Yes, you should be concerned. Here's a good starting point on some of the worst aspects: https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/consumer-rights-and-advice/your-rights/articles/tpp-secretly-trading-away-your-rights

It's telling that, of the US presidential candidates, Sanders, Clinton and Trump are all against the TPP and the others, who are basically in the pockets of the multi-nationals, support it.

TPP is an essential part of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex, using it's acidic C-H bond as a catalyst in an interesting cofactor capability of decarboxylation.

Source: I teach this

I think the TPP is a good idea. Free trade allows companies to use their resources more efficiently to provide goods to customers (see comparative advantage). This means productivity increases and we are all better off.

Doesn't the TPP exclude China or something?

still sort of amazing the group ever managed to make it through mt moon

Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures are important to all military games, Diplomacy games are no exception.

TTPs are extremely important:

Tactics -- think about what type of tactics you'll want to focus on in your games, the patterns for movements that are likely to come up, such as Openings, and how to use the map to your advantage, Stalemate Lines. Tactics will involce both military skills and diplomacy, i.e., communication skills, teamwork, and leadership.

Techniques -- consider the different techniques to effective gameplay: at the heart of Diplomacy is the negotiation skills you'll need to balance yourself between six other players. Deals and alliances are made and broken during the game, and no one can be certain whether other players will react as expected; the only thing you can control is your own techniques for problem-solving and dealing with any arising situation.

Procedures -- think about the procedures of the game that will be common to all Diplomacy games; Introductions; Opening Moves; securing allies; managing and maintaining diplomacy even with your enemies; always being prepared for stabs and surprise attacks; reaching stalemate lines to prevent solos. Being aware of expected procedure is important and players will have expectations; such as sending messages to your neigbours before you ready up (try to avoid readying up without first communicating with your neighbours).

I hope this helps as a starting point for you to think about your own personal TTPs. Feel free to fire any particular questions.

On WebDip we also have the School of War, which helps teach about TTPs and good practice for Diplomacy players; a magazine with player insights is being produced by abgemacht; and a YouTube channel with particular help in TTPs for 'gunboat' games is being produced by Valis2501.

Oh. TPP? I just read TPP and launched into advice mode :)

*TTP even.

I need to sleep :)

I haven't read all the chapters of the TPP, so I can't speak about its net effect, or if any chapters contain language that may cause concern.

But in general, its a good idea and most people will benefit from it. Traditional tariffs have long since been nearly done away with for most traded goods, though the TPP does go and reduce the existing ones a bit more. What the TPP does is set the rules for international trade by setting common standards, procedures for settling claims and lawsuits, and creating common definitions for goods (what is grade A steel in Japan vs the US?). These all lower the cost of doing business. Another large part of the TPP is to increase the trade in services between nations as well. So, if you are an educated individual who has enough disposable income to invest, the TPP is likely going to be very good for you. Low income/low skill with no assets in the market....well, you're most likely not going to see anything from this.

China is excluded from the TPP because 1) We want to write the rules of international trade. If its done on China's terms, it will be to China's benefit. As it stands, there are many barriers to international trade China has set up and foreign firms are at a massive disadvantage when operating there. The TPP will (hopefully) force China to lower many of these barriers, because a TPP without China in it *really* hurts China, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

"I haven't read all the chapters of the TPP, so I can't speak about its net effect, or if any chapters contain language that may cause concern [...] but its a good idea and most people will benefit from it."

##vote Palin

Sigh. I did, however, read a 250 page book detailing the different parts of the planned TPP, and the benefits the US and China would gain from China's inclusion to it. I'm not exactly uninformed on the topic. Published last autumn by PIIE, its called "Bridging the Pacific"

I also just searched and can't find any published chapters besides the IP chapter that Wikileaks has and general summaries of all the parts. Even the IP stuff that its getting slammed for is just an export of current US IP laws.

Does he mean "TTIP" ?

Free trade is good for everyone on average, but there will be winners and losers within each country (at least in the short term).

