If the New Zealand government had declined the Shanghai Pengxin purchase of the Crafar farm it could have faced an international law suit for breaching its free trade agreement with China, says University of Auckland law professor Jane Kelsey.

‘When China’s politicians warned New Zealand politicians last year that the agreement was a two way street it is clear they were referring to their rights as foreign investors under the so-called “trade” treaty.’

That view was reiterated in Shanghai Pengxin’s application to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO).

The New Zealand China Free Trade Agreement was signed in 2008.

The government cannot treat applications from Chinese investors differently from similar applications from other countries’ investors under what is known as the ‘most-favoured-nation’ or MFN rule.

Shanghai Pengxin’s application pointed to numerous purchases of farmland by investors of other nationalities, and claimed that rejection of its otherwise well-founded application would amount to anti-Chinese discrimination.

Prime Minister John Key admitted on Campbell Live on Friday night that the FTA ‘has in it the most-favoured-nation status that means we can’t discriminate’.

Sale: “cast(s) a spotlight on the even greater risks of the more extensive foreign investor rights proposed for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a debate that the government is desperate to avoid.”

That contradicts paragraph 62 of the OIO advice to ministers that there was no problem under the China FTA in a paragraph that does not address the MFN rule.

‘Presumably the Prime Minister got alternative advice from elsewhere’, Professor Kelsey said. She urged the government to release those documents.

‘The government would have pulled out all the stops to avoid a Chinese investor supported by the Chinese State taking it to international arbitration for breaching the FTA, even if it felt it was on strong legal ground.’

‘Such a dispute would have huge ramifications for New Zealand’s diplomatic and economic relationship with China.’

‘It would also cast a spotlight on the even greater risks of the more extensive foreign investor rights proposed for the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a debate that the government is desperate to avoid.’

According to Professor Kelsey ‘the US is demanding much stronger protections for its would-be investors in the TPPA than China secured and the Key government has apparently rolled over and agreed to them, unlike Australia’.

‘The popular angst being channeled towards the Chinese needs to become a more principled opposition to deals that sign the sovereignty of our resources over to foreign corporations and who can sue the government in offshore courts if they don’t get their way.’

Download the OIO’s Decision Summary

It is now clear, however, there is an even more insidious and threatening danger at the heart of this secret agreement.   One clause that the Americans will insist on (as they have done with other similar agreements) is a provision that would allow foreign private corporations to sue our government (including all future governments) if they saw any sign that the terms of the secret agreement might not be adhered to.

In the final weeks of the election campaign, the question of whether or not to sell some of our key assets remains, for many voters, a defining issue.  Yet, while that question is hotly debated, a related issue of equal if not greater importance is sliding by under the radar.

Bill English (top left, at last weekends APEC meeting) “will give consent in our name to the broad principles of a new multilateral agreement which will pose an even greater threat to our continued existence as a genuinely self-governing democracy”

That asset sales should raise real concerns is hardly surprising in a country that has already sold a higher proportion of its economy into overseas ownership than any other developed country.  For many, it raises fears, not just about the loss of control over our economic future, but about our powers of democratic self-government as well.

Yet, while those issues rise to the top of the election agenda, Bill English will – this weekend in Hawaii* – give consent in our name to the broad principles of a new multilateral agreement which will pose an even greater threat to our continued existence as a genuinely self-governing democracy.

He will do so without ever consulting us.  Not only that – we will not be allowed to know what is in the agreement, and even the record of the negotiations themselves will be kept secret, it seems, for up to four years.

NZN4S Patron Bryan Gould: “The government – in the persons of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Trade Minister - will make these secret decisions for us”

Parliament will not be allowed a say until the deal is done.  There will be no scrutiny by a select committee.  The government – in the persons of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, and the Trade Minister – will make these secret decisions for us.

Yet we already know that the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is certain to raise issues of the greatest importance.  We already know that the government is so convinced that “free trade” is a good thing that it will be prepared to sign away almost anything for the chance to sell to our trading partners the products that – in a food-hungry world – they want to buy anyway.

We know that our government will roll over at the mere sight of a dollar bill.  Who can forget the unseemly haste with which we gave away huge tax advantages and changed our labour laws at the behest of Warner Brothers?  Hardly the action of a government or a country with any self-respect.

