Wikileaks offers $100,000 for drafts of Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks started crowdsourcing $100,000 bounty on Tuesday for copies of Obama's Pacific trade pact.

|
John Stillwell/Pool Photo/File
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (r.) speaks during a news conference inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Aug. 18, 2014.

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks offered a $100,000 bounty for copies of a Pacific trade pact that is a central plank of President Barack Obama's diplomatic pivot to Asia on Tuesday.

WikiLeaks, which has published leaked chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiating text before, started a drive to crowdsource money for the reward, just as U.S. unions launched a new push to make the text public.

"The transparency clock has run out on the TPP. No more secrecy. No more excuses. Let's open the TPP once and for all," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a statement.

Nine hours after the campaign was launched, WikiLeaks' website was showing $25,835 pledged by more than 100 people.

The text of the TPP, which is still under negotiation and would boost the flow of goods between 12 nations from Japan to Chile, is a classified document. The U.S. Trade Representative has increased availability of the text to lawmakers, but critics complain there is still not enough oversight.

Union group AFL-CIO led a march on the USTR office in Washington to demand to read the text, but said it found the doors locked.

Under legislation awaiting approval from the House of Representatives, the text of the TPP will be publicly available for 60 days before it is signed by the president.

But it is still unclear when the House will debate so-called fast-track legislation granting the White House power to speed trade deals through Congress, although House majority leader Kevin McCarthy has said a vote is likely this month.

Negotiations on the TPP are close to completion but many trading partners are waiting for approval of fast track, which would stop lawmakers from amending trade deals like the TPP, before making their final offers.

Most of Obama's own Democrats oppose the legislation because of fears over the impact of trade deals on jobs, and amid fierce lobbying from unions to vote "no."

Only 18 Democrats have signaled support and dozens of Republicans, opposed to giving the White House more power, are expected to vote "no," leaving the 217-vote threshold needed for passage in doubt.

As part of its education push, USTR released a new report on Tuesday listing tariffs that U.S. exporters face in exporting their goods overseas, compared with the average 1.4 percent foreign companies face exporting to the United States.

U.S. wine faces tariffs of up to 55 percent in TPP countries, fresh vegetables as much as 90 percent and textiles up to 100 percent.

(Reporting by Krista Hughes; Editing by Alan Crosby)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Wikileaks offers $100,000 for drafts of Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0602/Wikileaks-offers-100-000-for-drafts-of-Trans-Pacific-Partnership-trade-deal
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe