Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

TPP trade deal: text published online

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INSERT: Hope that puts an end to this shame.

Australian MPs allowed to see top-secret trade deal text but can't reveal contents for four years
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/02/australian-mps-allowed-to-see-top-secret-trade-deal-text-on-condition-of-confidentiality

what a disgraceful Australian slap to democracy wank that was. I'm not sure, are there still secret side deals not published? Ok, seems no.

Trans-Pacific Partnership critics concerned about environment, IP clauses in trade pact's fine print

By political reporter Francis Keany, wires
Updated Fri at 3:49pm


Photo: Trade ministers from a dozen Pacific nations sealed the Trans-Pacific Partnership in
October. (Reuters: Marco Garcia)

Related Story: Trade Minister Robb optimistic about TPP ratification
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-07/australia-deal-emboldened-japan-on-tpp-andrew-robb/6834314
Related Story: Turnbull heaps praise on 'win-win' TPP deal
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-06/pacific-nation-ministers-negotiators-lock-in-tpp-trade-deal/6829368
Map: Australia - http://www.google.com/maps/place/Australia/@-26.000,134.500,5z

Critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) warn the full text of the agreement highlights serious concerns about environmental protections and intellectual property rights.

For the first time the fine print of the agreement .. http://dfat.gov.au/trade/agreements/tpp/official-documents/Pages/official-documents.aspx —
which would eliminate 98 per cent of all tariffs between the 12 nations including Australia — has been released.

LOLOL, this earlier one was worth looking at back then .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=114491593

Trade Minister Andrew Robb welcomed the release of the figures, claiming it is proof the deal will provide benefits for Australians.

--
What's in it for Australia?

The Government says the TPP deal will eliminate 98 per cent of all tariffs on everything from food to manufactured goods, resources and energy.

Sugar: Access into US to increase from 107,000 tonnes to 207,421 tonnes. Could see exports to US climb above 400,000 tonnes by 2019/20

Beef: Deal liberalises exports to Japan, and eliminates tariffs into Mexico, Canada and Peru

Dairy: Japan tariffs will be eliminated on a range of cheeses covering over $100 million in existing trade

Rice: For the first time in over 20 years, Australia will be able to export more rice to Japan

Resources and energy: Immediate elimination of tariffs on iron ore, copper and nickel to Peru

Manufacturing: Immediate elimination of tariffs on iron and steel products exported to Canada, and to Vietnam within 10 years

Intellectual property: TPP will not require any changes to Australia's patent system and copyright regime

Biologic medicines: Australia's existing five years of data protection for biologic medicines will not change.

Tobacco: Companies will not have extra power to challenge the plain packaging legislation under the TPP.

Source: Dept of Trade
--
.. more .. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-05/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-pact-detail-released/6917292

Hope there is no more undisclosed stuff. END INSERT.
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Release offers first detailed look at 12-state Trans-Pacific Partnership, world’s largest free trade agreement


Trade ministers from the 12 TPP member countries in Atlanta, Georgia, where they reached
agreement on the deal last month after secret negotiations. Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

Staff and agencies Thursday 5 November 2015 08.50 EST

New Zealand .. http://www.theguardian.com/world/newzealand .. has put the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) online, offering the first detailed look at the world’s largest free trade deal, the most ambitious effort in years to remove barriers to commerce.

The New Zealand government, which signed on to the deal, put the contents of the agreement on its website on Thursday .. http://tpp.mfat.govt.nz/text , saying it would continue to undergo legal review.

Analysis TPP or not TPP? What's the Trans-Pacific Partnership and should we support it?
Twelve Pacific rim countries have signed a sweeping trade deal but will it cut red tape and boost commerce or is it a sellout to big business that will cost jobs?
Read more .. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/05/tpp-or-not-tpp-whats-the-trans-pacific-partnership-and-should-we-support-it

Many activists have criticised the fact that the 12-state agreement was surrounded by secrecy, while critics also noted that signatory governments were forced to approve the unmodifiable deal in an all or nothing vote.

