Leaked TTIP memo shows EU targeting U.S. government contracts | Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Leaked TTIP memo shows EU targeting U.S. government contracts | Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Leaked TTIP memo shows EU targeting U.S. government contracts

Posted April 21, 2016 by Karen Hansen-Kuhn   

TradeTTIPFree trade agreements

    

 

 

Used under creative commons license from artbandito.

The EU is being asked to give up a lot in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), especially its relatively higher standards on food and chemical safety. It’s also asking for a lot in return, including the massive opening of U.S. public procurement to bids by EU firms. A new leaked memo from the European Commission shows just how much they want to open up those markets. It’s a bad tradeoff for both sides.

The March 29 European Commission non-paper addressed to its Trade Policy Committee titled “TTIP–Messages on public procurement” begins with the assertion that, “Public procurement is a key component of the TTIP negotiations and an area where almost all Member States have offensive interest, and in consequence the EU has been requesting a substantial market opening in this area.” The short paper provides arguments against the idea that U.S. procurement markets are already fairly open and accessible to European companies. The memo also takes aim at local decision making on procurement and preferences for small businesses.

Procurement contracts cover a broad range of public spending on all kinds of goods and services, from massive roads, transit, renewable energy and construction projects to much smaller Farm to School programs or university cleaning service contracts. Since it is taxpayer-funded spending, these programs often have conditions designed to benefit local economic activity. In the case of Farm to School programs, for example, preferences are given for healthy, locally grown foods, benefitting both farmers and students. Most often that kind of preference will be one of several criteria (including cost) used to judge the best value of a given bid for the community, but this public spending is often directed to improving the public good. Small business and minority set asides (which allocate a certain percentage of procurement contracts to those groups) can help to address past injustices and level the playing field so that those firms can effectively compete with much larger corporations.

From the start of the TTIP talks, the EU has insisted on the opening of public procurement contracts for all goods, all services and all levels of government. Its initial position papers indicated that it would target 24 U.S. cities (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Jose, Jacksonville, Austin, San Francisco, Columbus, Fort Worth, Charlotte, El Paso, Memphis, Seattle, Denver, Baltimore, Washington, Louisville, Milwaukee, Portland and Oklahoma City), as well as the remaining 13 states not already covered under the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA, a plurilateral agreement at the World Trade Organization), for procurement commitments. Subsequent leaked texts indicated its interest in commitments from counties, as well as public institutions like hospitals or universities. The new non-paper reiterates its ambition for commitments reaching municipal levels, noting that, “No U.S. city or county is currently committed in the GPA. But some cities procure more than States. For instance, New York [City] procures more than 17Bn USD every year and it is not yet covered.”

It also takes aim at measures that condition procurement spending, including the Berry Amendment (which requires local content for Defense spending on clothing, food and other supplies), Buy America provisions and small and medium enterprise (SME) set asides, saying that “According to the most recent U.S. GPA statistical report, the value of SME set asides is worth 38 Bn USD for GPA covered contracts at the Federal level and 92 Bn USD for all Federal procurement.’’

It is not at all clear who would decide if New York City, for example, were to be bound by procurement commitments in TTIP. Could Mayor Bill de Blasio sign on? Or perhaps the City Council? Would there be any kind of public consultations with local small businesses or unions over that decision? These are not rhetorical questions: the next round of TTIP negotiations will happen the week of April 25 in New York City, where presumably that issue will be very much on the table.

The Commission also targets federal local content requirements, complaining that “European companies are often obligated to change their supply chain partially or fully in order to comply with buy-local provisions and to establish a local business/manufacturing/assembly plant in the U.S. in order to fulfill U.S. requirements.”

EU firms can already bid on many U.S, state and local procurement contracts, whether as foreign firms or through locally established subsidiaries. In fact, the non-paper notes that between $102-188 billion in U.S. procurement markets are already open to EU firms. What is being challenged in TTIP are preferences for local content or ownership by small businesses. Analysis by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternativesof similar provisions in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA, the EU-Canada trade agreement) argues that these provisions would go well beyond preventing discrimination against EU firms to instead ensure unconditional access, especially for municipal governments and provincial entities that had been kept out of previous trade deals. They note that the procurement commitments in CETA, “are extensive, and will substantially restrict the vast majority of provincial and municipal government bodies from using public spending as a catalyst for achieving other societal goals, from creating good jobs to supporting local farmers, to addressing the climate crisis.”

