Trade deal must safeguard our sovereignty

Economist Bill Rosenberg in the Christchurch Press comments on the Transpacific Partnership Trade Agreement negotiations.

Are these agreements benefiting the people of the nations involved, or are they strong arm tactics from multinational lobby groups?

"This emphasis on opening markets with inadequate consideration as to the domestic effects of such agreements in weakening our ability to shape our own society and economy is distinctly 19th rather than 21st century. The globalisation of the 19th century ended with the First World War. The globalisation since the 1980s produced lower growth rates and repeated financial crises."

"Prominent Harvard economist Dani Rodrik says he has an “impossibility theorem” for the global economy: “democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full”. Our trade and investment agreements have ignored this incompatibility in favour of increasingly intense global economic integration, resulting in the wilting of our national sovereignty – our ability to make rules that would assist our development. Our democracy has weakened as a result: we still elect governments, but they are increasingly powerless to change the rules."

Trade deal must safeguard our sovereignty