The accord must be signed and ratified by the respective countries and many may experience difficulties, not least in the US .. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/10/obama-defends-tpp-deal-dismisses-secrecy-concerns .. as it tries to convince a sceptical Congress.

INSERT: Senator Warren on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=115762324

Lawmakers in the US have questioned whether it will help US exports and create jobs or just expose more American workers to low-wage competition, giving multinational corporations excessive power.

Under a trade law passed earlier this year, Barack Obama must give the public time to review the text before he signs the agreement and turns it over to Congress for approval. Lawmakers cannot nitpick the deal with amendments. They must simply vote yes or no. Congress is likely to take up the issue next year in the heat of the presidential election campaign.

Obama faces fierce resistance to the deal from within his own Democratic party. Hillary Clinton, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, has said she is against it. Her opposition may make it harder for Obama to round up votes.

The White House says the deal eliminates more than 18,000 taxes that countries impose on US exports. The agreement also calls for labor protections such as ensuring that workers in member countries have the right to form unions.

Those opposed to the deal contend it will force American workers to compete even more directly than they do now with workers in low-wage countries such as Vietnam.

They also complain that the agreement goes beyond traditional trade issues such as tariffs and import quotas and includes giveaways to powerful business lobbies.

The input from big businesses, such as pharmaceutical companies, recording studios, agribusinesses and other multinationals is evident in the myriad details laid out in the document. But negotiators reflected an awareness of those concerns with meticulous references to the rights of each country to protect its own sovereign powers and best interests.

In response to US pressure, TPP countries agreed to give drug companies about eight years of protection from cheaper competitors for biologics, which are ultra-expensive medicines produced in living cells. The industry had sought 12 years protection.

The agreement stresses that its provisions on patents for medicines “do not and should not prevent a Party [country] from taking measures to protect public health”.

The agreement says it “should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of each Party’s right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all”.

While the deal allows multinational companies to challenge laws and regulations in private tribunals on the grounds they amount to unfair barriers to trade, it also includes safeguards against abusive claims and guarantees governments the right to enforce health, labor, safety and environmental regulations in the public interest.

Countering worries that companies might be able to overturn local anti-smoking laws, countries can specifically ban tobacco companies from using the tribunals to challenge health regulations — likely to the consternation of US lawmakers from tobacco-producing states.

Australia’s trade and investment minister welcomed the publication of the complete text of the deal, adding that TPP members had agreed to release details as soon as possible.

“Today’s release honours that commitment and provides the Australian public with an opportunity to examine the text and more fully understand any areas of the negotiation that are of interest to them,” Andrew Robb said.

Under the deal, most tariffs would be eliminated or reduced on everything from beef, dairy products, wine, sugar, rice, horticulture and seafood through to manufactured products, resources and energy.

The TPP also establishes mechanisms to handle disputes between foreign investors and governments. Proponents say such measures protect investors who fear local laws such as health and safety regulations could violate a trade deal and threaten their investments.

But opponents say it allows commercial interests to force governments to change laws at the behest of private interests.

Delegates from the dozen Pacific Rim states finally managed to hammer out an agreement .. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/oct/05/trans-pacific-partnership-deal-reached-pacific-countries-international-trade .. in the US last month – five years after the Washington-led talks began.

Spanning about two-fifths of the global economy, the deal aims to set the rules for 21st-century trade and investment and press non-member China to shape its behaviour in commerce, investment and business regulation to TPP standards.

Those involved are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US and Vietnam. The US and Japan are the two biggest economies involved but long appeared unable to find common ground on key issues, including auto sector access and Japan’s huge agricultural tariffs.

If all 12 countries have not ratified the agreement within two years, provisions allow for it to take effect if six countries comprising 85% of the GDP of the bloc have signed. That means US ratification as the world’s biggest economy is essential.

Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press contributed to this report

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/05/tpp-trade-deal-new-zealand-releases-text-online

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The TPP trade deal cracks down on Big Tobacco — but gives drug companies a pass

Updated by Julia Belluz on November 6, 2015, 10:15 a.m. ET @juliaoftoronto [e-mail]


Riccardo Mayer/Shutterstock

After nearly eight years of negotiations, the United States and 11 other countries have finally reached consensus on the Trans-Pacific Partnership .. http://www.vox.com/cards/trans-pacific-partnership/what-is-the-trans-pacific-partnership , the biggest US trade deal since the 1990s.

On Thursday, the full text .. http://www.vox.com/2015/11/5/9674560/tpp-trade-deal-text .. was finally published online. The sprawling deal would affect a variety of issues, including tariffs, labor rights, and international investment. But some of the deal's most controversial provisions had to do with health.

Critics worry that while the deal may be good global trade, it's going to be bad for public health. Specifically, they say the TPP is going to drive up the cost of medicines, make it harder for companies to bring cheaper, generic versions of drugs on the market, and make it easier for pharmaceutical (and food or other health) companies to sue governments for regulations that are bad for business.

1) New rules will reduce competition and raise prices in pharmaceuticals


This map from the Congressional Research Service shows the countries that are expected to join the TPP
and the volume of US trade with each of them.

The pharmaceutical industry has lobbied hard for rules that would limit competition in the drug market, arguing that stronger protections were needed to allow drug companies to finance research and development. Those provisions have raised the ire of public health groups, which say that making drugs more expensive will deny millions of people access to potentially lifesaving medicine.

There are two specific ways the TPP would make drugs more expensive and inaccessible.

First, by allowing companies easier access to patent extensions for medicines: Every country has systems for granting patents to the first company to invent a drug — a reward for innovation. After these expire, other companies can apply to get their cheaper "generic" copies of these drugs on the market.

At the moment, it's up to countries to decide whether a small change in a drug molecule should warrant a patent extension. But the TPP mandates that governments consider extending patent terms beyond the usual 20-year term — a provision that is expected to limit a country's ability to define its own patent law and delay when generic drugs can become available.

Here's how that could work in practice. Let's say a pharmaceutical company holds a patent for a particular drug, which it filed seven years ago, and it wants to bring that drug to the Food and Drug Administration for approval for market. Jing Luo, a Harvard-affiliated doctor who wrote about the agreement in the journal JAMA .. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2430590 , explained that patents for products usually last 20 years, which means that the company would have 13 years left on its patent at that point. If the FDA sits on the company's approval application for another four years, the company can file for a patent extension for the time lost waiting for the health regulator to rule on its application. The company would win if the FDA's delay were considered an "unreasonable curtailment of the effective patent term."

This kind of patent-term extension didn't exist before, and public health advocates like Judit Rius Sanjuan of Doctors without Borders worry companies will use the new levers to extend patent exclusivity. For example, Doctors Without Borders is currently working to get generic versions of HIV/AIDS treatments into South Africa, where a patent barrier is keeping them out. As a result, drugs are more expensive there, and there are few alternatives when certain treatments are in short supply. If generics were allowed to enter the South African market, more affordable medicines could flow into the country, improving both access and supply for patients and doctors. Under the TPP, she expects more countries will face such shortages.


An anti-TPP protest on March 20, 2015, in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Second, through new data exclusivity protections for biologic drugs: When new drugs are created, companies perform clinical trials to test whether they are safe and effective for use in human beings. This data is submitted to regulatory authorities like the FDA when companies want to get their drugs approved for market.

The question of how long companies can keep this data secret, particularly with respect to biologic drugs, was one of the major sticking points in the negotiations.

Biologics are treatments made from biological sources, as opposed to chemicals that were synthesized in a lab. They're more difficult and expensive to make, costing .. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/health360/posts/2015/05/19-trans-pacific-partnership-prescription-drugs .. on average 22 times more than non-biologic drugs.

