TIP OF THE ICEBERG

One of the biggest issues that will impact on all who live inside an iwi is the TPPA, which first came to my notice in 2010 through the Jane Kelsey-edited book No Ordinary Deal: Unmasking the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. 

Although the TPPA is currently exciting this country’s opposition MP’s, it is just one of three trade deals being secretively brokered right now by the United States.  The other two are the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). Together with the TPP, they are known as the 3 Big T’s. 

In these three agreements, the US is rewriting the rules of the global economy for everybody.  Once signed they will cement a key part of the US plan to create a new global bloc that will ensure the dominance of its largest companies.  To understand why the US is pushing these agreements, we need to go back to the 1950s.

After the Second World War the United States accounted for half the world’s economy.  Because its influence was unmatched by any country, it was able to write the early rules of international trade to its advantage.

The World Trade Organisation was created in this context.  But as economies like China and India joined the WTO, it became a more democratised arena and eventually the US lost control.  Needing a new strategy to maintain its global dominance, in the classic American style, it went big. 

Bypassing the WTO, the US is negotiating the biggest international agreements the world has ever seen.  But when you look across all three deals, you see that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are all excluded.  Why?  Because those are the emerging economies which lead the threat to US dominance. 

The ultimate goal of these trade agreements is not the normal one of getting member states to mutually lower tariffs between them; the goal is getting ultimate control over everything.

In that context, the TPP, TTIP and TiSA can be seen as part of a new geopolitical war taking place between the United States and the emerging economies, especially China. 

Having moved to militarily encircle China through the Pivot to Asia, the US is now moving to economically encircle it and its fellow BRICS members by constructing a kind of reversed circle that very pointedly leaves them out. 

By integrating Latin America away from Brazil, Western Europe away from Russia and Eurasia as a whole, Southeast Asia away from India and China, and the African nations away from South Africa – the US intends to reorient those geopolitical blocs towards itself. 

To understand why and how this will impact every area of life that you care about, Jane Kelsey’s book is a good place to start.  But be prepared to delve deeper, because what was revealed in 2010 has since turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.