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China's Moon Rover "Jade Rabbit" in Trouble

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The rover Jade Rabbit, also known as Yutu, has been exploring the Moon’s soil

China’s Jade Rabbit Moon rover is in trouble after experiencing a “mechanical control abnormality”, state media report.
The Moon exploration vehicle ran into problems due to the moon’s “complicated lunar surface environment”, Xinhua news agency said, citing science officials.

The rover landed in December as part of China’s Chang’e-3 mission – the first “soft” landing on the Moon since 1976.

It was expected to operate for around three months.

Earlier this month, the Beijing Aerospace Control Centre said that Jade Rabbit, also known as Yutu, had successfully explored the surface of the Moon with its mechanical arm.

Lunar nightThe malfunction emerged before the rover entered its scheduled dormancy period on Saturday, Xinhua reported, citing the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND).

Scientists were organising repairs, the news agency added, without providing further details.

The rover was due to become dormant for 14 days during the lunar night, when there would be no sunlight to power the rover’s solar panel, reports said.

The malfunctioning rover presents the first public mishap China’s ambitious space programme has experienced in years, following several successful manned space flights, the BBC’s Celia Hatton in Beijing reports.

Xinhua said the news of the rover’s troubles had generated extensive discussion on Chinese social media.

“People not only hailed the authority’s openness to the accident, but also expressed concern,” it said.

On Sina Weibo, China’s largest microblog provider, users began tagging their posts with the hash tag “#hang in there Jade Rabbit”.

Users also circulated comic strips depicting a rabbit on the Moon, and rabbit-themed pictures, while expressing their support for the rover.

User Jessica_S_AC_USK wrote: “I want to cry. Go Jade Rabbit, even if we fail this time, we still have next time – our Chinese Jade Rabbit’s goal is the sea of stars! We will not give up easily.”

Referring to a Chinese folktale about a rabbit on the Moon, another microblog user wrote: “Whatever happens, we must thank Jade Rabbit. When our generation tells stories to our children, we can confidently say: ‘There really is a Jade Rabbit on the moon!'”

SOURCE:  BBC News

Patriotic style: Team USA reveals Olympic Opening Ceremony Uniforms

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The TODAY anchors got into the Olympic spirit, dressing up in the official Team USA uniforms as Ralph Lauren’s David Lauren (center, left) made the big reveal. TODAY
The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics are only two weeks away, and so it’s about time we got a close look at our athletes’ festive wardrobe. They’re 100 percent made in the USA — thanks to Ralph Lauren.
The all-American designer crafted the official Opening Ceremony and Closing Ceremony parade uniforms for the U.S. teams and they’re quite patriotic: The ensembles feature a classic color palette of red, white and navy. The Opening Ceremony look, revealed exclusively on TODAY Thursday, includes a knit patchwork cardigan emblazoned with stars ($598), paired with a cream cotton turtleneck sweater ($245), slim-fitting white fleece athletic pants bearing the “Team USA” label ($165), black leather boots with bright red laces ($395) and a cotton belt accented with American graphics ($75). Of course, there’s also a reindeer hat ($95).
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The official Opening Ceremony uniform, designed by Ralph Lauren, is modeled by Olympic professional ice hockey player Zach Parise. Ralph Lauren
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Olympic ice hockey player Julie Chu models the Opening Ceremony uniform, which was made in America. Ralph Lauren
The full look was modeled on TODAY Thursday by the Olympic athletes themselves — American curlers Jessica Schultz, 29, and Jared Zezel, 22, both from Minnesota — as well as the TODAY anchors, who joined Ralph Lauren’s David Lauren for the big reveal.

While the prices might seem a bit steep, it should be noted that 100 percent of the proceeds of the Limited Edition Team USA Opening Ceremony Cardigan will be donated to the U.S. Olympic Committee, an organization supporting our nation’s best athletes.

You’ll also be supporting our domestic manufacturers: Ralph Lauren looked to his home country for sources, which means the wool hails from Oregon, was spun in Pennsylvania, then yarned in North Carolina, before being knitted in California by the husband-and-wife team Ball of Cotton.