Because of the high prices of these drugs, companies are very interested in developing "biosimilars" — cheaper copies of the original drugs, like generic versions of pharmaceuticals. The reason these biosimilars are so cheap is that manufacturers can usually just rely on data from clinical trials submitted by the maker of the original biologic. But, of course, the maker of the original drug doesn't want everyone using its data and making cheap knockoffs.

To prevent this, US law gives the maker of a biologic drug 12 years of data exclusivity. The FDA can't approve a similar drug that relies on the original data during this time. (Theoretically, other companies could conduct their own trials to create a biosimilar, but because this is so expensive, they rarely do.) By contrast, in other countries, there are looser rules — or no rules — around such data exclusivity .. http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/health360/posts/2015/05/19-trans-pacific-partnership-prescription-drugs . Japan offers eight years, for instance. Brunei offers zero.

The United States (and big pharmaceutical companies) had been pushing to get every country to agree on 12 years of data protection for biologics. The final agreement didn't go that far: Biologics data will be protected for at least five, and in some cases at least eight, years.

This means the agreement will prevent more affordable biosimilars from entering the market for a longer period of time in places that previously had no bar to entry. (The US data protection will stay the same, since the current 12 years falls in line with the "at least" five or eight years clause.)

The burden of this new law will be felt by the world's poorest countries, according to Rius Sanjuan. "It’s a catastrophe for the developing countries," she said. Many of the countries in the agreement had zero monopoly protection on data for biologics, and under the TPP, they'll have to wait at least five years before allowing cheaper biosimilars to reach patients.

Luo also explained that this type of barrier "never occurred prior to the TPP" and noted that the reason these protections were put in place originally was to encourage new products to come to the market and protect them for as along as possible. On the other hand, after that period of exclusivity, the public could benefit from the widespread availability of generic medicines. With the TPP, Luo thinks that balance — between protecting companies' interests and protecting public health — is out of whack.

"I'm worried that the agreement is very strong in terms of intellectual property protection for medicines — and it was developed without consultation with the public sector," he said. "As I read the agreement, it seems to be motivated by corporate interests and interest to expand economies. Often public health concerns take a back seat."

2) The TPP could make it easier for companies to fight domestic regulation



International agreements decades ago created quasi court systems that let multinational companies push back when they felt their investments in countries were being undermined.

Critics say the TPP's provisions, related to these investor-state dispute settlements (or ISDS), will make it easier for foreign companies to challenge laws in member countries that they feel cut into their profits.

"These investor-state dispute settlement provisions have very broad definitions about the kinds of things investors can object to — not just expropriation but regulations of all kinds," Amy Kapczynski .. http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/AKapczynski.htm , who wrote about the deal's health impact in the New England Journal of Medicine .. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1506158?query=featured_home , told Vox when a version of the chapter was leaked in the spring.

Tobacco companies, for example, have used similar provisions to push back on a variety of anti-smoking policies in countries like Uruguay and Australia. And because of that, the final TPP agreement allows countries to ban tobacco companies from using these private tribunals for that purpose.

The text also includes other protections in chapters beyond the ISDS. In the expropriation annex, for example, the text reads: "Non-discriminatory regulatory actions by a [country] that are designed and applied to protect legitimate public welfare objectives, such as public health, safety and the environment, do not constitute indirect expropriations, except in rare circumstances."

But that doesn't mean companies won't take to these private tribunals to fight policies on everything from soda taxes to drug pricing rules that they argue are bad for business, said Deborah Gleeson, an Australian public health researcher who has analyzed the TPP .. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673613603128 . "While [the safeguards] appear to protect public health and the environment, they leave a big loophole for corporations to exploit, in launching an ISDS case arguing that their circumstances are rare."

3) Companies have more rights to challenge government decisions about drug and medical device reimbursements


Trade representatives attend an October 2014 TPP press conference in Sydney. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty)

A big theme in the agreement is transparency. And part of the "transparency annex" mandates that countries give drug and medical device companies more rights to monitor and challenge government decisions on drug reimbursements, explained Jamie Love .. http://www.keionline.org/prizes , director of the NGO Knowledge Ecology International. (Reimbursements are the prices insurance companies or governments agree to pay drug companies for their new products.)