Little wonder that there is a real concern that the American pharmaceutical industry will insist that the role of Pharmac – the government agency that has used its buying power to keep down the price of prescription medicines and has accordingly saved New Zealanders hundreds of millions of dollars – will have to be reduced so that the drug companies can extract much greater profits from us.

On this, as on other similar issues, Ministers give us general assurances – and by the time we discover what those mean, it will be too late.

It is now clear, however, there is an even more insidious and threatening danger at the heart of this secret agreement.   One clause that the Americans will insist on (as they have done with other similar agreements) is a provision that would allow foreign private corporations to sue our government (including all future governments) if they saw any sign that the terms of the secret agreement might not be adhered to.

The legal action would be brought, not in our own courts, or even in a properly recognised international court, but in special tribunals set up specifically for the purpose.   It would be necessary to establish these courts especially because they would be dealing with very unusual cases – cases where privately owned companies could sue a sovereign country to enforce treaty provisions to which those companies were not even parties.

Let us be in no doubt what that would mean.  It would mean that an American corporation would have far more extensive rights against our government than any New Zealand company would ever have.  It would mean that a future government, perhaps elected to change policy in an area like environmental protection or health and safety, could be prevented from doing so by a foreign corporation suing that government in a special tribunal.

It would mean, in other words, that concessions made in secret by today’s government could never be claimed back.  We, as a country, would be locked into a marketplace controlled by foreign corporations.

This is not mere speculation.  American and European companies investing and trading overseas have regularly enforced these rights arising from similar treaty provisions.

Ironically, the history of this kind of provision has begun to attract attention because it has come back to bite those who created it.  The Germans, some decades ago, began to insert such provisions in treaties with third-world countries, so that the interests of German investors in those countries could be protected.   Such was the power of German investment, and the weakness of the recipient countries, that no one took much notice.

Now, however, with the crisis in the eurozone and the growing investment of formerly third-world countries in Europe, the boot is on the other foot – and European countries are suddenly crying foul at the prospect of being sued by private companies from China or Korea.

Before New Zealand gets embroiled in similar proceedings, could we at least get a clear answer to a simple question?  Does the TPPA, to which Bill English nodded assent this weekend, contain a similar provision?

*This article, by NZN4S Patron Bryan Gould, was written prior to the APEC meeting (held last weekend) at which the TPPA was discussed. The NZ Herald declined to publish it.

After sifting through the deluge of documents released after today’s meeting of political leaders from the nine countries in the TPPA negotiations, Professor Kelsey said they provided no new information.

“The first official statements about the TPPA negotiations have told us nothing we haven’t already gleaned from leaked documents, analysis of speeches from politicians and corporate lobbyists, and our own discussions with delegations.”

The buzz-word ‘transparency’ consigned to the dustbins of hypocrisy

“They do confirm their goal is to set a straitjacket on the policies and laws that future New Zealand governments can adopt”, she said.

“We already know that the targets include Pharmac, tobacco control laws, restrictions on foreign investment, tighter environmental protections, GM and food labeling, industry, regulation of oil exploration and construction standards, and many other areas where market-friendly regulation has failed.”

“We need to see the draft texts so we can properly assess their implications and if they are not in our interests the government should be required to walk away. That’s the least we should expect in a democracy.”

The APEC process, which gives privileged access to the corporate sector and excludes all others, has compounded the secrecy that has surrounds the controversial TPPA negotiations.

“The buzz-word ‘transparency’, which is strewn throughout the APEC and TPPA documentation, should be relegated to the dustbins of hypocrisy”, said Professor Kelsey.

Asia-Pacific leaders at the APEC meeting – NZ’s Bill English at extream right

“The CEOs of the major corporations and the business lobby groups have had privileged meetings with the officials, ministers and leaders to push their cause.”

“New Zealanders should be outraged that our right to decide our own future is being dealt with this way.”

Outline of TPP Agreement from the United States Trade Representative 

The leaked documents are here

Answer:

•  Affordable medicine
•  being self-governing democracy
•  Regulation of banks, insurance and securities firms
•  All of the above

While over 600 corporate representatives have access to negotiation texts and an inside track, the public, press and Congress is locked out of these major trade negotiations.

