Bruce Bissett: TPP doesn't display true colours

Bruce Bissett

What bothers me about the TPP is that the battle for acceptance or rejection of the 12-country deal is largely being fought on ideology, not outcome.

That may not be so surprising given that most of the agreement is still secret and no one can yet properly quantify its pros and cons.

But it is - supposedly - a trade deal, containing all sorts of minutiae about who can ship how much of what to whom under which rules, and how much the taxman might clip off what is paid for it.

So surely the real deal is about terms of business, not whether someone drives a blue car as opposed to a pink or an orange one. Yet somehow this is being portrayed as an ideological struggle whereby the blue car is held up to be the only thing fit to drive.

Lacking comprehensive detail for or against, that must be taken as an article of faith. You don't even get to kick the tyres.

It's not good enough, is it. No one buys a car primarily for its colour; you buy it for the soundness of its manufacture, and the type of engine it has, and the fuel it needs, and how fast it can go, and the comfort and safety of the ride. That you then order one in a certain colour is the last decision, not the first.

But we are being sold a car we haven't even seen, simply on the basis it is blue, and blue (we are told) is the colour we must have. Shades of Henry Ford, except his were black.

This is the trouble with neo-liberalism: the creed assumes it is not only right, but the only right. Take it or have it forced upon you. And, suckers that we are, little old New Zealand is happy to accept "the best we can get" - a blue car containing very few of the things we actually want in our vehicle, and quite a few "extras" that we don't.

We can't even say whether it's value for money because not even the salesmen - sorry, negotiators - know exactly how it will work in practice, as no-one can predict how often the secret disputes tribunals will be called upon and will rule against New Zealand for some technical breach of terms of trade.

Given these "investor-state disputes" can - and usually do - involve suits costing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, it would only take a handful of such claims to go against us for the modest estimated worth of the deal to be entirely negated.

Bear in mind the United States is a litigious-loving country; large American corporations have whole departments spending all their time finding reasons to sue people. There have already been twice as many investor-state suits filed in the US as anywhere else.

So the few benefits the deal may deliver New Zealand - which even Trade Minister Tim Groser seems unable to specify with any clarity - could well be overwhelmed by corporations intruding on our sovereignty to paint our laws as "unfair", to our great cost.

Make no mistake, this is very much a corporate-oriented agreement. Bad enough for US President Barack Obama to say the deal is about "the US, not China, setting the rules for trade" - what about the rules we might want? - but what he meant was, "US corporations setting the rules".

And their rule is that you pay blind for a blue car that may not actually suit you, and pray that when it breaks down it doesn't cost a country to fix.

That's the right of it.

-Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.