let's learn our lessons from NAFTA, and avoid the "giant sucking sound" of fleeting jobs, and basic human freedoms, that's looming over the Pacific.