TTIP Update XXXIX

As previous updates - and many economists - have pointed out the huge economic gains claimed for TTIP are largely illusory.  The 119bn euros boost for the EU not only turns out to be under the most optimistic assumptions, clearly impossible to obtain now given the growing resistance to TTIP's de-regulation, but refers to 2027, and is the difference between an EU economy with TTIP and without.  That means the claimed 0.5% GDP boost is actually a ten-year cumulative figure, and amounts to the rather less impressive 0.05% extra GDP on average - in mathematical terms, indistinguishable from zero given the very approximate nature of the models used to make these predictions.

That's been quite widely known for a while.  But it turns out that there is another extraordinary fact buried within the main CEPR study, which was paid for the European Commission [.pdf]. I've discovered this thanks to an illuminating post about TTIP by Martin Whitlock, published in the UK edition of The Huffington Post. 

I'll cover his main point later on, but first I want to explore the extremely important piece of information that he mentions almost incidentally.  It goes some way to explaining the European Commission's obsession with cars: whenever they give an example of an industry that could benefit from TTIP, it's always cars.  And when asked about harmonisation of standards, it's again always about the different rules that apply to cars on each side of the Atlantic.  Here's what Whitlock writes:

cars form a big part of the E.U.'s case for TTIP. They account for 47% of the increase in exports and 41% of the increase in imports in the best case scenario, with well over three times as many vehicles braving the Atlantic storms in one direction or the other than at present.

When you think about it, that's staggering.  Indeed, so staggering that I checked what the CEPR study says to make sure those figures were correct.  For those of you following at home, it turns out that the relevant numbers are on pages 68 and 69 of the report.

In the most ambitious scenario, and in 2027, CEPR expects there to be a positive change in bilateral exports from the EU to US of 186,965 million euros (that's obviously a ridiculous precise figure - no model can provide six significant figures of accuracy about aspects of the world economy in 2027.)  Of that, fully 87,358 million euros are predicted to come from the motor industry.  The works out as 47%, as Whitlock writes.  Similarly, the table on page 69, CEPR expect there to be a positive change in bilateral exports from the US to EU of 159,098 million euros, which 65,903 million euros come from the motor industry, representing 41% of the total.

So that confirms Whitlock's figures.  But let's just think about what those CEPR predictions mean.  In rough terms, they say that in 2027, nearly 50% of TTIP's boost to transatlantic trade will come from one industry: cars.  Not only that, but CEPR further claims that the transatlantic exports for both the EU and the US industries will be boosted by roughly the same amount.  In other words, TTIP will lead to more cars being shipped from the EU to the US, but also for almost the same number of extra cars to be shipped back across from the US to the EU.

Since the number of cars travelling in each direction across the Atlantic more or less cancel out, this means that TTIP's net effect will be to cause vast quantities of fuel to have been burnt carrying out this vehicle swap.  It turns out, then, that 50% of TTIP's trade boost is pure environmental profligacy.  This is not an aspect of TTIP that the European Commission emphasises much, for some reason.

As I mentioned, this hugely important insight was only mentioned in passing by Whitlock, who goes on to analyse what are the consequences of moving roughly the same number of cars across the Atlantic in both directions.  Here's what he writes:

If the extra cost of transporting cars back and forth across the Atlantic is to be absorbed, and the vehicles are to offer better value to the consumer, it follows that the productive work contained in them will have to be acquired more cheaply. That could mean greater automation, or lower wages, or both. Either way, a smaller slice of the value of cars will go to the people who actually make them.

...

Trade which outsources production to low wage countries has the effect of importing poverty from the poor country to the rich one, since the loss of productive work in the rich country causes wages to fall. The danger of TTIP is that Europe and America will start exporting their significant levels of poverty to each other at a much faster rate than at present - a potentially disastrous chase to the bottom in which poverty increases inexorably as real wages continue to fall. Meanwhile, the capacity of governments to address the problem will be further eroded by the investor protections of ISDS and the tax breaks inevitably demanded by investor capital that can go wherever the return is greatest.

There are two important points here.  First, that it is inevitable that workers will suffer if CEPR's predictions for TTIP turn out to be true.  That's just simple economices: the whole "point" of TTIP from a business point of view is to allow cheaper labour to be used in this way; but, by definition, cheaper labour drives down wages.  Indeed, that is precisely what has happened with earlier trade agreements like NAFTA and KORUS.