Because of its critical role in promoting local development, procurement is an issue that has largely been left out of global trade negotiations. It is one of four “Singapore Issues” (along with investment, competition policy and trade facilitation) that developing countries have flatly refused to negotiate at the World Trade Organization (although some commitments were made on trade facilitation in recent years). Instead, some 45 countries (including the U.S. and the 28 EU member countries) negotiated and joined the plurilateral GPA. In that accord, the U.S. lists specific sectors that are excluded from commitments (such as Farm to School Programs), as well as continuing preferences for small and minority-owned businesses.

So far, USTR seems cool to the EU procurement proposals. But while the details of U.S. negotiating objectives on procurement in TTIP have not been published (or leaked), this push to eliminate local content requirements is entirely consistent with U.S. trade policy with other countries. The new 2015 National Trade Estimates Report on Foreign Trade Barriers complains about local content requirements in procurement rules in Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nigeria, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and Vietnam, and in several cases details the pressure it has exerted on those trading partners to drop those preferences.

So, like so many trade issues, it’s not a question of the U.S versus the EU, per se, but rather the corporate interests driving the trade agenda on both sides. On the U.S side, that includes pressure to “harmonize” EU food safety standards to allow for sales of GMOs, beef produced with hormones and chlorine-rinsed chicken. On the EU side, it seems to be pushing aside U.S. procurement programs that favor small businesses and local producers. Either way, it’s a bad deal to trade off local standards in Europe for local economies in the U.S.—one that should be soundly rejected. 

http://www.iatp.org/blog/201404/something%E2%80%99s-missing-from-our-food-and-it%E2%80%99s-not-salt

We’ve all made recipes and forgot that one key ingredient, only to forgive ourselves because, after all, food is more than just its physical ingredients: Too salty or not, we made that soup and we’ll be damned if we’re not proud of ourselves.

So what about the food we buy? Other than the items listed on the nutrition facts, food companies know we want to feel good: “The Breakfast of Champions” or something that’s “Mmm Mmm Good.” These famous slogans say nothing of ingredients, and everything about emotional appeal. Of course, advertising doesn’t include the whole story: The U.S. food system, controlled by a handful of corporations, is missing some key ingredients. We know there’s plenty of salt, sugar and fat, replacing the ingredients we might use at home, the freshness or family recipes we might cherish, and greater nutrition and variety provided by whole and home-cooked foods. In the same way, fair wages and prices for workers and farmers in the food system have been replaced with huge volumes of cheap food (and accompanying waste), low prices and inadequate wages.

From the soil and water that feeds our crops, to the waiters and waitresses that serve us our lunch, to the seeming myriad choices we have at the grocery store about what we eat, justice and health for ourselves, our farmers, workers and the environment is in drastically short supply.

With this in mind, IATP is excited to announce Justice and Health: Missing Ingredients in the U.S. Food System, an interactive tour of the U.S. food system. Check it out and join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook: What #missingingredients are most important to you? Environmental justice? Farmworker’s rights? Access to healthy food? Democratic decision-making? They’re all important, and they all need major work if, like our homemade soup, we want a food system we can be proud of.

Head over to www.iatp.org/missing-ingredients for more.

Benghazi Hero: The Fall Of Hillary Is Imminent - YouTube

Benghazi Hero: The Fall Of Hillary Is Imminent - YouTube

BE FEARLESS

Ex-FBI Agent Gunderson - one of many truths revealed by this man (until he was murdered)

Retired General Michael Flynn "Obama has a Policy of Willful Ignorance" on Iran ( - yeah we know, on everything else as well

Germany - Out of her senses -

Uncensored Interview

Does a Leading Jihadist Come From Germany? (War on the ISIS terrorists)

Gotz speech in Dresden Feb 9, 2015

Obviously
Germany is experiencing the same Left Lunacy take over we are.  No wonder Merckl is just a friendly face appearing to respect The USA.  She respects Obama.  The same climate of the world exists now as it did during the Communists Brazen path of destruction and Hitler committing atrocities in Germany.  German voices are censored, except for a rare speech like this one, subtitled, and only viewed by a several few.      Rethink the plane crash by the co-pilot for Germanywings that went down in the French alps.  All terrorists are mentally ill...  Think about a certain leader of a once "free" world.  His agenda is the same as IRAN's using all enemy forces he can - Death to America
Death to the Western way of life.   Communism under an iron fist, with more than half our population exterminated by multiple means.     It's no joke, and the wars will not be between countries, as in every Western Cultured Country is under attack, it will be those with information-comprehension and common sense who will rise up and fight against the subversive, brutal corrupt despicable power drunk money hungry gluttons in power.  THE PEOPLE WILL PREVAIL, NO DOUBT.  Get together with all on the Right, the Conservatives like this guy brave enough to speak out.  It will be a WAR like never before, a multinational war against its own people.  FREEDOM REIGNS, and those who try to control, censor, and restrain will end up as vapor swirling down the drain.  IT IS like GRAVITY.