Unfortunately it's easy to scare people and most are afraid of change, and the gains are kind of intangible (like e.g. cheaper products/cost of living for your average consumer and less waste) but the losses are more concrete (like people clinging to unprofitable jobs having to find a job that doesn't rely on tariffs)

So I'm all for it being a citizen of a country participating in it (Australia), but I understand why so many (including here in Australia) are opposed

If you support free trade, and an economy based on free trade, then you should support TTIP and, to be honest, you'll probably find you hardly notice it's effect.

I've done a detailed examination of what we currently know about the content of TTIP, from the (rather technically specific) perspective of my job as a public procurement specialist, and I concluded that TTIP will have almost no impact on the way in which public bodies such as local councils, government departments, etc, go about their work.

There is quite a lot of scare-mongering which is probably somewhat misplaced when you remember that the UK, for example, is already signed up to various free trade treaties.

For example, there are concerns that the agreement will open up Europe’s public services to US-based companies, resulting in further privatisation of the UK's National Health Service and other public services.

In fact, under TTIP, the EU delegation has confirmed, in writing, to Member States, that:

• Member states do not have to open public health services to competition from private providers, nor do they have to outsource services to private providers;

• Member states will remain free to change their policies and bring outsourced services back into the public sector whenever they choose to do so, as long as this is done in a manner respecting property rights (which in any event are protected under UK law);

• It shall make no difference whether a member state already allows some services to be outsourced to private providers, or not.

So to take one specific example, the idea that TTIP will somehow hasten the privatisation of the NHS is likely to be untrue. Some privatisation of the NHS is *already* happening, I'd say - but that's nowt to do with TTIP.

Any kind of transnational agreement that isn't open for public scrutiny is on principal non-liberal and anti-market. It's not freetrade, so don't fool yourselves. It's just another kind of mercantilism, with USA protecting it's own interests at the cost of those liberal values it acts like it's protecting. Hegemony worldpower scared that it might loose what it has already lost.

If TTIP is US protectionism, why would it be in Europe's interest to sign it?

Actually, it is far from clear that "free trade" as implemented here leaves everyone better off. In fact, by targeting regulation, this agreement looks to enable powerful economic actors to externalize their costs far more easily, which on balance impoverishes society. In fact, looking at the IP and drug components, this has some serious protectionist impacts. Additionally, the essentially unenforceable environmental and labor provisions appears to mean that efforts to force internalizations of costs will be thwarted because of regulatory capture by the negotiators of the treaty. Notice also that the tribunal has no representatives of the public, which should be expected to lead to a socialization of costs, with a priviatization of benefits, which invariably makes everyone worse off.

Jamiet - the TPP is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, currently in negotiations with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Japan and a few other Pacific Rim nations. Its broadly similar to TTIP under negotiations with the US and EU.

@Ogion - its being negotiated by the US Trade Representative, which is part of the Executive Branch, and must be passed by Congress. So there are representatives of the public involved in all parts of the negotiation. I've spoken with negotiators at the US Chamber of Commerce (private interests) and they don't have a seat at the negotiating table. What they do is hash things out with their German/French/etc counterparts, come to terms, and both bring their results to their respective representatives. Also, the unenforceable environmental and labor provisions (at least in TPP) are unenforceable because otherwise it would be impossible to get countries such as Vietnam to sign onto it.

Ah ok thanks goldie.

@jamie, you seem to know a decent amount about this.

But you haven't mentioned the investor-state dispute resolution mechanism.
And how it has been used by companies (where such mechanisms exist in previous treaties) to sue countries exercising their sovereignty to regulate.

The fear in the EU is driven by companies like Monsanto dropping legal action against EU regulations, because it is believed that Monsanto will now wait until TTIP is enforced, and the EU can be sued if they do not allow US (EPA-style) rules to govern regulation within the EU (ie if a drug or chemical is approved for public use/sale by the EPA, but the EU tries to block it, then the EU regulation is preventing profits on the investment from being realised, and the Investor-State Dispute resolution mechanism can be used to sue states or even the EU as a whole)

This in principle makes sense for large corporations ( the ones who can afford legal action against a state) to maximise their profits, and it undermines national sovereignty in a real and disturbing way.

