Jay Kuten: TPPA would rob taxpayer to lift pharmaceutical profit

TWO days before a planned march in Auckland in protest of the TPPA (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement), I received an email security alert from the United States Consulate in Auckland.

I was advised to avoid being in the vicinity of the expected 8000 marchers as "even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational".

As an American citizen, I am naturally grateful for my country's concern for my safety but as a New Zealander - with what I trust is a little knowledge about this country - I can only ask of the consulate: "What were you thinking?"

I can only surmise that, as usual, an orderly protest march against the TPPA such as we've seen here in Whanganui, or the 20 other cities, does not excite the same attention as when it happens in Auckland.

The New Zealand protest marches had as their main focus the lack of transparency in the proposed agreement, whereby hundreds of corporate lobbyists have had relatively unfettered access, while the potentially effected citizens or their representatives have been excluded. That is true here. It is also true in the US.

Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio announced that he would indefinitely hold up the nomination of President Obama's new trade representative unless the administration stopped its insistence that senators view the TPPA terms in the presence of a minder.

That lack of transparency prompted this senatorial exertion of power by a member of the president's own party.

Transparency is important to consideration of the TPPA. But there are other reasons to question this deal.

It is being promoted as a free-trade deal, one that will enhance trade by lowering tariff barriers. The assumption that lowered trade barriers lead to more trade and more profits and more jobs is just that - an assumption.

Let's recall how "assume" makes an "ass" of "u" and "me". The fall in world milk prices shows how weak are assumptions about trade barriers. And how vulnerable is our commodity-based economy to world supply and demand.

But the TPPA is a free-trade deal in name only. According to the leaked portions of the draft document, the US-based pharmaceutical companies are seeking patent protections that even exceed existing US law.

Among the most controversial provisions is "patent linkage", which would bar governments of TPPA member countries from approving generic drugs if there were any outstanding patent disputes. This would allow drug companies to quash competing generics simply by filing patent claims.

In short, in terms of intellectual property, patents and copyrights, the deal is a massive protectionist scheme, one that locks in profits for decades.

Prime Minister John Key has conceded that medication costs would rise, and offers that larger government subsidies will be needed to permit nan to get her heart medicine. That means our own tax money would underwrite our costlier medication. That shell game would be the present Government's enabling the protectionism of the giant multi-national pharmaceuticals. These companies have the highest rate of return on investment and the TPPA would increase their billions in profit to trillions from the Pacific Rim partners.

What is not clear is the extent that this so-called free-trade deal actually enhances trade or whether instead the potential rise in prices of protected goods, intellectual property, pharmaceuticals, medical procedures, genetically modified seeds that are eunichoid and won't reproduce, will actually diminish trade.

What is pretty clear is that the corporate groups promoting the TPPA stand to gain hundreds of billions in profit, if not trillions.

That, in itself, is not reason to scuttle the deal. But when that profit comes at the expense of ordinary taxpayers, when the protectionism of enlarging patent and copyright restrictions stifles innovation, when the profit of the few causes the many to have to choose whether to forego life-sustaining medication because of unaffordable cost, then it is time to say "no".

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.