TED says -

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Capability

 

 http://index.heritage.org/militarystrength/chapter/us-power/us-nuclear-weapons-capability/

 

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Capability

Assessing the state of U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities presents several challenges. First, the U.S. has elected to maintain the weapons—based on designs from the 1970s—that were in the stockpile when the Cold War ended rather than develop new weapons. Second, detailed data about the readiness of nuclear forces, their capabilities, and weapon reliability are not publicly available, and this makes analysis difficult. Third, the U.S. nuclear enterprise is comprised of many components, some of which are also involved in supporting conventional missions. For example, bombers do not fly with nuclear weapons today as they routinely did during the Cold War (although they are capable of doing so again if the decision should ever be made to resume this practice). Also, the U.S. National Nuclear Laboratories perform a variety of functions related to nuclear nonproliferation, medical research, and nuclear detection, among many others, as opposed to focusing solely on the nuclear weapons mission.



Thus, assessing the extent to which any one piece of the nuclear enterprise is sufficiently funded, focused, and effective with regard to the nuclear mission is problematic.
The second important factor is flexibility and resilience of the nuclear weapons complex that underpins the U.S. nuclear deterrent. If the U.S. detects a game-changing nuclear weapons development in another country, the capability of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex to adjust would be of concern.
The U.S. does maintain an inactive stockpile that includes near-term hedge warheads that can be put back into operational status within six to 24 months.¹ Extended hedge warheads can be made ready within 24 to 60 months.² The U.S. preserves some of this upload capability on its strategic delivery vehicles. For example, the U.S. Minuteman III ICBM can carry up to three nuclear warheads, though it is currently deployed with only one.³
Presidential Decision Directive-15 (PDD-15) requires the U.S. to maintain the ability to conduct a nuclear test within 24 to 36 months of a presidential decision to do so.⁴ However, successive governmental reports have found continued deterioration of technical and diagnostics equipment and an inability of the National Nuclear Laboratories to fill technical positions supporting nuclear testing readiness.⁵
The National Nuclear Laboratories are beset by talent and recruitment challenges of their own. Thomas D’Agostino, former Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), stated that in about five years, the United States will not have a single active engineer who had “a key hand in the design of a warhead that’s in the existing stockpile and who was responsible for that particular design when it was tested back in the early 1990s.”⁶ This is a significant problem because for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, the U.S. will have to rely on the scientific judgment of people who were not directly involved in nuclear tests of weapons that they had designed and developed and were certifying. It is unclear how much of the existing inactive stockpile will go through the life extension program. Hence, our ability to reconstitute nuclear forces will probably decline with the passage of time.
The uncertainty regarding the funding and direction of the nuclear weapons complex is one of the factors that complicate the National Laboratories’ efforts to attract and maintain young talent. The shift of focus away from the nuclear mission after the end of the Cold War caused the National Laboratories to lose their sense of purpose and to feel compelled to reorient their mission focus and change their relationship with the government. The NNSA was supposed to address these problems, but it has largely failed in this task, partly because “the relationship with the NNSA and the National security labs appears to be broken.”⁷
In 1999, the Commission on Maintaining U.S. Nuclear Weapons Expertise concluded that 34 percent of the employees supplying critical skills to the weapons program were more than 50 years old. The number increased to 40 percent in 2009.⁸ This is more than the average in the U.S. high-technology industry.⁹ In 2012, a number of employees of the Los Alamos National Laboratory were laid off in anticipation of a $300 million shortfall.¹⁰ The lack of resources is undermining the morale of the workforce.
The third important indication of the health of the overall force is the readiness of forces that actually operate U.S. nuclear systems. Since the end of the Cold War, the Air Force, which currently operates two of the three legs of the nuclear triad, has faced significant challenges regarding its operation of U.S. nuclear forces. In 2006, the Air Force mistakenly shipped ICBM components to Taiwan.¹¹ A year later, the Air Force transported nuclear-armed cruise missiles without authorization (or apparently even awareness that it was doing so) across the U.S.¹² These serious incidents led to the establishment of a Task Force on DOD Nuclear Weapons Management, which found that “there has been an unambiguous, dramatic, and unacceptable decline in the Air Force’s commitment to perform the nuclear mission and, until very recently, little has been done to reverse it” and that “the readiness of forces assigned the nuclear mission has seriously eroded.”¹³
