German Govt Turns Against TTIP Despite Merkel’s Support

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German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt criticized the United States for not making “any serious concessions”.

In his interview for Der Spiegel, Schmidt said that the trade agreement, already sparking a decent amount of controversy, does not provide significant concessions to German food producers, offering minor concessions to the automotive sector instead.

“We won’t sacrifice our high food safety standards in a barter trade for approval of European car blinkers,” he said.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” he said. “There won’t be any such horse-trading.”

While both red amber and red car blinkers are allowed in the US, the exact specific color of “amber” differs slightly between the markets. This can be viewed as an illustration of the extent of “concessions” proposed in TTIP.

This trade agreement has been backed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who claimed she “will do anything to conclude negotiations” before the end of this year. Such support was called “really striking” by Austrian politics expert Stefan Haderer.

Earlier, French politicians joined hands in their struggle against the agreement, with French President Francois Hollande going as far as threatening to reject the agreement in its current form, because it promotes “unregulated free trade”. According to French environmentalists, should France sign the agreement, it will “sacrifice French agriculture to get access to the US procurement market.”

MINA

MINA is the Macedonian International News Agency

One thought on “German Govt Turns Against TTIP Despite Merkel’s Support

  • May 10, 2016 at 2:28 pm
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    Slowly some EU countries start to realize that TTIP is a US export facilitating treaty that will destroy EU agriculture and replace good EU food with mediocre US factory farmed produce and products. Only fools would sign such an agreement.

    If that isn’t enough yet for the EU, take the example of Mexico who signed NAFTA and found the US flooding its market with subsidized US cotton, all but wiping out the Mexican cotton industry, the main livelihood for scores of farmers. The same will happen in the EU: subsidized US farm and food products will undercut high quality EU food and wipe out the EU farmers.

    It is what TTIP is all about: a new export market for the US. Nothing for the EU. The US wants to ratify TPP – the Asian version of this trade treaty. It will cause millions of US jobs to move to Asia as corporations move their production to Asia to profit from cheap labor. The US won’t be able to compete against the low wages in Vietnam, Malaysia etc. In order to counteract the losses from the TPP to the US industry, the US wants the TTIP – to take over the EU market for technology, energy, agriculture, cars and services. That is of course why the US blocked the South Stream and the Turkish Stream and now wants to also block the second line of Nord Stream pipelines. To undercut the Russian economy, topple Putin, use the EU as main export for fracked gas and oil and compensate for the job losses from the TPP. The EU will get all the unemployment from losing its industries to the US and a negative trade balance, piling up debt like the US. It is also the reason why the US pushed down on VW extremely hard because of the exhaust swindle in Diesel cars. Whether standards were deliberately pushed up to be unreachable -likely – to then catch the largest car manufacturer to decimate their market share in the US and worldwide in hope that their loss in sales will make room for US cars.

    Angela Merkel would do well to look at this trade treaty a bit more closely. Then she would see that everything is written in ways so as to use lawsuits for lost profits to force the EU into either paying billions or caving in to low and dangerous US standards. TTIP contains no safeguards for the environment. Plus consider that Egypt was sued for potential lost profits when it increased the min. wage – in country where 50% of the people live on less than $2! In Haiti Hillary Clinton as foreign secretary went negotiating the min. wage down again by half the increase Haiti wanted to decree. The US is not good or fair or interested in overcoming world poverty or hunger. It wants hegemony and all the world’s wealth. He who has the money has the power.

    Enjoy slavery in the EU if you sign TTIP. It is a trap that leaves no way out anymore.

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