Unlock the secrets and get informed.

World leaders are meeting this week in Honolulu at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings. One of the agenda items will be the Trans-Pacific FTA talks. This prospective trade deal would include the United States, Chile, Peru, Vietnam, Brunei Darussalam, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and possibly Japan. These talks have been cloaked in secrecy since negotiations began in 2008 under George W. Bush. Yes, this is one that Obama is now supposed to negotiate, but Bush started it — another NAFTA-style deal.

At the September 2011 Chicago Trans-Pacific FTA talks, negotiators admitted that they signed a secrecy pact that forbids access to texts for up to four years after a deal is signed or the talks end. Members of Congress, journalists and citizens are all denied the opportunity to look at the texts that will impact their daily lives, until it is too late to do anything to change the deal.

What’s at stake?

Access to Affordable Medicines

Last month, leaked texts showed that outrageous new privileges are being given to Big Pharma to jack up medicine prices. And it’s coming from US negotiators. This includes letting Big Pharma challenge the type of drug formularies that are used to keep down drug prices and the dismantling of Pharmac. For cash-strapped states, these formularies can save states up to 50 percent on the cost of medications.

Regulation of the Financial System

As people gather in the streets to protest against Wall Street and the financial institutions that have bankrupted America, the Banksters want to use the Trans-Pacific FTA to escape regulation and get back to business as usual. We know that extreme deregulation texts from before the financial crisis are the starting point for these negotiations. Those texts prohibit bans of risky financial products and services and limits on ”too big to fail” institutions.

The Trade Deal Heard Round the World

Everyday citizens are banging on the closed doors of the Trans Pacific-FTA negotiations and demanding a fair deal or no deal. Thousands of Japanese protesters took to the streets and submitted 11.7 million signatures to the government to oppose Japan’s potential participation in the Trans-Pacific FTA. In Peru, activists staged a sit-in outside of Trans-Pacific FTA negotiations. This September, hundreds of labor leaders and activist took to the streets in Chicago to demand

A Fair Deal or No Deal!

Now, we are asking for you to get involved and take the first step to open the doors to a new deal on trade.

Text taken from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch with alterations

At the APEC Leaders’ Summit in Hawaii on November 12 & 13, Bill English will signal the Government’s readiness to trade away yet more of this country’s powers of self-government, the New Zealand Is Not For Sale Campaign warned today.

“This is not just a question of asset sales. What is at stake is our ability as a self-governing democracy to decide our own laws,” the Patron of the Campaign, Bryan Gould, said.

KEPT SECRET FOR FOUR YEARS

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has been negotiated in secret; the Government will do the deal (which will be formally signed next year) without telling Parliament or the people what is in it.  The record of the negotiations will be kept secret for four years after the deal is signed.”

“The Americans have already pronounced themselves satisfied with the progress they have made in the negotiations. That strongly suggests that they have got their way on issues like the weakening of Pharmac’s ability to keep down the cost of prescription medicines, and on the right of American corporations to sue – in specially constituted international tribunals -any futureNew Zealandgovernment that wanted to change the arrangement.”

“We already know, from the special treatment offered to Warner Brothers and the Government’s willingness to change our labour laws to accommodate them, how far and how fast they are willing to roll over at the sight of a dollar bill,”Bryan Gouldsaid today.

NZN4S Patron Bryan Gould; “This is not just a question of asset sales. What is at stake is our ability as a self-governing democracy to decide our own laws,”

“We have already sold off into foreign ownership a higher proportion of our national assets than any other developed country.  The TPPA means that control over what remains, now and into the future, is in effect handed over to international corporations.  This is a heavy price to pay for a trade deal in which our partners do no more than commit to buy what they want to buy anyway.”