The emphasis on having the uniforms manufactured domestically came in the wake of controversy over the Team USA outfits from the London 2012 Olympic Games. Ralph Lauren was heavily criticized for having manufactured the clothing in China. The U.S. Olympic Committee announced that while it was too late to change the outfits ahead of the London Games, it had agreed with Ralph Lauren to make apparel for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games domestically.

This partnership marks the fourth time Ralph Lauren has been an official outfitter of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic teams. Last fall, the brand revealed the Team USA’s Sochi 2014 uniforms, including wool peacoats adorned with a red banner stripe and patriotic patch, fair isle sweaters, and wool turtlenecks with reindeer and snowflake motifs.

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U.S. Olympians celebrated the start of the 100-day countdown to Sochi by showing off apparel made in America. TODAY
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Figure skater Evan Lysacek and ice hockey player Julie Chu showed off Ralph Lauren’s U.S. Closing Ceremony parade uniforms for Sochi on Oct. 29, 2013. TODAY
In addition, Ralph Lauren designed a unique collection of village wear apparel and accessories for the teams. The village collection includes a mesh polo, a half-zip mockneck pullover, a long-sleeved Team USA T-shirt, and a full-zip fleece sweatshirt.

The U.S. apparel is available online on the Ralph Lauren site and the Team USA site, as well as in select Ralph Lauren retail stores and department stores.

SOURCE:  TODAY

President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union Address

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On Tuesday, January 28 at 9pm ET, President Obama will deliver his fifth State of the Union Address.
This year there will be more ways than ever to take part in the State of the Union, including a new way to watch the speech and share exclusive graphics with your social networks, and opportunities to discuss President Obama’s remarks with White House officials immediately following the address.

If you plan on watching from home, we will be streaming an enhanced version of the speech on WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU that features graphics, data and charts that help explain policies and the issues. You can also tune in live on Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and through our mobile apps

In the mean time, here’s how to stay updated, and learn more about how you can watch, share and discuss the speech.

  • Get email updates: Sign up and make sure you’re among the first to get exclusive content before and after the speech
  • Follow us on Twitter: Make sure you’re following @WhiteHouse on Twitter for news and real-time updates before, during and after the address.
  • WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU: Officially launching early next week, WhiteHouse.gov/SOTU will be your number one resource for all things State of the Union, and the best place to watch the enhanced livestream of President Obama’s address, featuring charts, graphs, data and more to help explain the issues and policies he’s discussing alongside the remarks. 

China's Exports Linked To Western U.S. Air Pollution

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Vehicles move slowly through heavy smog in Beijing on Thursday, January 16. China’s manufacturing of exports generates pollution that harms air quality — not only in Asia but also all the way across the Pacific Ocean in the Western United States, according to a new study.

(CNN) — Pollution doesn’t respect national borders.

Outsourcing manufacturing to China may have resulted in less pollution in some parts of the United States, but other regions have lesser air quality because of U.S.-bound Chinese products, a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds.

“Pollution from China is having an effect in the U.S., and we need to recognize how that is affecting both our background ozone levels and also particulates that are reaching the West Coast,” said study co-author Don Wuebbles, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In the western United States, Chinese pollution related to exports contribute up to 12% to 24% of daily sulfate concentrations, the study said.

Because of the United States outsourcing manufacturing to China, the eastern United States saw a decrease in sulfate pollution, but an increase was seen in the western part of the nation.

Because of pollution from China, the Los Angeles area and other U.S. regions violate national ozone standards one extra day per year, the study said.

U.S. consumer goods such as cellphones and televisions are often produced in China. Although Chinese manufacturing isn’t causing most of the U.S. pollution, winds called “westerlies” can send chemicals across the Pacific Ocean in a matter of days. Valleys and basins in western states can see accumulations of dust, ozone and carbon.

“We know that the efficiency of industry in China is not as it is good in the U.S.,” Wuebbles said. Higher efficiency of U.S. manufacturing, combined with controls on emissions and outsourcing, have made strides in reducing U.S.-based emissions.

Does that mean that outsourcing manufacturing to China is bad for American public health? The study suggests that for the United States as a whole, there’s a net benefit, because the population density in the eastern United States is higher than in the West.

