Tag: world trade organization
What Does ‘Made In America’ Mean To Trump?

What Does ‘Made In America’ Mean To Trump?

“MAGA,” blusters Donald Trump. “Make America Great Again!” America’s ranching families, however, would like Trump to come off his high horse and get serious about a more modest goal, namely Make America COOL Again.

COOL stands for Country of Origin Labeling, a straightforward law simply requiring that the labels on packages of steak, pork chops, etc., tell us if the meat came from the USA, China, Brazil or Whereintheworldistan. That’s useful information, empowering consumers to decide where their families’ food dollars go. But multinational meatpacking giants like Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill don’t want you and me having this basic knowledge and power to decide for ourselves.

So, in 2012, the meat monopolists got the World Trade Organization to decree that our nation’s COOL law violated global trade rules — and our corporate-submissive Congress-critters meekly surrendered, repealing the law.

Then came Donald Trump, blustering furiously against world trade scams and launching his Made in America campaign, which included promising struggling ranchers that he’d make restoring the COOL label a centerpiece of his new NAFTA deal. Ranching families cheered Donald the Dealmaker because getting that “American Made” brand on their products would mean more sales and better prices.

Now, however, cheers have turned to jeers, for Trump has issued his new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, ballyhooing it as a “historic transaction.” But wait a minute … Where’s the beef? In his grandiose 1,809-page document, there is not one scrap about restoring COOL, not one word.

Worse than being left out, America’s hard-hit ranching families are actually slapped in the face by Trump’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal, for it allows multinational meatpackers to keep shipping into the U.S. market foreign beef that does not meet our food safety standards! Aside from the “yuck” factor and health issues, this gives Tyson and other giants an incentive to abandon U.S. ranchers entirely.

What’s the matter with Donald and The Trumpateers? Why won’t they stand up for the American workers and business owners who make their products right here in the good ol’ US of A?

Oh, yeah, I know they talk a good game. Trump himself even issued a bold, star-spangled executive order in 2017 promoting the purchase of “American-made goods” produced by American labor. We consumers respond positively to that pitch, generally preferring to buy everything from mattresses to hockey pucks that are manufactured here at home. For example, take Patriot Puck. What’s not to like about this corporation, which literally wraps its hockey pucks in American flag packaging and proudly advertises that they are “the only American Made Hockey Puck”?

Well, sadly, one thing not to like is that the puck-seller’s pitch was a lie. Its product actually turned out to be made in China. It’s not just wrong to engage in such an unfair and deceptive sales scam. It’s a federal crime.

Saddest of all, though, is that when honest competitors and defrauded consumers protested the blatant firm’s deceit, Trump’s Federal Trade Commission appointees proved to be Made in America wimps. Far from standing up for U.S. workers, they coddled the job-stealing culprit. Trump’s Commission assessed no fines, required no admission of the obvious corporate crime, didn’t even make “Patriot” Puck notify customers of its false marketing scam and let it keep all the profits it pocketed from the fraud. Instead, Trump’s regulatory “toughies” insisted that the threat of future fines would keep such outlaws in check.

Seriously? The real crime here is not just that corporation after corporation is being given a pass for mocking our Made in America laws but that our nation’s president is mocking the plight of America’s manufacturing workers by making a spectacle of standing up for them. It’s a shameful political fraud.

One thing we can do to address the injustice of Trump & Company not enforcing Made in America laws and backing down from COOL is to stand with America’s farm and ranch families against their betrayal by Trump and the Big Food monopolists by contacting the National Farmers Union: NFU.org.

Populist author, public speaker and radio commentator Jim Hightower writes The Hightower Lowdown, a monthly newsletter chronicling the ongoing fights by America’s ordinary people against rule by plutocratic elites. Sign up at HightowerLowdown.org.

ISDS: A Corporate Cluster Bomb To Obliterate Our People’s Sovereignty

ISDS: A Corporate Cluster Bomb To Obliterate Our People’s Sovereignty

The Powers That Be are very unhappy with you and me. They’re also very unhappy with senators like Elizabeth Warren, activist groups like Public Citizen, unions like the Communications Workers of America and … well, with the majority of Americans who oppose the establishment’s latest free-trade scam.