The New Zealand Is Not For Sale Campaign, a network of numerous organisations committed to protecting what remains of New Zealand’s self-government, is to present to Parliament a petition signed by people from all over the country. The Statement reads:

We the undersigned citizens and permanent residents of New Zealand call upon the Government of New Zealand

• to cease negotiations on the Transpacific Partnership agreement; and

• to not sign this agreement; and

• to cease work on any other in-progress or proposed international trade and investment treaties containing clauses which limit or abrogate New Zealand’s sovereign and democratic right to make and enforce laws and regulations and provide services which differ from those of other states or transnational organisations.  

FUNDAMENTALLY AND PERMANENTLY WEAKEN OUR DEMOCRACY

“Because it is a Statement of Sovereignty, the Campaign wanted to present it, in the days immediately before the APEC Summit, to the Sovereign’s Representative, namely the Governor General,” saidBryan Gould.

“Sadly, he was unable to accept it, since the constitutional rules dictate that it has to be presented to a politician. This reinforces the denial of any democratic element in a process which will fundamentally and permanently weaken our democracy.”

“The Government has refused calls, including from a separate petition, to make the negotiating text public. And, of course, to cap it off, there is no Parliamentary scrutiny in NZ – treaties are the prerogative of the executive, not legislative, branch. There is no debate or Select Committee scrutiny and the only chance that MPs might get is to rubberstamp it after the Cabinet has agreed to it, and it is a done deal.”

THE TPPA WILL, AMONG OTHER THINGS

• undermine what little NZ has left in the way of any controls of foreign investment;

• institutionalise the very same horrendous financial practices which led to the global financial crisis;

• allow American corporations to sue theNew Zealandgovernment in private international tribunals;

• attack Pharmac and drive up the cost of prescription medicines;

• make access to digital recordings more expensive and copying more restricted;

• attack our GE and tobacco controls and food labelling and food and appliance safety standards;

• and weaken our controls of food imports where they might carry disease.

The Statement of Sovereignty and its signature sheets will now be presented to Green MP Catherine Delahuntyin Civic Square, Wellington, at 12 noon on Wednesday November 9^th, followed by a march to Government House.

DOWNLOAD THE EVENT POSTER

Drug companies' 'war' on Pharmac

New Leaked Texts Reveal Details of US Attack on Pharmac in Free Trade Talks

The leaking of three further secret texts from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations confirms fears that the US is pushing for rules on healthcare products that would give its pharmaceutical giants new tools to attack national drug buying agencies like Pharmac, Jane Kelsey said today.

The US proposed texts along with critique of their public health implications were posted on the Citizen Trade Campaign website today.

Speaking from Lima where the texts are being negotiated, Washington-based legal expert Professor Sean Flynn describes the proposed Annex on “transparency” that targets drug pricing and reimbursement programmes as “an extreme proposal that regulates public health policy and has no place in a trade negotiation”.

“This proposal is contrary to the demands of democracy, is bad for the development interests of poorer countries, and represents an affront to the best practices in evidence-based health policy, including such practices in the US”.

According to Professor Flynn, the real effect of the US proposal is to advance the pharmaceutical industry’s ultimate goals of a binding international agreement on drug pricing.

“If such an agreement is desired by countries, it should be negotiated in an open forum where public health experts and advocates are well represented, eg. the World Health Organisation.”

The leaked text on transparency strikes at the core of Pharmac, which uses its purchasing power to negotiate affordable prices for medicines.

University of Auckland Law Professor Jane Kelsey describes the combined effect of the three leaked texts as “giving Big PhRMA a platform to wage a war of harassment against Pharmac”.

“The US proposals would allow drug companies to challenge every Pharmac decision as not appropriately recognising the ‘value’ of patents – a dangerous and undefined standard. Adopting this standard would open floodgates of litigation against Pharmac and will ultimately raise medicine prices and ration access.”

“These leaked documents are being discussed at this week’s negotiating round in Lima. Yet again, we see the dangers of secret negotiations that give foreign corporations enormous leverage over our democratic processes and threaten the viability of our health care system”.

Checkout all the leaked documents

TRANSPARENCYCHAPTER – ANNEX ON TRANSPARENCY AND PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS FOR HEALTHCARETECHNOLOGIES

TBT ANNEXES ON MEDICAL DEVICES, PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS AND COSMETIC PRODUCTS.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CHAPTER

REGULATORY COHERENCE CHAPTER

Also see

Key Sticks To Pharmac Position > (its up for grabs)

“It is totally inappropriate for a ‘trade’ agreement to dictate how governments should structure their domestic bureaucracy and procedures”,

Another secret document from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations has been leaked, the first dealing with issues other than intellectual property and medicines.