But the West still suffers.

Sulfate concentrations went up by up to 2%, and ozone and carbon monoxide levels saw slight increases too, in the western United States in 2006, according to the study.

Average sulfate, carbon monoxide and black carbon concentrations went down by 0.3% to 0.9% when looking at population-weighted averages. But this all comes at a cost: In the western United States and populous Chinese regions, air quality went down.

Black carbon has been linked to asthma as well as diseases such as cancer, emphysema, and heart and lung disease. Rain doesn’t easily clear it from the atmosphere, so it hangs around and travels far.

Researchers found that 36% of anthropogenic sulfur dioxide, 27% of nitrogen oxides, 22% of carbon monoxide and 17% of black carbon from Chinese emissions were linked to producing goods for export.

About 21% of export-related emissions from China, for each of these pollutants, came from exports that went from China to the United States.

Production of goods for export has rapidly expanded in China, with volume growing 390% between 2000 and 2007, although there has not been as much growth since the global financial crisis. China has generally become a “large net exporter of energy-intensive industrial products,” the study said.

Behind this economic growth is a rise in combustion of fossil fuels, particularly coal, a big culprit in carbon dioxide emissions rising worldwide.

Previous research has shown the substantial carbon dioxide emissions that result from Chinese trade, but this study focused on more other air pollutants. Researchers constructed a model using data on economics and emissions.

Over the last decade, China has seen a huge increase in the use of coal-burning power plants, Wuebbles said. Coal use for generating electricity is a big part of why carbon dioxide emissions have nearly doubled their rate of growth worldwide, according to a leaked report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by CNN.

High carbon dioxide atmospheric concentrations are projected to cause a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in temperature by 2100. Agriculture, forestry, ecosystems and human health are all expected to suffer as a result of trends in climate change.

To decrease pollution from China, Wuebbles recommended increasing the efficiency of manufacturing processes and re-examining energy production. Scrubbers can reduce emissions from coal-burning power plants.

“Consideration of international cooperation to reduce trans-boundary transport of air pollution must confront the question of who is responsible for emissions in one country during production of goods to support consumption in another,” study authors wrote.

SOURCE:  CNN

US Consumers To Blame For Some Air Pollution From China

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The downtown Los Angeles skyline on December 14, 2011 (AFP Photo/Frederic J. Brown)

Washington (AFP) – Air pollution from China blows across the Pacific Ocean and ends up over the US west coast — and American consumerism is to blame for a portion of it, said a study Monday.
On some days, nearly a quarter of the pollutants in the air over California, Oregon, Washington and Portland were initially spewed into the air in China, during the making of televisions, toys, cellphones and other products for export.

“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” said co-author Steve Davis, a scientist at the University of California, Irvine.

“Given the complaints about how Chinese pollution is corrupting other countries’ air, this paper shows that there may be plenty of blame to go around,” he added.

The research was led by Jintai Lin of Beijing’s Peking University, along with co-authors from the United States and Britain.

The study found that 22 percent of carbon monoxide and 17 percent of black carbon emitted in China were associated with the production of goods for export.

Black carbon is a concern because it lingers in the atmosphere, doesn’t wash away with rain and can travel long distances. Exposure can raise the risk of cancer, heart and lung disease and asthma.

The study also examined sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.

“For each of these pollutants, about 21 percent of export-related Chinese emissions were attributed to China-to-US export,” said the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

SOURCE:  Yahoo News

Made in China for us: Air pollution tied to exports

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Study finds blowback causes extra day per year of ozone smog in LA.
Chinese air pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean is often caused by the manufacturing of goods for export to the U.S. and Europe, according to findings by UC Irvine and other researchers published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study is the first to quantify how much pollution reaching the American West Coast is from the production in China of cellphones, televisions and other consumer items imported here and elsewhere.

“We’ve outsourced our manufacturing and much of our pollution, but some of it is blowing back across the Pacific to haunt us,” said UC Irvine Earth system scientist Steve Davis, a co-author. “Given the complaints about how Chinese pollution is corrupting other countries’ air, this paper shows that there may be plenty of blame to go around.”