The other point is that even if they wanted to, EU and US politicians wouldn't be able to pass new regulations to ensure that wages did not fall, say.  That's because such new rules would inevitably be called an "indirect expropriation of future profits" by the companies affected.  And if you think that is far-fetched, it's worth bearing in mind that ISDS has already been used in precisely this way: the French multinational Veolia is suing the Egyptian government for daring to raise the country's minimum monthly wage.  Preserving national sovereignty in the fields of wages and social justice is yet another very good reason for taking ISDS out of TTIP.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

TTIP Update XXXVIII

In my last update, I mentioned plans to organise a European Citizens' Initiative, a formal petition against both TTIP and CETA.  I think everyone assumed that the European Commission would just ignore this, but in fact it has done something rather more spectactular - and stupid: it has refused to allow the ECI to go ahead at all.

In its rejection of the ECI, the European Commission claims that the negotiating mandates on TTIP and CETA are not legal acts but internal preparatory acts between EU institutions and therefore not contestable via an ECI.

“The Commission’s view that only acts with an effect on third parties are permissible for an ECI is obviously a legal error. The negotiating mandate of the Commission is a formal decision of the Council and therefore a legal act. If the Commission’s legal opinion had any substance, then in plain English this would mean that Europe’s population is excluded from participation in the development of any kind of international agreements – information that is as frightening as it is scandalous,” according to Efler.

What’s more, the Commission claims that it cannot make negative ratification proposals and therefore cannot comply with the ECI demand not to conclude the CETA and TTIP negotiations. “Contrariwise, this means that citizens can only applaud international negotiations carried out by the Commission, but not criticize them,” said Efler.

The group behind the petition have realised that they don't actually need the European Commission's permission anyway, and so are simply going ahead without it:

We reject the Commission’s attempt to silence us and will carry out our European Citizens’ Initiative anyway, without approval from Brussels. We are currently preparing an online signature gathering tool as well as paper signature forms and will start collection in early October. At the same time, we will challenge the Commission in court by appealing to the European Court of Justice.

In the past couple of weeks our campaign has gathered support from over 240 civil society organisations in 21 EU member states. It is somewhat ironic that the European Commission, which often complains about the “lack of a European public”, is trying to stop this truly European movement in its tracks. We will continue to speak out against the Commission’s total lack of transparency in the negotiations and favouring of corporate interests over the common good. We will stay very public and very European in our opposition to TTIP and CETA!

This refusal even to allow a largely symbolic petition to proceed is indicative of the contempt with which the European Commission regards any expression of the public's view on these matters, which it seems to think are the exclusive domain of bureaucrats and politicians (and lobbyists).  That was underlined even more strongly last week, when the official text of the trade agreement with Canada, CETA, was finally released.  However, at precisely that moment, the European Commission was also "celebrating" the conclusion of the talks, with the implication that no further changes can be made.  So after telling everyone that the public would have its chance to comment on the CETA text later, it turns out that in fact it can only see the document not change it.  The European Commission has an interesting concept of what democracy means.

Interestingly, the meeting between the European Commission and the Canadian government was called a "celebration" rather than a signing because Germany has indicated that it is not happy with the inclusion of the problematic investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) chapter in CETA.  Since it is likely that CETA is a "mixed agreement" - that is, one that requirements approval from all 28 member states, as well as from the European Parliament - if Germany were to say "no", CETA would be dead.

It turns out that ISDS is only one of the really bad ideas contained in CETA.  That's what emerges from an excellent analysis of CETA from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, called "Making Sense of the CETA".  It's very clearly written, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand what the implications of CETA will be for business or, indeed, for all of us. 

Another key factor influencing both CETA and TTIP is the appointment of a new European Commissioner responsible for trade, and thus trade agreements.  The Commissioner-Designate is Cecilia Malmstrom, and she was involved in yet another storm around ISDS at the weekend.

Jon Worth has all the details in a blog post, but essentially a document from Malmstrom indicated that she was willing to drop ISDS from TTIP.  The S&D group in the European Parliament issued a statement welcoming the move, but then Malmstrom tweeted that she hadn't written the words.  This made her appearance yesterday before the European Parliament as part of the process of confirming her as trade commissioner even more important, since it would clarify what exactly she thought on this matter.

Her statements during that session were unequivocal: she will not take ISDS out of CETA, which she regards as finished.  She claimed she had an open mind on ISDS in TTIP, saying that it might be taken out, but she was unconvincing here.  It seems clear that she wants ISDS in TTIP.  Her justification was very weak.  She kept on saying that ISDS existed in other treaties (true), was problematic there (true), and therefore required a new, improved version to be used in TTIP (false).  She seemed to be under the impression that "improving" ISDS in TTIP would somehow rectify all the deeply-flawed versions elsewhere, when they are completely unrelated.

It's true that there are some EU countries that have bilateral trade agreements with the US that includes ISDS.  These are ex-Soviet countries that clearly signed up to bad deals because they were desperate to escape the clutches of Russia.  But that's not a reason to include ISDS in TTIP, and inflict the same problems on everyone else.  The East European treaties can all be cancelled in due course, and that is what those countries should do.  Adding ISDS to TTIP simply gives new life to the idea. 