This follows yesterday’s leak of documents showing the US is pushing for rules on healthcare products that would give its pharmaceutical giants new tools to attack national drug buying agencies like Pharmac

“We warned the government that obsessive secrecy surrounding the TPPA negotiations would spawn more leaks, and that’s what is happening,” said Professor Jane Kelsey, a critic of the proposed agreement.

The leaked regulatory coherence text sets out the agencies, mechanisms and processes that governments should use when deciding on domestic regulations. This has never been included in a free trade agreement before.

“It is totally inappropriate for a ‘trade’ agreement to dictate how governments should structure their domestic bureaucracy and procedures”, said Professor Kelsey.

Jane Kelsey rejects claims by defenders of the chapter that it simply reflects New Zealand’s process of regulatory impact assessments, overseen by the Treasury.

“Regulatory impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses are portrayed as objective and benign, but academic studies show they systematically privilege quantifiable economic considerations and interests. That bias is reinforced by the National-ACT policy ‘Better Regulation, Less Regulation’ released in August 2009.”

Kelsey says the real risks lie in the cross-fertilisation of these ‘regulatory disciplines’ with other TPPA chapters. The ‘transparency’ chapter would guarantee foreign investors input into New Zealand regulatory decisions, while the ‘investment’ chapter could allow foreign investors to sue the government in private offshore tribunals if it proceeded with new regulations that eroded the investment’s value or profitability.

“The TPPA would have the same effect as ACT’s controversial Regulatory Responsibility Bill through the backdoor. The Business Roundtable, ACT and fellow travellers have promoted the law unsuccessfully since the Richardson era in 1994. Yet another version is at select committee as part of the ACT/National coalition deal.”

“The way the TPPA is shaping up, large, mainly foreign corporations and powerful lobby groups will have the right to exert undue influence over New Zealand’s policy and regulatory decisions and demand minimalist regulation. There would be no equivalent rights to public interest groups that may have contrary views.”

“Given our recent experiences with Pike River, oil spills, leaky buildings, the last thing we need is to lock in this pro-corporate regulatory bias and rights to demand compensation for new regulation through a secretly negotiated ‘trade’ deal.”

“The ultimate irony is the regulatory coherence text would require the government to make public background documents and drafts of proposed new laws—something the TPPA negotiators steadfastly refuse to do!”, Jane Kelsey observed.

> See the leaked U.S. proposal for a TRANSPARENCY CHAPTER – ANNEX ON TRANSPARENCY AND PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS FOR HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGIES

> See  the leaked U.S. proposal for TBT ANNEXES ON MEDICAL DEVICES, PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS AND COSMETIC PRODUCTS.

> See the leaked U.S. proposal for the INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CHAPTER

> See the leaked text for the REGULATORY COHERENCE CHAPTER

“The secrecy that shrouds the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations just got even more outrageous”, said Professor Jane Kelsey, who monitors the negotiations.

The parties have apparently agreed that all documents except the final text will be kept secret for four years after the agreement comes into force or the negotiations collapse. This reverses the trend in many recent negotiations to release draft texts and related documents. The existence of agreement was only discovered through a cover note to the leaked text of the intellectual property chapter.

New Zealand is the repository for all these documents and the conduit for all requests for the release of information, including this Memorandum of Understanding.

An open letter to Prime Minister John Key and Trade Minister Tim Groser from unions, civil liberties, church, public health, development, environmental and trade justice groups has demanded the release of the secrecy document. The Green Party and Mana Movement have both endorsed the call.

The release of the secrecy memorandum was requested during the Chicago round of negotiations in early October. New Zealand lead negotiator Mark Sinclair has asked for responses from the other countries, but there is no guarantee they will agree.

The spotlight will fall on the document during the negotiating round in Lima next week, when letters from many other TPPA negotiating countries are also handed to Sinclair.

