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Hi Joseph,



Thank you for posting this essay and for all of your fine work on this issue.



In principle, I've always been a strong proponent of free trade, and later, an even stronger proponent of fair trade.



However, this TPP is getting kinked badly by corporate interests. It's so bad, that if it isn't fixed, it should be scrapped completely -- with China the winner as it will forge its own agreement with many-but-not-all Pacific rim nations before we can start anew on a TPP successor 5 or 10 years on.



Therefore, the corporatist agenda must be reined-in -- otherwise we will, by default, hand a major portion of Pacific rim trade to China.

____



I'd also like to comment on the Uruguay/Australia/Phillip Morris situation:



1. Assuming Philip Morris can sue Uruguay and Australia for lower sales and potential lost profits -- even as both countries attempt to lower their healthcare spending which is negatively impacted by the negative health effects of tobacco on human health -- then both countries should be able to sue Phillip Morris to recover all those billions of healthcare dollars that have been spent on treatment (and lost productivity in the economy) for smokers, since the day that cigarettes were first deemed hazardous to human health.



Other countries could conceivably join in and claim the costs to their healthcare systems and lost productivity as a result of the sales of cigarettes since they were outed as hazardous to human health.



Uruguay and Australia might end up as part of your new ownership group after you can't pay that (up to) $1 trillion dollar court ordered bill.



2. The other option for Uruguay and Australia (if they wanted to cause less harm to Phillip Morris than my #1 scenario above) would be to pay the fines and then simply, outlaw the sales of any product that has been shown to be hazardous to human health.



Instead of having to pay an (up to) $1 trillion dollar court ordered bill (and thereby needing to declare bankruptcy) Phillip Morris would only lose the ability to legally sell cigarettes in Uruguay and Australia.



Unless other countries decided to join in...



It is a very tempting way for countries to lower their healthcare spending. And just like at the high school prom, everyone is standing around waiting to see who will go first.



Maybe it will catch on and within 15 years' time, all countries will have decided to lower their healthcare costs by (up to) 15% by simply banning the sale of cigarettes.



3. As a general statement, what can happen to Phillip Morris as I've outlined in scenarios #1 and #2 above, could happen to other countries too.



"If you sue our country, we'll just counterclaim or outright ban you from selling your goods in our country."



If a certain imported car (to use a non-tobacco example) doesn't hold up well in car crashes and a larger percentage of occupants die in those crashes, then that company could have warning labels affixed to all of their advertising (by law) and if that impacted their sales negatively, and the car company decided to sue that government, then perhaps scenario #1 or #2, or both might then occur.



Be careful what you wish for...

____



“The definition of fascism is The marriage of corporation and state ” -- Benito Mussolini



And that is what corporations necessarily default to, they can't help it, they always want *more power* and *bigger markets* and *lower labour costs* and *more productivity* -- not because they are 'evil' -- but because that is the way the regulatory environment is set up.



Some corporations have realized that if they can get ahold of TPP, they can get *those things* -- and then the rest of us will live in a very different world -- and probably for a very long time.



But the 1%'ers will do just fine, thank you very much!



But that isn't a sustainable way forward for our civilization, and the corporatists (in their greed) will simply hand all of us over to China (and later, India) in exchange for filthy lucre.



If we let them.



It is time to choose our destiny...



Cheers, JBS