Los Angeles, for instance, experiences at least one extra day a year of smog that exceeds federal ozone limits because of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide emitted by Chinese factories making goods for export, the analysis found. On other days, as much as a quarter of the sulfate pollution on the U.S. West Coast is tied to Chinese exports. All the contaminants tracked in the study are key ingredients in unhealthy smog and soot.

China is not responsible for the lion’s share of pollution in the U.S. Cars, trucks and refineries pump out far more. But powerful global winds known as “westerlies” can push airborne chemicals across the ocean in days, particularly during the spring, causing dangerous spikes in contaminants. Dust, ozone and carbon can accumulate in valleys and basins in California and other Western states.

Black carbon is a particular problem: Rain doesn’t easily wash it out of the atmosphere, so it persists across long distances. Like other air pollutants, it’s been linked to a litany of health problems, from increased asthma to cancer, emphysema, and heart and lung disease.

The study authors suggest the findings could be used to more effectively negotiate clean-air treaties. China’s huge ramp-up of industrial activity in recent years, combined with poor pollution controls, has unleashed often fierce international debates.

“When you buy a product at Wal-Mart,” noted Davis, an assistant professor, “it has to be manufactured somewhere. The product doesn’t contain the pollution, but creating it caused the pollution.”

He and his fellow researchers conclude: “International cooperation to reduce transboundary transport of air pollution must confront the question of who is responsible for emissions in one country during production of goods to support consumption in another.”

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Jintai Lin of Beijing’s Peking University is the paper’s lead author. Others are Da Pan, also of Peking University; Qiang Zhang, Kebin He and Can Wang of Beijing’s Tsinghua University; David Streets of Argonne National Laboratory; Donald Wuebbles of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Dabo Guan of the University of Leeds in England.

About the University of California, Irvine: Located in coastal Orange County, near a thriving employment hub in one of the nation’s safest cities, UC Irvine was founded in 1965. One of only 62 members of the Association of American Universities, it’s ranked first among U.S. universities under 50 years old by the London-based Times Higher Education. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UC Irvine has more than 28,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It’s Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $4.3 billion annually to the local economy.

SOURCE:  University of California, Irvine

Why it's Time to Unleash Manufacturing Innovation

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It is time to put a tired idea to bed. Not long ago, people were predicting the demise of manufacturing. They said that manufacturing was a relic of the past, that the service sector alone could grow an economy and drive innovation. They could not have been more wrong.
Increasingly, manufacturing is not a sector in need of rescuing. It is the sector doing the rescuing. As a recent WEF report stated, “The manufacturing sector has a fundamental role to play in global economic growth and job creation for emerging economies and developed markets.”

Compared to service businesses, manufacturers are nearly 10 times stronger exporters; their employees contribute twice as much to national productivity as workers in other sectors; and each job inside a manufacturing facility can spur the creation of an additional three to five jobs outside it.

In countries around the world, manufacturing’s multiplier effect has gone to work – creating jobs, boosting productivity, fueling innovation, and balancing economies. In the United States, for example, manufacturing made the largest contribution to GDP growth of any sector in 2012 and has expanded for each of the past seven months. That is how the manufacturing renaissance is driving recovery today – and helping businesses and nations prosper for many tomorrows to come.

Advanced manufacturing is replacing smoke stacks and shuttered factories with high-tech laboratories and state-of-the-art plants. These new, 21st-century models for prototyping and innovating enable the manufacturing industry to generate up to 90 percent of business R&D spending.

Generations ago, companies like Dow created and marketed new products entirely on their own. Products like Saran Wrap and Ziploc Bags went from the lab bench to the factory floor entirely within our company. Today, the breakthroughs we seek – game-changing ideas like self-healing materials and self-driving cars – are so complex that they will never materialize if we all stay within the boundaries of our sectors or our companies.

Innovation does not – and cannot – happen in silos anymore. The best products and industries of tomorrow will be born at what I call “the intersections.”

That is why, more and more, we need to work to form partnerships to unlock progress. We need collaboration among the brightest minds in business, science, and engineering. In the same spirit, we need active collaboration between the public and private sectors as well.

For businesses to succeed – for economies to grow – governments must create the conditions for innovation ecosystems to develop and flourish. This requires renewed focus in three key areas.

