KUALA
LUMPUR - To commemorate Malaysia's 55th
Independence Day, Prime Minister Najib Razak
published an article highlighting the nation's
various accomplishments, principally that while
many of the world's economies are "either flat or
falling" Malaysia is steadily delivering high
rates of economic growth. [1]
The
ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, although
perceived by the middle class to be unpopular, has
overseen consistent economic development and has
worked to raise incomes and provide consumer
affordability. Despite these achievements, the
upper echelons of Malaysia's ruling coalition have
seemingly endorsed a controversial international
trade agreement that will have enormous impacts on
domestic consumers and will even
undermine the government's
own ability to issue legislation.
The
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a free-trade
agreement led by the United States in partnership
with Asia-Pacific nations like Brunei, Australia,
New Zealand, Singapore, and others. If the
agreement is accepted by all participatory nations
and successfully passed, signatory countries must
conform to a rigid set of legal regulations,
including strict intellectual property
protections, authored by representatives of big
foreign corporations.
While critics of the
agreement call it "a stealth attack on democratic
governance", leading members of the US Senate and
Congress have expressed outrage over the TPP
primarily due to the climate of secrecy
surrounding the negotiations. Six hundred US
corporate advisors have negotiated the TPP, and
the proposed draft text has not yet been made
available to the public, the press or
policymakers. US Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of
the congressional committee with jurisdiction over
TPP, was even denied access to the negotiation
texts. [2]
In Malaysia, members of
parliament such as Charles Santiago have voiced
frustration over their own government's
unwillingness to release any information regarding
the agreement. [3]
Based on information
contained in two leaked chapters of the TPP
agreement, the partnership aims to abolish the
accountability of foreign corporations to the
governments of countries with which they trade by
introducing a myriad of new corporate rights and
privileges. The proposed agreement would make
signatory governments accountable to foreign
corporations for costs imposed by national laws
and regulations, including health, safety and
environmental regulations, and mandate that
corporations receive compensation for such costs
taken directly from domestic taxpayers and public
funds.
Advocacy website Public
Citizen has confirmed the authenticity of a leaked
chapter of the TPP entitled "Investment" and
issued a detailed analysis of the text. In
addition to the leaked "Intellectual Property
Rights" chapter, the agreement seems to show a
major goal of US multinational corporations is to
impose extreme foreign investor privileges and
rights on developing countries by giving
individual corporations and investors equal
standing with each TPP signatory country's
government.
Non-governmental
organizations such as the Malaysian AIDS Council
and the Breast Cancer Welfare Association Malaysia
have voiced their concerns over the TPP's
restrictive intellectual property laws, which
allow United States-based drug companies to secure
long-term monopolies on pharmaceutical products by
preventing the production of generic drugs. This
provision would inevitably increase the price of
medicine in developing signatory countries. [4]
The US is demanding
aggressive intellectual property provisions that
extend existing patents on medicines for up to 10
years in addition to the current 20-year
requirement. Malaysian Health Minister Datuk Seri
Liow Tiong Lai has spoken out against the TPP,
arguing that such an agreement would make
healthcare less affordable to the public.
"We
are against the patent extension," he said.
"According to the agreement, if a medicine is
launched in the US, and then three years later it
is launched in Malaysia, the patent would start
from when it is launched here and not when it was
launched earlier in the US. This is not fair." [5]
The proposed legislation on
intellectual property will have enormous
ramifications for TPP signatories, including
Internet termination for households, businesses,
and organizations as an accepted penalty for
copyright infringement. In addition to allowing
copyright holders to ban parallel imports of
copyright material and prioritizing national
police to enforce copyright laws, a drastic
expansion of copyright duration for sound
recordings and film is imposed. [6]
Signatory nations would
essentially submit themselves to oppressive
copyright restrictions in line with US law,
severely limiting their ability to digitally
exchange information on sites such as YouTube,
where streaming videos can be considered as
infringing on copyright.
Patricia Ranald, convener of
the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network,
said, "Broader copyright and intellectual property
rights demands by the US would lock up the
Internet, stifle research and increase education
costs by extending existing generous copyright
from 70 years to 120 years, and even making it a
criminal offense to temporarily store files on a
computer without authorization. The US, as a net
exporter of digital information, would be the only
party to benefit from this." [7]
Proposed measures would also
restrict signatory nations from exercising capital
controls to prevent and mitigate financial crises
and promote financial stability. Malaysia was able
to recover from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis
more quickly than its neighbors by introducing a
series of capital control measures on the ringgit
currency to prevent external speculation.
Under the TPP, nations would
surrender their ability independently to pursue
monetary policy and impose capital controls, and
must permit the free flow of derivatives, currency
speculation and other destabilizing financial
instruments. [8] Signatories to the TPP could also
have their domestic policies (health, land use,
government procurement, regulatory permits,
intellectual property rights, monetary regulation)
legally overwritten before foreign tribunals,
giving foreign investors the right to pursue
claims against a nation outside of its own
judicial system.
In the private
"investor-state" that the TPP aims to establish,
national governments can be sued by foreign
corporations, exposing signatory countries to the
jurisdiction of investor arbitral tribunals
staffed by private sector attorneys. Foreign
tribunals could order governments to pay unlimited
cash compensation out of national treasuries to
foreign corporations and investors if new or
existing government policies hinder investors'
"expected future profits".
Any
compensation paid to private investors and foreign
corporations, in addition to large hourly fees for
tribunals and legal costs, would be shouldered by
the domestic taxpayer in each signatory country.
Under this regime, foreign investors and
multinational corporations can undermine the
sovereignty of participatory nations by skirting
domestic regulations and limiting the abilities of
national governments to make and issue policies.
The TPP would oblige nations
to alter their domestic policy to comply with 26
proposed chapters of legislation, including
financial, healthcare, telecommunications, food
and product standards, land use and natural
resources, government procurement, and others.
Clearly the TPP is
constructed to serve private, not public,
interests by exempting private corporations from
public accountability. The analysis provided in
this article is based on two leaked chapters of
the proposed agreement (which may or may not be
subject to amendments prior to the conclusion of
negotiations); the other 24 chapters have not been
released for public scrutiny, or even to
policymakers in those participating countries.
Other than the national
delegation for each participating country, the
only people who have been allowed to see the
actual text of the proposed agreement are members
of various trade advisory committees and top
corporate executives, with no representatives from
academia or civil society.
The
blanket secrecy over the entire negotiation
process is nothing short of alarming, with
legislation in place to keep text proposals from
being publicly released until four years after the
close of negotiations. [9] The next round of TPP
negotiations is set to take place in Leesburg,
Virginia, this month. [10]
Prime Minister Najib has said
Malaysia is committed to being a member of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership.
"I
hope some time in the near future we will be able
to conclude TPP," he said in May. "It is important
for the US to have free trade with ASEAN [the
10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations].
ASEAN is a US$2 trillion market of 600 million
people and there is not another trade bloc with
momentum like it in the world." [11]
Ostensibly, the TPP can be
seen as an attempt by the US to build a coalition
in which its corporate interests dominate the
ASEAN region to counter China's increasing
economic prowess. Leaders and citizens alike must
re-examine their stance on this issue and consider
the enormous negative ramifications it would hold
for consumers and domestic industry. Previous
attempts to negotiate a US-Malaysia bilateral free
trade agreement in 2006-2010 failed; one would
hope that attempts to implement a Trans-Pacific
Partnership suffer a similar fate.
Nile
Bowie is a Kuala Lumpur-based American writer
and photographer for the Centre for Research on
Globalization based in Montreal, Canada. He
explores issues of terrorism, economics and
geopolitics.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road,
Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
