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Wednesday, May 13, 2015

TPP - fast tracked to the shoals? Or a temporary set-back?

image source, here

Likely there are a multitude of online reports by now. A sampling:

Guardian, here and here.

TC BizJ, here.

NY Times, here.

CNN, here.

A WaPo editorial, here, this opening excerpt:

SINGAPORE — Where you stand on fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal is quickly becoming an ideological litmus test on the American left. But to some governments outside the United States, the TPP is already a litmus test of a much more consequential kind — of American seriousness in Asia.

The stakes in the TPP debate are a lot higher than the trade deal’s potential economic benefits. The view from Singapore, a trading partner and a party to TPP negotiations, is that this is “a critical moment,” Grace Fu, a senior Singaporean diplomat, told me last week. With Europe stagnating and China slowing, the world needs an engine of growth. [...]

Will aids meds (and Viagra) pricing world wide be a boon to Big Pharma and a bane to human suffering (and fun), if TPP eventually happens? Who knows, but vox.com asks.

"The arguments for the TPP are transparently weak," is http://america.aljazeera.com/ May 11 op-ed headlining, here.

Last - Wingnut News Daily, with an item written by a 750 year old Walking Dead zombie, really; here.