Despite its benign name, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a cluster bomb of legalized “gotchas” that won’t bode well for the vast majority of Americans and for our small businesses. TPP empowers global corporations from Brunei, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, and seven other nations to circumvent and even overturn our local, state, and national laws. Those moneyed elites are upset that rabble like us oppose their latest effort to enthrone corporate power over citizen power, and they’re particularly peeved that we’ve found TPP’s trigger mechanism — something called “Investor-State Dispute Settlements.”

That’s a mouthful of wonky gobbledygook, isn’t it? Indeed, ISDS is an intentionally arcane phrase meant to hide its democracy-destroying impact from us. It would create a system of private, international tribunals through which corporations (i.e., “investors”) could sue our sovereign governments to overturn laws that might trim the level of corporate profits that — get this — they “expected” to make.

These tribunals are not part of our public courts of justice but are totally privatized, inherently biased corporate “courts” set up by the UN and the World Bank. A tribunal’s “judges” are corporate lawyers, and they unilaterally decide whether the protections we’ve enacted for workers, consumers, our environment, etc. might pinch the profits of some foreign corporation.

This mess all started when the Dr. Frankensteins on our Supreme Court created a monster by declaring that a lifeless, soulless corporation is a “person.” But the corporate giants thought, “Why stop there?” So now, another coterie of Frankensteins is trying to transform multinational private corporations into “nations.” The secretly engineered Trans-Pacific Partnership magically endows private profiteering corporations with sovereign rights equal to those of real nation-states. Under TPP, a “corporate nation” — unlike individual citizens of real nations — could directly compel the U.S. or other countries to alter their laws in order to increase corporate profits. Of course, the Frankensteins dismiss such concerns as an “irrational fear,” claiming that no corporation would actually be able to force a country to change its laws.

To give you a look of what this is going to look like, let’s take a peek at what other corporate-written trade deals have done to the laws written in the USofA.

Remember that these Frankensteins say that no corporation outside our country can change our laws. Really? Well, just ask “Flipper” the dolphin. While not yet able to confront a nation directly, corporations can get their home governments to sue in the World Trade Organization to overrule another nation’s laws. That’s what happened to our “dolphin-safe” tuna labeling law. Most Americans oppose tuna fishing with nets that also catch and kill the loveable Flipper, so we have a law encouraging dolphin-free fishing methods. Tuna packers that comply can put “dolphin-safe” on their labels, thus giving consumers a marketplace choice. Free enterprise at work!

But some Mexican fishing companies got their government to complain that our label discriminates against their dolphin-slaughtering methods — and a World Trade Organization “compliance” panel ruled that our label is a “technical barrier to trade,” essentially overruling a law that We the People enacted.

And now, if the Trans-Pacific Partnership is approved, foreign corporations won’t have to get their national governments to intervene, for they will become governments. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and the other revolutionaries of 1776 would upchuck at this desecration of our nation’s democratic ideals — and so should we. For the lowdown on this and to join today’s rebellion against the aristocracy of corporate elites, go to www.citizen.org/trade/.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. 

Photo: Global Trade Watch via Flickr

WTO Panel Faults U.S. Duties On Indian Steel

WTO Panel Faults U.S. Duties On Indian Steel

Geneva (AFP) — The United States broke global trade rules by slapping import duties on Indian steel products, a WTO panel ruled on Monday, calling on Washington to fall into line.

A World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel, said that Washington had “acted inconsistently” with regulations set down for the international body’s 160 member economies.

“We conclude that the United States has nullified or impaired benefits accruing to India,” said the panel, which is made up of independent trade and legal experts.

“We recommend the United States bring its measures into conformity with its obligations,” it added.

India filed its complaint at the WTO in 2012, after Washington imposed duties of nearly 300 percent on imports of products including steel pipes.

The United States applied the duties because it felt Indian steel manufacturers were benefitting from unfair subsidies.

WTO members are allowed to impose so-called countervailing duties — a special import tax — if they believe that their domestic manufacturers are being hurt by subsidies granted by a trade partner to its companies.

The WTO regulations require the importing country to first conduct a detailed investigation that shows properly that domestic industry is hurt.

Legal sparring over the scope and depth of such investigations, and the legitimacy of subsidies and countervailing duties is commonplace at the WTO.

The WTO polices global trade accords in an effort to offer its member economies a level playing field.

Its panels can authorize retaliatory trade measures by the wronged party if its rival fails to fall into line.

It disputes process can last for years however, owing to appeals, counter-appeals and compliance assessments.

Monday’s ruling was the first by the WTO panel in the steel case, and Washington has the right to appeal.

AFP Photo

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