First, human capital. Machines may do the heavy lifting on factory floors, but it is human beings – specifically, scientists, engineers, and other highly skilled professionals – who turn advanced manufacturing clusters into centers of innovation. Governments must do more to educate young people, whether in universities or through skills training at community colleges, and to retrain experienced workers – particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Second, the business climate. In countries like the United States, a complex environment of regulations and tax provisions determines if and where companies scale up and invest. Too often, these regulations add costs and, worse, uncertainty to these calculations.Forward-thinking countries are seeding the ground for manufacturing growth by shifting to smarter regulation. Through competitive tax rates, streamlined permitting processes and other reforms, these countries enable government to operate at the speed of business, increasing predictability for companies that are looking to invest.

Third, a smart, balanced energy policy. Manufacturers gravitate toward regions where energy is affordable and accessible – not merely because we consume energy, but also because we create so much more with it. We use natural gas, for example,as a feedstock – as the building block that transforms our innovations from ideas into reality.

More than 95 percent of the world’s synthetic materials would not be possible without our industry: from pharmaceuticals to smartphones to lighter, more efficient vehicles. When natural gas is used in the manufacturing process instead of burned or exported, it generates eight times more value across the economy.

In this way, advanced manufacturing expands economies when they are healthy and helps them recover when they are not. It creates competitiveness in a way no other sector can – encouraging countries to invest in their work forces, laying the groundwork for further innovation, and making far better use of natural resources.

But again, this virtuous cycle cannot set itself in motion. If we create an ecosystem in which innovators can work together – at the intersections between business, government, academia, and civil society – then the current manufacturing renaissance can become a revolution. Far from the so-called demise of manufacturing, we will instead see the rise of a new era of investment, innovation, job creation, and prosperity that will improve lives around the world.

Andrew Liveris is Chairman and CEO of Dow.

SOURCE:  CNBC

Original article can be read here:  http://www.cnbc.com/id/101349128

Why House Democrats Might Kill Obama's Big Trade Deal

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January 11, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s international trade agenda is dead in the water if he doesn’t do a better job engaging with Democrats in Congress, and his administration appears to be getting that message, Democrats said Friday.
Congressional Democrats have often been frustrated by his lack of attention to their concerns, but they’ve been especially disturbed lately that in his grand pivot to Asia and push for a 12-nation trade pact dubbed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they and the rest of Congress largely have been cut out of negotiations.

“We want transparency. We want to see what’s going on there,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters. “We have a problem with that.”

As a result, many Democrats fear the actual terms of the deal do not reflect traditional Democratic Party policy priorities.

“This is a big problem now,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “There is inadequate engagement on the substance of what will be in an agreement or out of an agreement.”

Democrats in the House and Senate have complained for years about the secrecy standards the Obama administration has applied to the TPP, forcing members to jump over hurdles to see negotiation texts, and blocking staffer involvement. In 2012, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) complained that corporate lobbyists were given easy access while his office was being stymied, and even introduced protest legislation requiring more congressional input.

The issue came to a head Thursday in two ways. In one case, Obama’s new nominee for China ambassador, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), angered his party by introducing fast-track trade legislation backed by the White House. The bill would ease the passage of the TPP and is co-sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.). But most Democrats oppose the bill, and ultimately, Baucus and the administration introduced the legislation without a House Democratic co-sponsor — a public embarrassment that prompted House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to declare Obama needs to get his act together on trade policy.

Also Thursday, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman met with Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, and got an earful, lawmakers told HuffPost.

“We had a very frank discussion,” said Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee.

“They’ve said that they welcome congressional input,” said Van Hollen, who also attended the meeting. “But in terms of actually establishing the mechanisms, they haven’t put forward a proposal. But we should be putting those proposals on the table. Any administration is going to try and maintain maximum flexibility. It’s up to the Congress to insist that we have an important role in the process.”

Democrats are especially determined to win a role in negotiations because the bill introduced by Baucus, the departing chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, would grant the administration the ability to present Congress with trade deals that could not be amended, leaving lawmakers to take it or leave it, including on the TPP, which is opposed by many progressive groups and some tea party activists.

