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bossob's avatar

What does the Obama administration know about TPP that we don't?

Asked by bossob (5929points) June 25th, 2015

Since so few details have been released, we can only speculate. If you believe that politics is like chess, in that sacrifices are made for long term gain, are there are factors involved besides trade?

President Obama is a centrist, but I’m surprised he’s willing to so thoroughly piss off his base that helped get him elected twice.

One theory I heard was that the trade deal was a compromise about future military opportunities in S.E. Asia, such as maintaining and increasing our military presence in the region to thwart Chinese threats.

Thoughts?

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8 Answers

Zaku's avatar

I don’t think “Obama is a centrist”, nor any conventional superficial political discussion comes anywhere near describing the actual decision-making process involved.

At best, I think maybe Obama chooses to delay stating outright opposition to the TPP for tactical reasons, waiting for the right level of public & media attention. It reminds me of how he didn’t seem to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline until near the end of the process. Except in this case there was the weird comment he made against Elizabeth Warren’s opposition to it.

However, I think even though Obama is clearly intelligent, I think that probably his actions and words are mainly determined by others. I’d say that for every US president since at least Gerald Ford, one or more groups/organizations beyond the president’s advisors and his political party leaders are actually making almost all of the decisions and policies, and their agendas largely do not resemble the apparent person of the president, nor his political party, nor the US government, except as is necessary to remain seemingly consistent with those stories about why things happen, whose main purpose is to form a convenient story and distraction from what’s really going on.

Which is, that most of the wealth on the planet is held, and practically all of it controlled, by one group of interrelated banks and corporations, not to mention the systems of ideas that go unquestioned and determine what people do, thought of as “economics” or “that’s the way the world works”.

The TPP is evidently something that power base wants, and they have more than enough influence over our politicians and ownership of our media to pretty blatantly attempt to bypass and ignore due political process to pass an international agreement that our laws can’t protect our environment from corporations, and that corporations should be able to sue people from impeding corporations’ right to capitalize hand over fist in any way they want to.

The biggest mystery to me, is why the corporate power base is still obsessed with increasing its domination over the money game, when they’ve already basically won the Monopoly game they’re playing and own the Earth for all purposes, yet they’re still acting as if they’re happy to destroy the Earth.

My best guess is that these people are so deep in their perverted ideas and warped world view, that they can’t perceive that’s what they’re doing.

ragingloli's avatar

An important thing that this “treaty” will enable corporations to do, is to sue governments over regulations resulting in “diminished profits” in private courts, circumventing any national judicial systems.
What they want is complete official immunity from any laws and regulations anywhere on the globe, instead of having to expensively bribe politicians, and TPP is one big step towards that goal.

bossob's avatar

@Zaku I’ve long believed that what the average citizen knows as ‘politics’ is merely orchestrated theater intended to distract us from the real business of running the country behind the scenes. If they keep us pointing fingers at each other (left and right), we’re much less likely to be pointing fingers at them.

@ragingloli I’ve been thinking about that too, and it scares the crap outta me.

janbb's avatar

TPP scares the shit out of me and I can’t understand why it passed.

stanleybmanly's avatar

It passed for the very reasons we’re afraid of it. The people who benefit most from the thing (while insisting that we all benefit) call the tune, and we’re all gonna dance to it. Obama has already stated rather cryptically that this is going to be rammed down our throats, and it’ s going to happen regardless of what he does. The only question lies on whether or not he will be involved?

stanleybmanly's avatar

The thing that is undeniable about the TPP is that is at heart an agreement to establish rules which supercede the national sovereignty of individual nations, a very necessary step on the road to corporate governance.

Pachy's avatar

I completely agree with @janbb. Whatever happened to checks and balances? Oh wait—it went the way of separation of church and state.

cheebdragon's avatar

How can we know what he knows, if we don’t know? If we knew what he knew, we would, in fact know.

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