Equally, the view that ISDS can be "improved" sufficiently to make it acceptable is wrong: it is just not needed between the EU and US, both of which have well-functioning legal systems.  Creating new rights for corporates that allow them to challenge national regulations outside the legal system is just anti-democratic and bad policy. 

Finally, it was clear that Malmstrom laboured under the delusion that we "need" this ISDS in TTIP so that we can demand that China accepts it in a trade agreement that is currently under discussion.  What this overlooks is the painful fact that soon China will be investing more in Europe than Europe invests in China, such is the strength of the China's economy, and the size of its reserves.  This means that ISDS will be chiefly a weapon that can be used by Chinese companies *against* the EU, not for EU companies to use in China.  Not only will ISDS by harmful in TTIP, it will be actively dangerous in any agreement with China.

Although it was clear from the meeting yesterday that Malmstrom is not another Karel De Gucht, who was far more abrasive and arrogant than she is, equally she will not be deviating much from his policy, even if she dresses it up differently.  She made vague but essentially empty promises about increasing transparency, but ignored the real issue: that we do not have access to negotiating documents. 

Some claim that such documents must be secret, otherwise the EU negotiators will lose the advantage; this is demonstrably not true, since for WIPO talks, all the documents are open by default without problem.  But even were it true, the solution is simple: make available all those documents once they are *tabled*.  At that point, there is no negotiating advantage in keeping them secret, since the US side has already seen them.  That's also true for the lobbyists that have routine access to these documents.  The only group that suffers is - of course - the public, that never has any means of seeing what is supposedly being done in its name.  Instead, as the CETA fiasco shows, at the end of the process we are presented with a fait accompli, and told simply to like it or lump it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

TTIP Update XXXVII

In my last TTIP column, I discussed the CETA negotiations with Canada, which started before those of TTIP, but have continued in parallel with them.  That's because what happens with CETA has a massive effect on TTIP, in part because it acts as a template for the TTIP, but also because Canada's economy is tightly integrated with that of the US in many ways, and so CETA is already a kind of shadow agreement with the US.  Once again, the area where that probably matters the most is for the investor-state dispute settlement chapter included in CETA.

To see why, consider what happens if ISDS is not included in TTIP, but is present in CETA.   Philip Morris is suing Australia over the latter's strict laws aimed at reducing tobacco consumption, even though the trade agreement between the US and Australia does not contain any ISDS mechanism, by invoking an agreement between Australia and Hong Kong, using its subsidiary in the latter.  Similarly, any US company that wanted to sue the European Union would not be greatly inconvenienced if there is no ISDS in TTIP: it will simply use a Canadian subsidiary, which are pretty common given the integration between the economies in north America, to sue using CETA.

That means even before fighting ISDS in TTIP, we must fight it in CETA. But time is running out.  As I mentioned in Update XXXVI, CETA seems "finished" in some undefined sense - at least finished enough that both sides are getting ready to sign something later this month.  Since there is no way that the results of the ISDS consultation conducted by the European Commission earlier this year will be ready then, this effectively means that the intention is to ignore the 150,000 comments, most of which were strongly against including ISDS in TTIP, and enshrine it in CETA.  If that happens, then US companies will in any case have a large and convenient back-door for suing the EU even if ISDS is dropped from TTIP.

We have every reason to fear that ISDS will indeed be in CETA because of remarks made by the Italian vice-minister for trade to the European Parliament's international trade committee, INTA.  Here's how the Canadian title Embassy reported his comments:

The controversial investment protection chapter of the Canada-European Union trade deal should not be reopened, Italy’s vice minister of trade said on Sept. 3, putting his comments at odds with those of other EU countries—and raising further questions about the approval process of the much-awaited deal.

“We [member states] gave the [European] Commission the mandate to negotiate the investor-state dispute settlement agreement. Now that negotiations are finished, it is difficult to say we changed [our mind] and let’s re-discuss,” Carlo Calenda, Italy’s vice-minister of trade, told members of the European Parliament during a meeting of the parliament’s international trade committee. “If we move in this way, we will have to open up all the chapters and waste a lot of time.”

That's pretty extraordinary.  He's arguing that allowing the European public, in whose name these negotiations are supposedly being conducted, to express their opinions on the text before it is fixed for ever, would "waste a lot of time".  That reveals why the European Commission's assurance that the people would have an opportunity on to be heard later on was always a completely worthless, since at point the text would be frozen.  The Italian minister's comments confirm that there is no intention of changing anything that was agreed in secret behind closed doors, whatever the EU public thinks.

This represents a betrayal that is exacerbated by the fact that the public has forcefully let the European Commission know that it does not want ISDS, even if the detailed results of the consultation have not yet been released.  Instead, the Commission is pretending those 150,000 responses never happened, and that it is at liberty to push through its own anti-democratic agenda.