With opposition from the right, the administration needs to shore up support from Democrats to move the trade agenda ahead. And the Baucus bill didn’t help. Even Democrats like Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who are more open to free-trade deals with the right protections, think Baucus’ effort does little to improve the last fast-track bill Congress passed in 2002.

“I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s going to make it very hard to pass, and frankly, I don’t think it should,” said Blumenauer. “I’m a little disappointed that something’s dropped [introduced] that was never discussed with Democrats in the House. As I understand it, it wasn’t actually discussed with Democrats in the Senate.”

“It’s interesting Baucus introduced his bill without any — I think a couple senators endorsed it — but without any other Democratic senator on it,” Levin said.

“And most of them hadn’t seen his bill when he introduced it, including the new chairman,” he said, referring to Wyden, who is replacing Baucus at the head of the Finance Committee.

There’s a lot at stake for Democrats and the president in working out their rough spots. If they don’t, Obama’s trade agenda stalls. And for Democrats, giving the White House too much authority could undercut the centerpiece of the 2014 election argument — that they are the party that will deal with income inequality and help the middle class. That’s because many in their own party, especially grassroots activists and unions, blame flaws in previous grand trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement for siphoning off middle class jobs.

“We have had a trade deficit that has exceeded $350 billion every single year for the past 13 years. We have this enormous staggering problem with our economy called the continuing trade deficit, and this is a measure that would make that worse,” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said. “The classic example of this is NAFTA. NAFTA has managed to hurt American workers and Mexican workers at the same time.”

And most Democrats don’t think the pending TPP deal addresses numerous labor, environmental and other issues adequately. Like NAFTA, the TPP would empower foreign corporations to directly challenge the laws and regulations of a country before an international tribunal. Under other trade frameworks, like the World Trade Organization treaties, only nations themselves are permitted to bring trade cases before an international arbiter, meaning companies must first win support from a government before attacking a law. Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly and other corporations have used NAFTA to attempt to overturn Canadian regulations regarding offshore oil drilling, fracking, pesticides, drug patents and other issues.

Progressives like Grayson have long been critical of free trade deals because of their empowerment of corporations. But even members of the House Democratic leadership who have traditionally supported such pacts are upset over the current deal and worried about its impact on their 2014 message.

“No one should believe that negotiations on TPP are over, because almost — again — all the key issues remain,” said Levin.

“Congress must have a robust role in the oversight of any trade deal,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “I will continue working with my colleagues to ensure any trade deal reflects 21st century realities, protects the American worker and is only agreed to after adequate and necessary consultation with Congress.”

Still, boosting trade does fit into the Democrats’ agenda if it helps boost exports and create new jobs in America.

“We need to deal with trade. I don’t think there’s a member of Congress who isn’t pro-trade, but it’s got to be pro-American worker, pro-American consumer, pro-American business,” sai
d R
ep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.). “Otherwise, why are we opening up our markets to people if we’re going to get raped?”

Becerra and others acknowledge there is a great deal of pressure, in general, to take steps that promise economic growth with the economy still limping along and producing too few jobs. Crafting a trade deal that pleases their base, however, won’t come easily, and almost certainly not before the election, especially if the Obama administration offers Democrats little more than token input.

“This place doesn’t work on amorphous pressure. It works on touch-and-feel pressure. Unless we can come together on something that collectively, bipartisanly, we think can work, I think it’s going to be tough,” said Becerra. “It won’t be fast. It might be on a track, but it won’t be fast.”

House Democrats Balk At Efforts By Obama, Boehner On Controversial Pacific Trade Deal

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January 9, 2014
WASHINGTON — House Democrats balked Thursday at a bill designed to clear congressional hurdles for President Barack Obama’s controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. By refusing to put forward a co-sponsor for the legislation, House Democrats have significantly hampered the prospects for the bill’s passage.
The legislation, introduced Thursday, would prevent members of Congress from offering amendments to a still-unfinished deal between 12 Pacific nations, and would instead force an up-or-down vote on whatever deal the Obama administration eventually reaches.

