Declarations of Dependence: Trade Tyranny, Sovereignty, and Democracy

Declarations of Dependence discusses a range of issues surrounding the three trade agreements being negotiated by the Obama Administration and numerous nations around the world. It uses a critical approach to consider them, and especially the recently passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). It places special emphasis on the likely governmental impacts of the trade agreements, including their implications for the consent of the governed, separation of powers in the United States, sovereignty at all levels of government, democracy, the potential development of fascism arising at the national level due to the influence of global corporate rule, and other governmental issues. These impacts are the most important ones among many, because they are the key to all the others, such as the impact of the agreements on jobs, labor, inequality, and sustainability.

The book also evaluates whether “fast-track” is a real barrier in defeating the trade agreements or is a ruse and a fraud. It emphasizes a variety of justifications for the TPP and other trade deals, while challenging the very fundamentals of their “free trade”- based justifications, with a more comprehensive perspective on trade agreements as instruments of public purpose. Finally, it places the trade deals in the broader context of the multi-decade conflict between democracy and neoliberalism, and locates the trade agreements as part of this struggle and the continuing efforts of neoliberalism to master and rule over political democracy.