Tweet of the Day

Trump is seeking small changes to NAFTA to make it more like the proposed TPP. Now that's how you break a promise! https://t.co/QkSeU7VU4E

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 30, 2017

H/t Ian Welsh.

Please Don't Throw Me into the Briar Patch*

A Mexican senator is proposing that they should pull out of their treaties with the United States if Donald Trump is elected.

This is arguably the best argument I've heard this far for voting for the Republican Nominee, though I would still never vote for him:

A Mexican senator is proposing legislation to empower the government to retaliate if a U.S. administration led by Donald Trump inflicts expropriations or economic losses on his country to make it pay for a border wall.

Republican presidential nominee Trump has vowed to have Mexico fund the planned wall to keep out illegal immigrants if he is elected, and threatened to fund it by blocking remittances sent home by Mexicans living in the United States.

Armando Rios Piter, an opposition senator for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), will next week present the initiative he hopes will protect Mexicans, and highlight the risks of targeting them economically.

The plan offers a taste of the kind of tit-for-tat measures that could gain traction between the two heavily-integrated economies if Trump wins the presidency at the Nov. 8 election.

In a preliminary summary of the proposal, which also foresees giving the Senate the power to disavow international treaties when the interests of Mexico or its companies are threatened by other signatories, it states:

"In cases where the property/assets of (our) fellow citizens or companies are affected by a foreign government, as Donald Trump has threatened, the Mexican government should proportionally expropriate assets and properties of foreigners from that country on our territory."

The only way for this law to work is if Mexico pulls out of NAFTA.

I consider this a win for everyone, except perhaps for the abusive maquiladoras, big pharma, Wall Street, and subsidized US corn.

I can live with that.

^*By this, I mean, please do this.  This is a reference to the story of how the trickster Brer Rabbit got out of a sticky situation by convincing Brer Fox that he was afraid of being thrown the place where he would be safe.  See also Tar Baby. 

And this is Mild Compared to the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The WTO has just ruled that requiring the labeling of dolphin safe tuna is an unacceptable restraint of trade:

International trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) need to be carefully examined piece by piece because they can take precedence over a country’s own laws.

Case in point: the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday ruled that dolphin-safe tuna labeling rules — required by U.S. law, in an effort to protect intelligent mammals from slaughter — violate the rights of Mexican fishers.

As a result, the U.S. will have to either alter the law or face sanctions from Mexico.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how the “investor-state dispute settlement system” baked into trade agreements can force countries to compensate corporations when regulations cut into their profits.

The long-running quarrel over tuna reveals another way that domestic laws can be overturned by trade agreements: when countries can file trade challenges on behalf of domestic industries.

“This should serve as a warning against expansive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership that would replicate rules that undermine safeguards for wildlife, clean air, and clean water,” said the Sierra Club’s Ilana Solomon in a statement.

This short of crap is a feature of trade deals, not a bug.

They Will Be Back

Small farmers in Mexico have managed to block a law to legalize Monsanto's seed monopolies:

Progressive small farmer organizations in Mexico scored a victory over transnational corporations that seek to monopolize seed and food patents. When the corporations pushed their bill to modify the Federal Law on Plant Varieties through the Committee on Agriculture and Livestock of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on March 14, organizations of farmers from across the country sounded the alarm. By organizing quickly, they joined together to pressure legislators and achieved an agreement with the legislative committee to remove the bill from the floor.

What’s at stake is free and open access to plant biodiversity in agriculture. The proposed modifications promote a privatizing model that uses patents and “Plant Breeders’ Rights” (PBR) to deprive farmers of the labor of centuries in developing seed. The small farmers who worked to create this foundation of modern agriculture never charged royalties for its use.

Although the current law, in effect since 1996, pays little heed to the rights of small farmers, the new law would be far worse. Present law tends to benefit private-sector plant breeders, allowing monopolies to obtain exclusive profits from the sale of seeds and other plant material for up to 15 years, or 18 in the case of perennial ornamental, forest, or orchard plants–even when the plants they used to develop the new varieties are in the public domain.

The legislative reform would extend exclusive rights from the sale of reproductive material to 25 years. Further, it seeks to restrict the rights of farmers to store or use for their own consumption any part of the harvest obtained from seeds or breeding material purchased from holders of PBRs.

The bill wasn't defeated, it just didn't pass, so this is a temporary victory.

Monsanto and its ilk will come back again … and again … and again until they get their bill.

Mexico City Marriage Equality

Same Sex marriage is now legal in Mexico City, but the bigoted "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) still stands in the US Senate.