Following these incidents, the Air Force instituted broad changes to improve oversight and management of the nuclear mission and inventory of nuclear weapons, including creating the Global Strike Command to organize, train, and equip intercontinental-range ballistic missile and nuclear-capable bomber crews as well as other personnel to fulfill a nuclear mission and implement a stringent inspections regime.
The U.S. government currently uses two metrics to evaluate the Department of Defense’s Strategic Objective of “Maintain[ing] a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal to deter attack on the U.S. and on our allies and partners.”¹⁴ They are:
“[The] Number of formal Department of Defense-led meetings with international partners to reaffirm U.S. commitments to extended deterrence” and
“[The] Passing percentage rate for Defense Nuclear Surety Inspections (DNSIs).”¹⁵
In the first category, the Department of Defense exceeded its goals in FY 2011, FY 2012, and FY 2013. In the second category, passing percentage rates were 71 percent in FY 2008, 77 percent in FY 2009, 73 percent in FY 2010, 85.7 percent in FY 2011, 100 percent in FY 2012, and 91.7 percent in FY 2013, with the target being 100 percent. While these indicate an improved trend, the Air Force is currently undergoing a major review following a string of additional missteps in 2013 and 2014.¹⁶
This calls the credibility and relevance of the metrics into question. It is also not clear how the number of meetings contributes to affirming the U.S. commitment to extended deterrence absent evaluation of capabilities and requirements that allies consider necessary for assurance.
Fiscal uncertainty and a steady decline in resources for the nuclear weapons enterprise have negatively affected U.S. nuclear weapons readiness. Admiral C. D. Haney, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), recently testified that “[i]n recent years the percentage of spending on nuclear forces has gradually declined to only 2.5% of total DOD spending in 2013—a figure near historic lows,”¹⁷ although he also stated that he fully believes STRATCOM “remains capable and ready to meet our assigned missions.”
Admiral Haney went on to note that the sequestration-level reductions in FY 2013 had negatively affected STRATCOM’s readiness and had the potential to further affect U.S. capabilities in the future. While he noted that it was impossible to tell just what effects sequestration would have, he observed that the existing freeze on hiring new personnel and furlough of the workforce during the summer of 2013 had diminished the human capacity needed, resulting in a lessening of STRATCOM’s readiness through lack of research and development, modernization, and know-how.
Implications for U.S. National Security
U.S. nuclear forces are not designed to shield the nation from all types of attacks from all adversaries. They are designed to deter large-scale attacks, including nuclear attacks, against the U.S. homeland, forward-deployed troops, and allies.
In addition, U.S. nuclear forces have played an important role in the global nonproliferation regime. U.S. assurances to NATO, Japan, and South Korea have led these allies either to keep the number of their nuclear weapons lower than otherwise would be the case (France, the U.K) or to forgo their development and deployment altogether. North Korea has proven that a country with very limited intellectual and financial resources can develop a nuclear weapon if it decides to do so. This makes U.S. nuclear assurances for advanced industrial nations ever more important.
Certain negative trends could undermine U.S. nuclear deterrence if problems are not addressed. From an aging nuclear weapons infrastructure and workforce, to the need to recapitalize all three legs of the nuclear triad, to the need to conduct life extension programs while maintaining a self-imposed nuclear weapons test moratorium, to limiting the spread of nuclear know-how and the means to deliver nuclear weapons, to adversaries who are modernizing their nuclear forces, there is no shortage of challenges on the horizon.
Deterrence is a complex interplay between one’s conventional and nuclear forces and the beliefs of both allies and adversaries that one will use these forces to protect allies and defend both one’s own interests and their interests. The requirements of deterrence and warfighting may be quite different and thus should be considered within their own context and then balanced against each other to ensure that the U.S. nuclear portfolio is structured in capacity, capability, variety, and readiness to meet both types of demands. In addition, military requirements and specifications for nuclear weapons might be different depending on different circumstances and who one wants to deter from doing what.
Due to the complex interplay between policy, actions that states take in international relations, and other actors’ perceptions of the world around them, it is quite possible that one might never know precisely when deterrence became less credible. Nuclear weapons capabilities take years to develop, and the infrastructure supporting them takes years to deteriorate. But we can be reasonably certain that a robust, well-resourced, focused, and reliable nuclear enterprise is more likely to sustain its deterrent value than is a weakened, unfocused, and questionable one

 http://index.heritage.org/militarystrength/chapter/us-power/us-nuclear-weapons-capability/