“The National-led government has already blocked our petition for a select committee hearing on the implications of this agreement for New Zealand”, said Helen Kelly, President of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.

“We want to see the terms that the government agreed to that stop us from seeing what they have done in our name until it is too late to hold them accountable”.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), facing a deluge of condemnation over the impact of its trade policy on affordable medicines, today issued a four-page white paper entitled ‘Trade Enhancing Access to Medicines (TEAM), Jane Kelsey said.

Jane Kelsey has been in Chicago for the latest round of talks on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.

Critics of the US position slammed the USTR for releasing the paper on the same day it tabled its most controversial provisions that will restrict access to medicines at the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations in Chicago.

Peter Maybarduk from the Public Citizen Global Access to Medicines Program said ‘the paper fails entirely to address those provisions, or the other elements of its aggressive intellectual property proposal that would restrict access to medicines.’

He described it as mere ‘window dressing for USTR’s pro-Big Pharma, anti-access to medicines status quo.’

Professor Sean Flynn from the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, American University Washington College of Law expressed the frustration voiced by many ‘stakeholders’ following the negotiations.

'This administration has endorsed a set of policy proposals ... that is much worse for access to medicine concerns than any other past administration."

‘The statement of the administration today continues its practice of actively thwarting the release of meaningful information about its positions in closed door international law making. The statement says little about what the administration’s actual trade policy on the medicines issue is or what justifies it.’

‘Thanks to leaked proposals, we know what the administration’s actual position is. This administration has endorsed a set of policy proposals in its trade negotiations with developing countries that is much worse for access to medicine concerns than any other past administration.’

‘The administration is proposing to grant patent rights on substances that are already discovered, increase in-transit seizures on medicines, extend monopoly rights through data protection that operate independent of patent rights, get rid of the so-called “May 10th” deal with the Bush Administration and Congress protecting key access to medicines flexibilities in developing countries, and add a first ever restriction on the operation of pharmaceutical reimbursement programs as a cost saving mechanism in developing countries’, Professor Flynn explained.

Another critic of the implications of the TPPA for public health, Krista Cox of Knowledge Ecology International, described the ‘white paper’ as ‘basically four pages of spin and PR with little to no substance.’

‘This is the PhRMA/BIO version of how to promote access, with the White House logo, in a large trade negotiation.’ The result would be ‘access for people who can afford to pay monopoly prices for medicine. In developing countries, that is certainly not going to achieve access to medicine for all.’

‘This is the PhRMA/BIO version of how to promote access, with the White House logo, in a large trade negotiation.’

Matthew Kavanagh from International HIV-Aids campaigners Health-Gap, who protested last week in Chicago, objected that ‘ensuring the profits of multinational pharmaceutical industry has not proven an effective strategy for getting medicines to people in need, since they are largely unaffordable for both patients and health programs’.

Claims from the Obama administration that ‘multinational pharmaceuticals are withholding life-saving drugs from patients for in developing countries for periods of time in order to maximize profits should trigger investigations of unethical practices, not efforts to shift policy toward ensuring those profits.’

Jane Kelsey has been in Chicago for the latest round of talks on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.

‘Removing trade barriers may be a desirable objective when the products being traded are beneficial, but tobacco is not a beneficial product. Cigarettes are the only legally available consumer product that kills through its intended normal use’, Madara said.

‘US trade negotiators should not ask any nation to weaken it’s a current anti-smoking or alcohol control strategies in the interest of promoting free trade’.

The letter cites longstanding AMA policy that ‘international trade agreements recognize that health and public health concerns take priority over commercial interests, and that trade negotiations be conducted in a transparent manner and with full attention to health concerns and participation by the public health community’’.

The exclusion would prevent actions like that of Philip Morris to sue the governments or Uruguay and Australia for tobacco control policies using the investor-state enforcement powers.

Download the letter (pdf)

Likewise, intellectual property rules would not apply tobacco and alcohol trademarks and governments would not be required to reduce their current tariffs on imports.

The letter was distributed by the AMA’s Director of Prevention and Healthy Lifestyle as part of a series of stakeholder presentations at the Chicago round of the TPP negotiations, alongside other leading US public health groups Tobacco-Free Kids and the Centre for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health.