Jay Kuten: Borrows' make-believe TPP

IF OUR local MP Chester Borrows had wanted an honest, robust debate on the merits of the TPP and its alleged benefits nationally and locally, that would have been OK. But his defence of TPP (Chronicle, October 9) is anything but that. I recognise that Mr Borrows has got to make some kind of sales pitch in support of leader John Key's TPP. If you take the leader's ministerial limousine, you must be willing to do Mr Key's bidding.

Chester can and does inventory accurately the number of jobs currently active in our regional industries. It's the promise of more jobs due to the TPP which has no basis in reality and which serious critics dispute, claiming that TPP will actually enable more jobs to go offshore.

What's even less debatable and amounts to what the American comedian calls "truthiness" is Borrows' claims about the minimally increased cost of medications due to implementation of the TPP. Chester says: "We know the cost of prescriptions won't increase."

He claims the expected increased cost of medications is $2.2 million and easily covered by the expected increase to our GDP from the trade deal. This flawed statement reminds me of the Bush administration assurance that invading Iraq would cost $50 billion and be paid for by Iraqi oil. It's make-believe math and make-a-wish economics.

MOH gives the current annual cost of medication to New Zealanders as $2 billion (1 per cent of GDP). It's been increasing by 5 per cent annually since 2006. That's 100 million annual increase before TPP. Mr Borrows' number, $2.2 million for the added cost due to TPP, is an 0.1 per cent increase. A very optimistic estimate would be an additional $100 million. It's much more likely to double our current costs, adding $2 billion to medication costs alone.

That is because the TPP, a massive corporate giveaway as regards intellectual property, extends patents for many biomeds for an additional five-eight years, and disfavours the way Pharmac currently brings in generics to keep the costs down.

If that information isn't confounding enough to make readers totally sceptical of Mr Borrows' bland assurances, consider his claim about the TPP effect on worker conditions in signatory countries such as Vietnam. Borrows says the TPP requires countries to follow the international worker safety and compensation rules. That's only technically close to true.

While corporations like pharmaceutical companies will have recourse to a corporate-friendly dispute tribunal by claiming impairment to profits by a signatory country's efforts (see Pharmac), there are no similar provisions for enforcement of labour rules.

Alongside the false assurances of Mr Borrows stands his snarky calling opponents the pejorative name, "naysayers".

His further claim, they are "tilting at windmills", is an implied suggestion of mental unreliability.

Among his so-called naysayers, I'm proud to stand with Josef Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, both of them Nobel laureates in economics. According to Stiglitz, TPP is not a free trade agreement but a managed trade agreement to benefit multinational corporations and the wealthy upper 1 per cent.

Krugman agrees and forecasts more offshoring of jobs from the US and developed countries like ours to places with lower and cheaper labour standards. To the many American economists who see this deal as deeply flawed, add now the name of Hilary Clinton, prospective candidate for US President. When it comes to considered opinion on the TPP, the nays have it.

In the meantime, National and Mr Borrows are deluding themselves. I guess that's what "tilting at windmills" looks like.

They've got jobs, for now, but Mr Borrows says there's no job security in tilting at windmills. Maybe he'll be right about that, at least.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.