There are examples of companies sueing the states under similar mechanisms where other trade agreements have already been reached. Including a tobacco company sueing the Australian government for attempting to change labelling standards for cigarettes.

This is literally a company trying to sell a know poison to people, and the state acting to reduce the number of poisoned people who will end up needing medical care. This is the greatest anti-TPP/TTIP issue i have seen.

@ orathaic: "Including a tobacco company sueing the Australian government for attempting to change labelling standards for cigarettes."

Interesting. Did they win? Link to case?

Searching... Found this article first.

"The Uruguayan case pre-dates the more famous but similar ISDS case brought by Philip Morris against Australia when the country banned logos on cigarette packets. The tobacco giant’s attack on Australia, which is ongoing, led New Zealand to U-turn on a decision to follow its bigger neighbour with plain packaging."
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/big-tobacco-puts-countries-on-trial-as-concerns-over-ttip-deals-mount-9807478.html

The idea that new zealand didn't even get sued but changed its behaviour preemptively is more worrying.

Here is something directly relating to the case against australia:

http://www.mccabecentre.org/focus-areas/tobacco/philip-morris-asia-challenge

And there is this criticism over the cost of defending the legal action to the country:

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/07/taxpayers-cop-50m-bill-to-fight-philip-morris/

Which (along with the worry that countries will change their behaviour to avoid being sued in the first place) ramps up the fears that smaller countries will not fight against claims - whether they would pass muster or not.

orathaic - while what you say are all legitimate criticisms of the system, the system is there to prevent sovereign countries from abusing their power and harming international corporations. A good example is the recent case where the World Bank has recently told Ecuador to pay over $1 billion to an oil company whose assets it seized after it spent quite a bit of many to drill and establish operations in Ecuador.

That may well have been the initial reason; but the fear is that the power given to investors is now being used to undermine the ability of nations to regulate dangerous activities and protect their citizens.

There is one example of a US company incorporating in Canada, and using provisions of a US-Canadian deal to sue the US. This highlights the fact that the system is open to abuse.

I am not saying mega-corporations have nothing to fear from states having complete control over assets in their territory. But the theory is that as a state you don't behave in a way which will scare off future investment - like Ecuador seizing assets. That there is no need for this kind of Investor-State Dispute System, because states will have a reputation to uphold.

If the EU is known for having tougher protections of their citizens (than the US) companies wanting to invest in the EU do so knowing in advance that they will have to pass those tougher regulations. (This is in reference to drugs which the FDA approves, but which are not legal in most EU countries)

Now i can ENTIRELY see the point of view of corporations; they spend a lot of money getting past FDA regulations to get something approved, and it would be great if they could do that once and be able to 'trade' in every nation.

Like the international agreement to recognise marriages from different countries, it would be really handy if drug companies could get international recognition approval once they have passed some single countries set of standards.

Normalizing standard globally would be amazing. It would in theory reduce drug development costs and make new drug research possible where it is too expensive today. But that is not a trade/investment proposal, that is a proposal for an international standard for drug regulation (you could have simular standards for environmental protections) And if done, i believe it shoyld he done through the UN, not the WTO/IMF.

Seperate concerns for seprate issues. If capital is invested in a state and they repossess that, then you have an actual investment dispute. If regulations are controlling the market for customer protection, you do not.

I hope the australian case gets thrown out as not being a valid case, based on the asutralian government's claim that Philip Morris Asia did not invest in the to Australian subsidaries which already existed in Australia when PM decided to restructure their corporate ownership to that they became foreign owned subsidaries.

But even if Australia wins this case, Philip Morris will have cost the Australian people several dollars each in order to not be poisoned by them.

Of course the democratic solution, in this case at least, is for Aussies to organise a botcott of Philip Morris products and cost them more money than they are worth.

*boycott, even.

And on the other other hand; i actually support the repossession of corporate assets when i see things like this: http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/a-call-for-support-of-the-struggle-of-viome/

Ireland has a Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) which is used by the all powerful state to repossess land that the state wants to build new roads on - the constitution explicitly protects private property, except in the interest of social good.

