Obama setback on Trans Pacific Partnership: Tobacco control advocates need to speak out publicly now

The bulk of the press coverage on President Obama’s failure win endorsement of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) on Friday has concentrated on the strong unified opposition by organized labor and the general political fallout of his defeat.
 
There is no question that these issues are important.  There is a broad consensus outside the corporate interests that have been pushing the TPP (including with nearly $200 million in campaign contributions to House members) We have been following this issue closely and agree that the evidence strongly supports the proposition that the earlier trade agreements upon which the TPP is based have led to declining opportunities for American workers, wage stagnation, and increasing income inequality.
 
But that is not  the only thing wrong with the TPP.
 
The TPP includes “investor-state” provisions that allow multinational corporations to sue countries over regulations that the corporations argue will cost them money.  (The cigarette companies have been using similar provisions in other trade agreements to sue Australia, Uruguay, and other countries to block plain packaging of cigarettes and large warning labels.  The threats of such suits have also been used to prevent other countries from acting.)  While it may be reasonable to require compensation for a factory that has been nationalized, the language in trade agreements has gone way beyond that to allow businesses use these provisions to threaten public health, the environment, worker safety, and financial reform.  We published a paper, "Health preemption behind closed doors: trade agreements and fast-track authority," in the American Journal of Public Health last year.  (John Oliver has an excellent primer on these issues which is a lot funnier here.) 
 
Up to this point the tobacco control political community has been pretty quiet on these issues, fearing that raising them would lead the Republicans to put language in the fast track bill specifically protecting Big Tobacco and foreclose the possibility of getting the Obama Administration to include a tobacco “carve out” in the TPP.  I was never a fan of this thinking (I’ve never seen public health win in quiet “behind the scenes” negotiations against big money), but, obviously our colleagues in DC did not see things that way.
 
The situation is quite different now, after Friday’s vote.  There is no doubt that President Obama is scrambling to save the TPP and it is very important that the public health and environmental issues become an important element of the public discourse so that we do not end up with an agreement that fixes the most egregious impact on workers and income inequality but leaves all the other bad things in the TPP intact.
 
It is time for the public health advocates in DC to put the tobacco issue front and center as an example of the broader adverse impact of the TPP on public health.
 
Representative Sandy Levin (the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee) published a cogent analysis of a wide range of the problems with the TPP and the thinking behind it.  There needs to be a broader discussion of all these issues. need to be (available at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-sander-/an-open-letter-to-progres_b_72...).  These issues need to be put front and center.
 
Some things that need to be done if the discussion of the TPP (and the similar agreement for the Atlantic countries):

1. The entire chapter on Investor-State relations be replaced with a clear statement that nations have a right to enact health, environmental, and related legislation and regulations and specifically state that companies do not have a cause of action under to oppose such actions.

2. Repeal such agreements in bilateral agreements already executed by parties to the TPP.

3. Make the entire draft treaty be made public now, so that there can be a reasonable debate over its actual provisions.  The fact that the public has had to rely on WikiLeaks belies President Obama's claims of "the most transparent administration" ever.

4. Release the names of all the advisory committees that have helped the USTR negotiate and insist that these committees operate in the open with broader public involvement.

 
It is also time for Hillary Clinton to stop trying to avoid the issue of trade agreements.  Today she finally said something, essentially telling President Obama that he should listen to Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.  While that is a step in the right direction, she needs to recognize that all her talk about the middle class and income inequality is hollow as long as she is willing to accept the kind of trickle-down economics that President Obama and the Republicans have embraced in the TPP.  She has to join the strong consensus among Democrats that these politics have been an abject failure.
 
Most important, as the media and public discuss the future of trade there needs to be a broader discussion than just whether labor is exercising new muscle (which it is) to the much broader issues that the TPP raises.
 
Public health and tobacco control advocates can play an important role in broadening the discussion by injecting tobacco into the discussion now.