The pending trade deal is supported by corporate interest groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while organized labor and traditionally liberal public interest groups have consistently voiced concerns over the TPP’s potential to undermine important environmental, public health and labor standards.

Late last year, 151 House Democrats signed a letter opposing the so-called fast track scheme, also known as trade promotion authority. Several House Republicans oppose fast track on the grounds that it excessively empowers the executive branch, but many others, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), support the proposal.

“Obama wants to pass it; Democrats in the House want to oppose it,” said one House Democratic aide, who was granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the Democratic position. “Republicans are split ideologically, and want to know why they should take one for Obama.”

Nevertheless, Boehner said at a Thursday press conference that he cannot pass the bill without Democratic help.

“I’ve made clear to the president that this can’t pass unless there is bipartisan support for it,” Boehner said. “And this goes back months, and yet we’ve seen scant attention to this issue by the administration in terms of encouraging Democrat leaders and Democrat members to stand up and vote for it.”


The Obama administration did attempt to drum up Democratic support, according to sources familiar with the effort, particularly with an aggressive effort to win over Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.). Kind is co-chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group traditionally sympathetic to corporate interests, but he also is frequently mentioned as a potential gubernatorial or senatorial candidate in his home state of Wisconsin, where labor unions wield significant political clout. Neither Kind nor any other House Democrat agreed to co-sponsor the fast track bill, which was introduced by Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in the Senate.

Kind’s office said that there had been discussions with the administration, but no formal request that he sponsor the bill.

The New Democrat Coalition, meanwhile, issued a statement, endorsed by Kind, on the fast track legislation, saying, “We are encouraged by the introduction of a bipartisan, bicameral bill to spur action on Trade Promotion Authority. We look forward to working with our colleagues in considering this bill … Trade Promotion Authority will help the Administration conclude important agreements that will open markets and create jobs.”

Many House Democrats are flatly opposed to the TPP and efforts to ease its passage. House Democrats are often more responsive to liberal interest groups than their Senate counterparts, and many members — including some in the Democratic Party leadership — believe that opposing TPP is good for electoral politics in 2014. While supporters of the deal argue it will increase economic growth, similar recent trade deals have undercut some U.S. industries and weakened global labor protections.

“The president has failed to find someone who is willing to introduce the bill. He’s got over 200 members to cultivate from, some of whom would like to have his support in the next election. But Democratic members are extremely skeptical of this,” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) told HuffPost.

“We’ve tried free trade, and not only has free trade not improved the U.S. economy, it’s gutted manufacturing and driven down our labor standards,” he added, citing NAFTA as a prime example.

“We expect to have a robust conversation on the Hill about how trade agreements should be negotiated and the role of Congress in that process,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told HuffPost. “We’re eager to engage directly with members of the Finance and Ways and Means Committees and with all of Congress to pass Trade Promotion Authority legislation that has broad, bipartisan support.”

The precise terms of the deal remain secret from the public, and the dozen countries involved in the talks have yet to reach a formal agreement. The Obama administration has categorized the negotiation text as a classified document. Congressional staffers have complained about being denied access to the U.S. position.

This fall, WikiLeaks unveiled a draft of the deal’s intellectual property chapter, prompting outcries from global health experts and Internet freedom groups, which warned that the language on patents, copyrights and other intellectual property could increase the cost of medicine and curb free speech on the web.

Progressive groups came out strongly against the trade promotion authority, suggesting that approving it and the underlying trade deal would undercut efforts to curtail income inequality.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership would be an unmitigated disaster for everything from the environment to Internet freedom and working families,” said Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of Democracy For America, a grassroots progressive organization, which intends to make trade an election-year issue.

“Members of Congress must be able to work to ensure that any proposed trade agreement is a fair deal for all Americans, not just the rich and powerful,” Chamberlain added in a statement. “Let’s be clear: A vote for fast track authority on the TPP is a vote for a deal that will hurt hardworking Americans and haunt every single member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, who votes for it.”

This article has been updated with a statement from the New Democrat Coalition.

WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Obama Deal – #TPP

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November 13, 2013
WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks on Wednesday published a critical chapter of an international trade deal the United States is currently negotiating with 11 Pacific nations.
The document confirms what some public health experts and Internet freedom advocates had long feared: The Obama administration is aggressively pursuing terms that would increase the cost of medicines and hamper an open Internet.

