The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is an important part of the globalization process that has been decades in the making. The process was formalized on November 12, 2011. While a “Pacific community” similar to the “European Community,” has often been mooted by New Zealand and Australian politicians,[1] TPP creates the foundation for full-fledged regional governance. Presently the states that comprise this TPP are: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States.[2]
The current format of this regional pact was announced by Ambassador Ron Kirk to the US Congress on December 14, 2009. As a free trade regional agreement, this means that each state will be obliged to open itself up to imports and a regional economic rationalization process that will Darwinistically eliminate those national industries that cannot compete. It means that once in, like other free trade agreements, extricating oneself becomes impossible. The much lauded prospects of increased employment and economic opportunities, by which such agreements are sold, such as that entered into by New Zealand with China does not – obviously – eventuate. “Partnership” and “competitiveness”[3] are used simultaneously, yet free trade intrinsically does not include “partnership”; it means driving the “weaker” to the wall on the pretext that the best survive and thereby the general economy is strengthened. It takes no account of national requirements, strategic needs, and ties each state to the rise or fall of the major players in a gamble with entire nations.
When Kevin Rudd became Australian Prime Minister in 2008, he floated ideas for a Pacific regional bloc that are close to what is transpiring with the TPP. What is significant, in identifying the globalist interests that are promoting this agenda, is that Rudd presented the idea to his countrymen via a speech to the Australian branch of the Asia Society, which will be considered below. In the speech he went beyond the usual call for a closer regional agreement between Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific island nations and advocated its broadening to include the USA and China. That is to say, the Pacific community idea which in many ways is desirable; especially if it could minimize the influence of China and the USA in the region, has been broadened to being exactly what was always intended: a step toward globalization at the behest of US-based plutocracy. What Rudd said a few years ago is instructive in providing background for the present TPP, which focuses on the USA and is broadened to Pacific Rim South American states.
Nonsense about each state doing what one can do best has been used for several decades now to sell the idea of economic rationalization. Any state that embarks on such a course of reanimated 19th Century economics is left with a ravaged economy that has no chance of being self-supporting. Economic rationalization in the name of “efficiency” creates a permanent pool of the unemployable because the champions of free market economics believe, as economic reductionists, that humans are interchangeable economic units that are infinitely malleable and can fit into whatever new environment is contrived. When the theory does not accord with reality, the victims, the new pool of unemployed, are further victimized as “welfare bludgers.” Free Trade, and its method of economic rationalization, is a failed dogma. New Zealand began the process of rationalization decades ago by the start of a long process of opening up to imports, on the assumption that “inefficient” businesses would fall, and leave only the best and most suitable to fit into a regional and ultimately a world economy (the “New International Economic Order” as it was then called). The result was the destruction of New Zealand manufacturing, which has resulted in a large pool of unemployables, because the politicians cannot or will not understand that not everyone of working age is capable of being an IT worker. New Zealand’s labor intensive economy was wrecked for the sake of a globalist agenda and we today see the consequences.
The great achievement that has been negotiated is therefore to extend failed economic dogma beyond national levels and to the regional, in order that a very small element of business can expand without national impediments.
Globalist interests in the USA have not been pushing this “economic integration” as a humanitarian gesture. It is an important exercise in international power-politics. The other member states will be prostrate before US plutocracy as their resources come under the domination of free trade investment clauses in the TPP agreement. TPP will be sold in the other states as a great opportunity to sell exports to a big market. Nonsense. We have seen how the FTA between China and New Zealand operates. The big dominants and, where necessary, eliminates the little under Free Trade. The US administration is selling TPP with national rather than globalist rhetoric: “Increasing American Exports, Supporting American Jobs.”[4] Under Free Trade, there are winners and losers, and even recourse to war when the losers are no longer sustainable and fight rather than roll over and die, or when one export power conflicts with the interests of another, as in the case of World War II resulting from the success of German trade expansion in Europe and its extension into South American markets.