"The TPP includes a bunch of provisions that say you have to give all kinds of information to the drug companies that sell drugs or medical device makers that seek reimbursement for government agencies," he added. "They can harass agencies if they don't accept a price that they like."

Love said this means that countries will now be required to justify why they decided to pay $7,000 per month for a reimbursement of a specific cancer drug, as opposed to the $12,000 the company was looking for — a burden he expects will drive up the cost of drugs.

4) There are loopholes that empower countries to fight against corporations that undermine health — including anti-tobacco provisions

The Obama administration was aware of criticisms from the public health community, and the agreement includes some provisions that — according to the White House — limit the power of large drug companies. For example, the intellectual property chapter "confirms that [countries] are not prevented from taking measures to protect public health," according to the White House.

Language in the "exceptions chapter" also gives countries flexibility to "regulate in the public interest, including for a [country’s] essential security interest and other public welfare reasons."

One of the strongest public health wins probably came with the tobacco exception under the "investor-state dispute settlements" section. Again, tobacco companies have been fighting local governments that enact laws they don't like. (Famously, in 2012, US tobacco company Philip Morris sued Australia .. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8903507/Philip-Morris-sues-Australian-government-over-tobacco-packaging.html .. from its headquarters in Hong Kong — under a Hong Kong–Australia state-investment treaty — after the country enacted a law that required companies use only plain cigarette packaging.)

Under the new law, countries in the TPP can "deny the benefits of Investor-State dispute settlement with respect to a claim challenging a tobacco control measure of the [country]," the White House said.

But how well all of this works in practice, particularly in countries with limited resources to fight multinational corporations, remains to be seen, Love said.

"It’s one thing to be able to sue Australia from Hong Kong," he said. "But it's another thing to be able to sue anybody in the
TPP. The [investor-state dispute settlement] provision will bring [these litigation strategies] to a whole different level."

Gleeson also felt the tobacco exception is too limited. "It’s optional rather than an absolute carve-out, so countries can elect to deny the right to use ISDS to challenge tobacco control measures," she said. "And it only applies to ISDS, not to other parts of the agreement or to the state-to-state dispute settlement process. So we could still see the sorts of legal challenges that Australia is facing from other countries over tobacco plain packaging through the World Trade Organization’s state-to-state dispute settlement process."

So the question becomes whether there is any language that would make these public health researchers and advocates feel safe. And with nearly half the world's economy and many millions of lives at stake, it's possible the answer is no.

In this StoryStream

TPP: Full text of Trans-Pacific Partnership released
http://www.vox.com/world/2015/11/6/9680976/tpp-trade-deal-text-released-news

* Nov 6
The Trans-Pacific Partnership, explained
http://www.vox.com/cards/trans-pacific-partnership
* Nov 6
The TPP trade deal cracks down on Big Tobacco — but gives drug companies a pass
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/6/9680758/tpp-public-health-drug-prices-tobacco/in/9445017
* Nov 6
How trade deals like TPP fail the global poor
* 39 updates
http://www.vox.com/world/2015/11/6/9680976/tpp-trade-deal-text-released-news

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/6/9680758/tpp-public-health-drug-prices-tobacco

===

Joseph E. Stiglitz .. https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/joseph-e--stiglitz , a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book, co-authored with Bruce Greenwald, is&nbs… read more

Adam S. Hersh .. https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/adam-s--hersh .. is Senior Economist at the Roosevelt Institute and Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue.

OCT 2, 2015 73

The Trans-Pacific Free-Trade Charade

NEW YORK – As negotiators and ministers from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries meet in Atlanta in an effort to finalize the details of the sweeping new Trans-Pacific Partnership .. https://ustr.gov/tpp (TPP), some sober analysis is warranted. The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems.