“The U.S. is refusing to back down from dangerous provisions that will impede timely access to affordable medicines,” said Judit Rius Sanjuan, U.S. manager of the Access Campaign at Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian group that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000.

Most major provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership document, which is dated at Aug. 30, are nearly identical to previous leaks that drew criticism from tech activists and consumer groups. But the public disclosure of which countries support or object to which terms, is new. The U.S. government considers the draft text to be classified, a status which has stymied access for congressional aides, and prevented some lawmakers from airing their complaints.

“The Obama administration’s proposals are the worst –- the most damaging for health we have seen in a U.S. trade agreement to date,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s global access to medicines program.

Countries that violate the terms of trade agreements can be sued in international courts.

The TPP deal would explicitly empower corporations to directly challenge government laws and regulations, a political power that World Trade Organization treaties have reserved for other sovereign nations. The U.S. has endorsed such corporate political powers in previous trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement. Companies including Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical and Eli Lilly have attempted to invoke NAFTA to overrule Canadian regulations on offshore oil drilling, fracking, pesticides, drug patents and other issues.

“With both copyright and patent, the really alarming thing is, there’s talk about major systemic changes that could be made in the next couple of years,” said Parker Higgins, spokesman for the internet freedom group Electronic Frontier Foundation. “The last thing we want to do is crystallize current U.S. law in a trade agreement that we would have to renegotiate.”

The administration, however, rejected criticism that it is pursuing an unhealthy deal.

“We are working with Congress, stakeholders, and our TPP negotiating partners to reach an outcome that promotes high-paying jobs in innovative American industries and reflects our values, including by seeking strong and balanced copyright protections, as well as advancing access to medicines while incentivizing the development of new, lifesaving drugs,” said Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The leaked document shows U.S. negotiators pursuing a host of policies that could drive up medical costs by extending drug companies’ and other corporations’ monopolies on their products beyond the normal 20-year patent term. These provisions include standards to lengthen patent terms, expand the criteria for which countries must grant drug patents, require countries to issue new patents on minor alterations to a drug, and establish barriers on the use of pharmaceutical test data, all of which prevent market competition from generic drugs.

A coalition of five nations consistently offered alternatives to the U.S. language, including New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, Chile and Malaysia. The only language mitigating this effort to drive up drug prices is a vague exemption for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria drugs.

“The obligations of this Chapter do not and should not prevent a Party from taking measures to protect public health by promoting access to medicines for all, in particular concerning cases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, [US oppose: chagas] and other epidemics as well as circumstances of extreme urgency or national emergency,” the document reads.

Prior WTO agreements have included similar protections, but the U.S. has repeatedly brought political pressure against countries that attempted to grant access to generic AIDS drugs. The U.S. has had several recent disputes with India over the country’s decision to issue a $157 generic cancer drug for which Bayer had charged more than $5,000 a month.

“People die from cancer, too,” notes Sanjuan. “The public health challenges we see in the countries where we work are much broader than HIV, TB and malaria. Even if this is a sincere effort at a solution, it’s a fake solution and won’t really work.”

The draft’s copyright standards would require countries to adopt digital distribution rules similar to those the United States has had in place since the late 1990s. Those rules have come under fire for establishing a host of legal liabilities for normal internet functions. The rules have made tech start-ups targets of costs and legal threats from movie studios and record labels, and created conflicts over simple actions like linking to copyrighted content.

The U.S. has avoided some of the most damaging implications of its broad copyright definitions by relying on a robust set of exemptions, including fair use and other terms that permit using some copyrighted information without paying royalties. But the TPP draft would establish a narrow international standard for fair use, and thwart other types of exemptions. EFF and others have warned against exporting the U.S. copyright criteria without including U.S.-style exemptions.

WikiLeaks, the government transparency organization, released the document on the same day that 151 congressional Democrats sent a letter to President Barack Obama objecting to the “fast-track” process the president hopes to use to approve the TPP deal. Two separate letters from dozens of House Democrats and Republicans objecting to the same process were sent to Obama on Tuesday.

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