Such a Deal

The Office of the United States Trade Representative, the agency responsible for negotiating two massive upcoming trade deals, is being led by former lobbyists for corporations that stand to benefit from the deals, according to disclosure forms obtained by The Intercept.

  Unofficial Sources

I know; you’re shocked.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a proposed free trade accord between the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim countries; the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a similar agreement between the U.S. and the E.U.

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Critics say the deals will provide corporate interests with sweeping powers to challenge banking and environmental regulations.

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Many of the former clients of the trade officials now negotiating these agreements stand to gain immensely.

Sharon Bomer Lauritsen and Christopher Wilson both represented biotech companies. As economist Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the TPP could restrict competition in the pharmaceutical industry by undermining government regulation of drug prices and by creating new rules to obstruct the introduction of generic drugs.

Robert Holleyman represented software companies. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the TPP “contains DRM [Digital Rights Management] anti-circumvention provisions that will make it a crime to tinker with, hack, re-sell, preserve, and otherwise control any number of digital files and devices that you own.”

Of course, it’s hard to discuss these deals, because the people formulating them are meeting in secret.

The contents of the trade deals are secret and therefore still veiled from scrutiny by the public and even most members of Congress. Only trade officials and select corporate representatives have been able to review them.

And Obama wants to fast track the deals so that Congress doesn’t have time to review them properly when it comes time to vote.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.