You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for “free trade.” The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about “free” trade .. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trans-pacific-partnership-obama-secrecy-by-simon-johnson-2015-05 .

New Zealand has threatened to walk away from the agreement over the way Canada and the US manage trade in dairy products. Australia is not happy with how the US and Mexico manage trade in sugar. And the US is not happy with how Japan manages trade in rice. These industries are backed by significant voting blocs in their respective countries. And they represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the TPP would advance an agenda that actually runs counter to free trade.

For starters, consider what the agreement would do to expand intellectual property rights for big pharmaceutical companies, as we learned from leaked versions of the negotiating text. Economic research .. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.27.1 .. clearly shows the argument that such intellectual property rights promote research to be weak at best. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary: When the Supreme Court invalidated Myriad’s patent on the BRCA gene, it led to a burst of innovation that resulted in better tests at lower costs. Indeed, provisions in the TPP would [WILL] restrain open competition and raise prices for consumers in the US and around the world – anathema to free trade.

The TPP would manage trade in pharmaceuticals through a variety of seemingly arcane rule changes on issues such as “patent linkage,” “data exclusivity,” and “biologics.” The upshot is that pharmaceutical companies would effectively be allowed to extend – sometimes almost indefinitely – their monopolies on patented medicines, keep cheaper generics off the market, and block “biosimilar” competitors from introducing new medicines for years. That is how the TPP will manage trade for the pharmaceutical industry if the US gets its way.

Similarly, consider how the US hopes to use the TPP to manage trade for the tobacco industry. For decades, US-based tobacco companies have used foreign investor adjudication mechanisms created by agreements like the TPP to fight regulations intended to curb the public-health scourge of smoking. Under these investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) systems, foreign investors gain new rights to sue national governments .. http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-secret-corporate-takeover-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2015-05 .. in binding private arbitration for regulations they see as diminishing the expected [my color] profitability of their investments.

International corporate interests tout ISDS as necessary to protect property rights where the rule of law and credible courts are lacking. But that argument is nonsense. The US is seeking the same mechanism in a similar mega-deal with the European Union, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership .. https://ustr.gov/ttip , even though there is little question about the quality of Europe’s legal and judicial systems.

To be sure, investors – wherever they call home – deserve protection from expropriation or discriminatory regulations. But ISDS goes much further: The obligation to compensate investors for losses of expected profits can and has been applied even where rules are nondiscriminatory and profits are made from causing public harm.

Philip Morris International is currently prosecuting such cases against Australia and Uruguay (not a TPP partner) for requiring cigarettes to carry warning labels. Canada, under threat of a similar suit, backed down from introducing a similarly effective warning label a few years back.

Given the veil of secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations, it is not clear whether tobacco will be excluded from some aspects of ISDS. Either way, the broader issue remains: Such provisions make it hard for governments to conduct their basic functions – protecting their citizens’ health and safety, ensuring economic stability, and safeguarding the environment.

Imagine [my color again] what would have happened if these provisions had been in place when the lethal effects of asbestos were discovered. Rather than shutting down manufacturers and forcing them to compensate those who had been harmed, under ISDS, governments would have had to pay the manufacturers not to kill their citizens. Taxpayers would have been hit twice – first to pay for the health damage caused by asbestos, and then to compensate manufacturers for their lost profits when the government stepped in to regulate a dangerous product.

It should surprise no one that America’s international agreements produce managed rather than free trade. That is what happens when the policymaking process is closed to non-business stakeholders – not to mention the people’s elected representatives in Congress.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trans-pacific-partnership-charade-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-and-adam-s--hersh-2015-10

See also:

Chris Hedges: The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=118331183

Bernie Sanders Will End the IMF's Economic Violence in Greece and Africa
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=115169135

Here Are The Trade Fight's Biggest Winners And Losers
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=114857817

What the FTA? Who is benefiting from free trade agreements?
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=113725750