What makes things even more ridiculous is that in the same Embassy article, the EU's chief negotiator for CETA, Mauro Petriccione, is reported as saying that it was impossible to address all the issues that were likely to arise:

“The debate isn’t finished,” he added. “I cannot promise you that this text answers concerns that are still being debated or which may arise in the future.”

In fact, as I explained in a column back in March, we know that a previous massive flaw in the text was only discovered because a copy was leaked that allowed independent experts to check it.  Freezing CETA's text without allowing more such scrutiny to be applied is just folly, and almost guarantees that there will be problems later on.

That meeting before the European Parliament's INTA committee drew an another, even more significant comment from the Italian politicians present, as Yanick Jadot, an MEP on INTA explained in a perceptive article:

In one of Italy’s first appearances in the European Parliament since it assumed the Council Presidency in July, Carlo Calenda, the minister charged with overseeing TTIP for the Council, announced to the INTA committee the possibility of concluding an “interim agreement” for TTIP in light of lack of progress to date.

The announcement is politically significant. It is both a clear indication that a thorough TTIP reevaluation is underway at the highest levels in Brussels, and that a comprehensive agreement may be too controversial and substantial to swallow in one go. The minister noted that a “profound reflection on the negotiation strategy” was now needed and that a decision to go for an interim agreement could take place after the US mid-term elections in November, with an aim to conclude it in 2015.

As Jadot rightly notes, this is a clear sign that TTIP is in trouble, and the European Council and Commission are desperately trying to find some way to conjure up at least half an agreement to save face.  Whether that can then be converted into an "ambitious" one, as the Commission has been insisting is necessary, is another matter. 

As well as this unexpected signal from deep within the political machine that even its supporters know that TTIP is going nowhere, this suggestion for an "interim" agreement is an important development because the US is totally against the idea:

Anthony Gardner, the new US Ambassador to the EU, immediately refuted Italy’s interim suggestion at the same INTA meeting, aggressively defending a comprehensive deal:

“There are many geopolitical and economic reasons to conclude an ambitious agreement, and I say ambitious because we continue to believe, like our Commission colleagues, that only a comprehensive agreement would yield the significant results our leaders want. Yes I know our friend Carlo Calenda believes an interim agreement should be considered but we continue to believe that only a comprehensive agreement will work.”

While Mr. Gardner said he would look forward to “a regular, open and honest dialogue”, he went on to attack those who have raised issues of concern, such as chlorine washed chicken. Such issues he claimed were “peripheral” and amounted to “scaremongering”. So much for an open and honest dialogue. He then warned those who “refuse to believe” the assurances of both sides: “do not prejudge the results, wait until we have advanced texts before you make up your mind.”

Of course, that's precisely what we, the public, can't do: no texts will be released to us until it is too late to do anything about - exactly with CETA.  So telling people to wait until we have "advanced texts" is just another kick in the teeth.  No wonder, then, that the resistance to ISDS and TTIP is growing.  Here's what's happening in the UK:

British trade unions are this week expected to lend their support to a growing campaign opposed to a new international trade deal which critics claim threatens to make the privatisation of the health service irreversible.

Three of the UK's biggest unions have tabled motions at the Trade Union Congress in Liverpool outlining their opposition to the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP), a huge trade deal being negotiated behind closed doors at the European commission between EU bureaucrats and delegates from the US.

Meanwhile, Europe-wide initiatives are springing up.  For example, there's the European Citizens’ Initiative, an official petition:

An alliance of more than 200 civil society organisations from all across Europe has launched a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) with the aim of repealing the European Union’s negotiating mandate for the Transatlantic Trade Investor Partnership (TTIP) and not concluding the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).

The ECI was registered with the European Commission on 15 July. The collection of signatures is due to start in mid September 2014.

Here's how that will work:

One million signatures must be gathered within one year. Additionally, in seven EU states a specific minimum of supporters must be achieved, e.g. 72,000 signatures in Germany, 55,500 in France, or 54,750 in the United Kingdom. If the initiative succeeds in doing this, then the EU Commission organises a hearing in the EU Parliament, and concerns itself with the matter. The ECI citizen’s committee then finally receives a written response from the Commission. If the Commission decides to present a legal act, then this is is passed on to the European Council and to the European Parliament.

Obviously, that's a pretty long-term project, and before then, people plan to take to the streets of Europe on 11 October to protest against TTIP.  Many readers will doubtless recall that demonstrations against ACTA in 2012 led to the rapid collapse of support for the agreement, and its eventual rejection by a massive majority in the European Parliament.  It will be interesting to see whether these European marches will similarly signal the beginning of the end for CETA and TTIP.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+