Free Trade has been imposed upon the world as the economic foundation for a US-dominated order since Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points”. The policy was reiterated by Roosevelt in the “Atlantic Charter.” The rhetoric has not changed for decades. When Roosevelt was laying down the terms for the post-war world to Churchill he stated:
Of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade. No artificial barriers. As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.[5]
…Will anyone suggest that Germany’s attempt to dominate trade in central Europe was not a major contributing factor to war?[6]
International trade brings war, not peace, as it is a façade for domination by hegemonic interests. The terms of TPP are intended to benefit the USA, which means US-based globalist plutocrats, the Office of the US Trade Representative stating:
Cross-cutting issues not previously in trade agreements, such as making the regulatory systems of TPP countries more compatible so U.S. companies can operate more seamlessly in TPP markets, and helping innovative, job-creating small-and medium-sized enterprises participate more actively in international trade.[7]
Economic structures are therefore to be rationalized regionally to permit free entry for US encroachments. Reference to the benefits for small-and medium-sized enterprises is nonsense, as rationalization drives such enterprises to the wall. No state will be able to subsidize such enterprises, as it will be regarded as interfering in the free market and as unfair competition. State owned enterprises are also to be subjected to competition from the globalist corporations. As it is, many of the states involved, and in particular New Zealand, have been selling their state assets and enterprises, generally to make interest payments on debts to international finance. What is left of state assets will be taken over by the major corporations, and national governments, such as they remain, will not be able to interfere because of regional regulations imposed by TPP and enforced by TPP laws and bureaucracies. Note that the above passage from the TPP principles states that regulations of each state will be altered to make national economies compatible with US corporate interests. TPP terms will ensure, “state-owned enterprises compete fairly with private companies and do not distort competition in ways that put U.S. companies and workers at a disadvantage.”[8] This means pitting the state against private business in the free market, although state assets should be regarded as being of a strategic and not strictly an economic character. However, under Free Trade there is no such concept as a “strategic national interest.”
The nine founding states of TPP are intended as the beginning of a wider process, “and will begin bilateral processes with these interested countries to discuss their readiness and ambition to meet the standards and objectives of the TPP.”[9]
The ramifications of TPP will be known only as they take effect as – apart from the final declaration – the documents of the agreement are secret for four years from ratification.[10]
Globalists’ Pacific Agenda
What Kevin Rudd proposed in 2008 was the agenda of the Trilateral Commission, created in 1973 by David Rockefeller. The Trilateral Commission was established as a think tank of globalist political and business leaders incorporating the USA, Europe and Japan. The newly appointed Italian Prime Minster, Mario Monti, is the TC European chairman,[11] who also served with Goldman Sachs.
What is notable in the context of the TPP is that the Trilateral Commission (TC) a few years ago extended its agenda to include Mexico, and the “Japan Group” has now become the “Pacific Asian Group.” Japan has stated its interest in joining the TPP.[12] Although Mexico is not one of the founding member states of TPP, the extension of Trilateralism, which originally focused on North America, Europe and Japan, was extended to Latin America and to Asia as a whole. TC stated of this:
Two strong convictions guide our thinking for the 2006-2009 triennium. First, the Trilateral Commission remains as important as ever in helping our countries fulfill their shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international system and, second, its framework needs to be widened to reflect broader changes in the world. Thus, the Japan Group has become a Pacific Asian Group, and Mexican members have been added to the North American Group. The European Group continues to widen in line with the enlargement of the EU.[13]
Of the TC Pacific Asian Group, members are drawn from the following countries to reflect this aim of a Pacific-wide union.
In 2000, the Japanese group of 85 members expanded to become a Pacific Asian group of 96 members, and includes 57 members from Japan, 15 members from Korea, 8 from Australia and New Zealand, 16 from the original five ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The new Pacific Asian group also includes participants from the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.[14]
The Commission also implies that these regional groupings are the prelude to a “new world order”:
The “growing interdependence” that so impressed the founders of the Trilateral Commission in the early 1970s is deepening into “globalization.” The need for shared thinking and leadership by the Trilateral countries, who (along with the principal international organizations) remain the primary anchors of the wider international system, has not diminished but, if anything, intensified. At the same time, their leadership must change to take into account the dramatic transformation of the international system. As relations with other countries become more mature—and power more diffuse—the leadership tasks of the original Trilateral countries need to be carried out with others to an increasing extent.[15]