And while that could mean repossessing hundreds of thousand of empty and unfinished houses left by developers after Ireland's property bubble and giving the to homeless families across the country. It has not been used this way. Only when powerful actors want to get a road built through your backyard...

Similarly, i would support this Greek case, and many of the occupy groups in the US which attempted to form co-operatives instead of being kicked out of their factories back in the crisis years.

@ orathaic: Philip Morris is already suing the UK government in exactly the same way as it is trying to sue Australia, over government controls on cigarette packaging:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/business/international/tobacco-plain-packaging-philip-morris-british-american-cigarettes.html?_r=0

I therefore put it to you that TTIP makes no difference in this case - the tobacco companies are *already* able to bring such lawsuits.

Not only will TTIP change who gets to sue and be sued - ie it covers a specific set of countries which may or may not be covered by current agreement (or they woudln't be adding this)

It also chagnes how: "On Friday, the fight moved to Europe as a suit was filed in the High Court of Justice, one of Britain’s highest courts."

Instead of and actual British court, which has British judges making the ruling, the TTIP dsipute resolution mechanism is supposed to go to a collection of industry appointed 'Arbitration Tribunal' - which are likely to be much more open to abuse and lobbying.

This of course is not something i can back up, because TTIP negotiations are secret, even MEPs can't easily get access to it.

see: http://sputniknews.com/business/20150619/1023600235.html
http://www.sligonewsfile.com/eu-operating-top-secret-unit-to-restrict-mep-access-to-us-trade-deal-records/
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-7f23-MEP-slams-EU-chiefs-for-TTIP-secrecy#.VkJ44ISYpwA

So you will forgive me for having misgivings. We only have Wikileaks to base our knowledge of TPP - and they only got the chapter on intellectual property, afaik.

And yes that is a different treaty, but the same thinking will likely go into TTIP. Whether it is exactly the same or not isn't known.

Also, i understand the default to secrecy in having your negotiating position. It empowers you to act without worrying about public preception.

"But the theory is that as a state you don't behave in a way which will scare off future investment - like Ecuador seizing assets."

Except this literally happens all over the world all the time. Whether its Russia seizing foreign assets in reaction to US sanctions, or Brazil nationalizing different industries. Corporations need a quick way to resolve these disputes, not a disjointed track through the World Bank or WTO that takes a decade to resolve.

About your comment on standards, the problem is pushing things through the WTO or UN is that you will never get anyone to agree. The way to advance is through baby steps. The TPP is just a larger, slightly broader version of the US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement that was passed a few years ago. Putting the issue to the UN or WTO is just shooting too far, and likely won't be passed.

Also, the US has a similar thing to the Ireland bit you mentioned, called Eminent Domain.

Trump is currently criticizing the TPP for not discussing China's currency manipulation. Rand Paul just corrected him saying they aren't even part of him. That was hilarious.

part of it*, rather

"Except this literally happens all over the world all the time."

Yeah, that was my reaction as well. But then, the same could be said of big corporations pushing small countries around--often with the assistance of big countries.

Very true. As with most issues, both sides have their point. What is needed is a well articulated agreement that strikes a middle ground and prevents these extremes. Maybe that's in the TPP, but we don't know yet

"Eminent domain (United States, the Philippines), compulsory purchase (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland), resumption (Hong Kong), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Australia), or expropriation (South Africa, Canada) is the power of a state or a national government to take private property for public use."

Sure same thing.

"Maybe that's in the TPP, but we don't know yet"

And once it is passed and becomes public it will be too late for you to oppose it.

But that is how bi-lateral/multi-lateral treaties are discussed, because countries have reason to want their negotiating position to be private.

To me it doesn't sound like the proposed mechanism will be balanced, it sounds like it undermines the current judicial system in place in countries and replaces it with corporate appointed 'experts' - which in fairness, it makes sense to use industry experts who are well versed in the questions being raised - there is a definite conflict of interest.