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posted by
martyb
on Monday November 05 2018, @06:49AM
from the All-Your-Copyrights-are-Belong-to-US-dept dept.
from the All-Your-Copyrights-are-Belong-to-US-dept dept.
The Australian Government ratified the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) on October 31st 2018. Protesters of the TPP have been described as being "misinformed" by authorities keen to sign the agreement. Previous analysis of the TPP showed detrimental clauses for Australia. The TPP was first signed in New Zealand in 2016 amongst significant protests. While there were some opiniions that Australia could be a winner in the agreement, the consensus amongst experts that the pharmaceuticals and investor-state arbitration sections make the TPP not worth signing — the total cost from these clauses will outweigh any other benefits. A full costing of the TPP for Australia is still not available.
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Australia Ratifies the TPP on Halloween
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sillema sillema nika su
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @11:18AM (3 children)
No, I only remember the USACANMEX or whatever the name of exact same thing that Trump "came up with". It's tremendous!
Seriously, read what the agreement is instead of freaking out about it. But people are too lazy to read it, just panic and have their uninformed opinions. Here's a thing - how about instead of being the NIMBY crowd, how about coming up with ideas how to make it better?? Oh wait, that requires reading in the first place. ETOODIFFICULT!!!! Where are my Cheetos? Need to do my NFL sports on Monday evening....
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 05 2018, @06:29PM (2 children)
I'm referring to NAFTA. Pretty much no one wanted it. Would you care to hear about the downsides? I'm going to go over the most obvious.
Mexico had an economy, which was pretty much dependent on land ownership. Mexico passed laws decades ago - I don't know just how long ago - that you had to be a Mexican citizen to own land. The kept all the banana companies from coming in, and setting up another banana republic. US corporations hated that shit. So - NAFTA - you let us buy land, and we'll build factories. So - however good or bad you might claim Mexico's economy to be, it was wrecked. Suddenly corporations from all over the place are in Mexico, buying up land. You never hear that, on this side of the border - everyone thinks that Mexico lost nothing, and gained a helluva lot with NAFTA. But - we destroyed their economy.
With Mexico's economy destroyed, or very nearly so, we have masses of people who no longer own land, and have no jobs. Subsistence farming is no longer an option for many. Where do they go? North, of course. And, in the process, they deal a pretty hefty blow to our own economy. There is no counting that journeymen and even master craftsmen put out of work, because those Mexicans were hungry, and willing to work for 1/2, or 1/3, or even 1/4 the wages any American could afford to work for.
Not everyone could foresee that - but a lot of people DID see it coming. THAT is why so many southern states were oppposed to NAFTA.
A lot of fools claimed that the corps would pay a lot more in taxes, but those were just the fools who kept their heads buried in the sand. Corporations, even then, often times paid no taxes, instead qualifying for some tax break, or discount, or waiver, or loophole. General Electric was in the news for paying jack-shit in taxes at the time.
We have lost a helluva lot with NAFTA. The Mexicans have lost even worse. Canada? IMHO, they've about broken even. The ONLY winners with NAFTA were the corporations.
Now - you read. Try it. Google around, read, and try to comprehend. If you can wrap your head around Mexico's problems, then understand how those problems created more problems for us, maybe you won't be so flippant. I was here, and I watched it happen, young puppy.
And, also - fuck Trump. The ONLY good thing about Trump is, he's not Clinton.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 06 2018, @05:27AM (1 child)
The only reason that Canada maybe broke even under NAFTA was because we lost so much under the original Canada USA free trade agreement. That is what wiped out Canada's manufacturing, sending it all to the States. My Dad for example, a machinist who took pride in his work and made about $25 an hour with good benefits had his profitable employer shutdown and move to Phoenix, paying the workers $8 an hour (probably with minimum benefits) and the company became unprofitable. The deal was perceived as so bad by Canadians that the party in power was wiped out, winning only 2 seats in the next election and no longer exist on the federal scene.
Imagine one of the American political parties being wiped out.
Now we have Trump proudly saying he doesn't know what he is talking about but how Canada is taking advantage of Americans, while America was running a small trade surplus, going on about diary while not mentioning sugar and all the other agricultural industries America props up and now we have NAFTA2 with some of the shit that was in the TPP now in NAFTA2. Gotta extend copyright, authors don't make enough with only 50 years after death. Shit pharmaceutical stuff, web site blocking, etc, but not really anything for the average American, just good stuff for the already rich and more shit for Canadians. And due to our adjusting to a NAFTA world, it is hard to just say fuck you when you're 10x bigger.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 06 2018, @03:18PM
Thanks for the point of view. Yeah, what you say goes hand-in-glove with businesses moving from the "rust belt" in the states, to the "sunbelt". That preceded offshoring, so places like Pittsburgh and Youngstown were already hit fairly hard when the steel mills started going overseas.