June 17, 2015
The NYT apparently is doing its part to try to push the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Today it ran a piece warning people in its headline “failure of Obama’s Trans-Pacific trade deal could hurt U.S. influence in Asia.” The piece presented the views of a variety of individuals who said the failure of the TPP would damage the standing of the United States in the region.
Remarkably the piece did not include the views of anyone who had a different opinion. This is remarkable because we know from the leaked chapters that there have been important objections to at least parts of the TPP from most of the countries in the deal. For example, all the countries disagreed with much of what the United States was pressing in the form of stronger and longer patent protection for prescription drugs. Australia objected so strongly to the investor state dispute settlement mechanism that they indicated that this provision would not apply to the country. (It’s not clear that this is final.)
Surely the NYT could have found someone in these countries who thinks that negatives, like higher drug prices and an extra-judicial legal system that can over-ride laws passed at the national and sub-national level, over-ride any gains from the modest tariff reductions in the TPP. For some reason the NYT opted not to present the views of any opponents of the TPP, wrongly implying to its readers that everyone believes that the failure of the TPP would be a serious negative.
The piece also included the wonderful line:
“The White House and its Republican free-trade allies in Congress are searching for ways to revive a bill that would extend aid to workers displaced by global trade agreements.”
The phrase “free-trade” is not accurate and does not belong in this piece.
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