SEANET workshop on "Business friendly regulations" in Kuala Lumpur, February 2016

1. Bienvenido ―Nonoy‖ Oplas Jr.
Pres., Minimal Government Thinkers, Inc.
Fellow, SEANET
SEANET Workshop on ―Business Friendly Regulations‖
Renaissance Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
21 February 2016

2. TPP’s liberalization agenda will:
1. Force open members’ economic sectors such as agriculture, affect poor
peasants, women
2. Further push them into poverty, compete with giant agricultural
corporations from more developed countries
3. Increase corporations’ access to indigenous people’s lands and territories
for resource extraction without their free prior informed consent (FPIC)
4. Undermine country’s right to reject genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), subject those GMOs to prior risk assessment; ensure
uninterrupted trade for GMOs to the benefit of major GMO producers and
exporters like the US and Canada
5. Permit corporations to violate labor rights by making it easier to offshore
jobs to countries with lower labor standards
http://aprnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Do-Not-Sign-the-TPP-
endorsers.pdf

3. 6. Encourage more inflows of migrants who later forced to become
undocumented migrants to add more cheaper and docile labor
7. Endanger people’s right to quality and affordable healthcare due to strict
intellectual property rights (IPR) on patents, data monopolies to medicines
8. Make educational materials become expensive with strict IPR
9. Violate internet users’ privacy rights and will stifle creativity and
freedom of expression through severe copyright rules
10. Mean death to democracy, allow corporations to use investor-state
dispute settlement (ISDS) to attack public interest laws to increase their
profits; corporations suing governments over living wages, environmental
protection , people’s access to public utilities
11. Have knock-on effects on the whole region, have potential to be the
standard that all future trade deals will follow
12. Promote the hegemony of corporations, neoliberal regimes and
political and economic dominance of the US and other powerful States over
the developing and underdeveloped economies of the world.

7. Dr. Ramon Clarete, Univ. of the Philippines
School of Economics (UPSE), February 2015
Used the Gravity model of trade in estimating level
of bilateral trade between two trading partners.
If the PH, RCEP member and further becomes a TPP
member, exports expected to rise 48%, GDP 61%.

8. Economic Effects of TPP
membership
* Used computable
general equilibrium
(CGE) model of the PH
* Model comprises 50
industries/sectors; 3
primary factors of
production; 10
household income
groups, govt, priv.
business enterprises
* The estimated add’l
exports (above)
inputted into the model
to compute their
economy wide impacts.
* PH already with RCEP,
computing the gains if
PH also joined TPP….

9. IPR in TPP = expensive medicines, poorer public health?

10. like compulsory
licensing (CL),
special CL…
Intl. exhaustion
of IPR and
parallel
importation
More patent
cooperation, not
exclusion.
TRIPS flexibilities
are affirmed.

11. * Only those
with
inventive
steps can be
patented
* Health
methods,
biological
processes,
animals, can
NOT be
patented.
* So reduce the
10-12 yrs (out of
20 yrs ave. patent
life) regulatory
approvals of
clinical trials to
drug marketing.

12. * Regulatory
data
protection
(RDP) is not
10 or 8 years,
only 5 years
* At least 8
years
effective
patent life
(bec. 10-12
yrs patent life
already eaten
by clinical
trials &
approvals)

13. On plain packaging.
People — not the state or
media or the health NGOs,
etc. — own their body. They
recognize the risks of
smoking, drinking, etc.,
compare such health risks
with the pleasure of
smoking and drinking. Then
decide whether to smoke 1
or 20 sticks a day, drink 1
or 20 bottles of beer a
week, etc.
Too much nannyism via
restrictions to protect public
health is a smoke screen
and excuse for more
taxation, more regulations,
more government.

14. Concluding Notes:
1. Joining the TPP has more gains than pains for member-
countries, especially in exports and overall GDP expansion.
2. IPR health provisions in TPP not scary, apply only to newly-
invented medicines and not to cheaper generic drugs. Existing
TRIPS flexibilities for new meds are maintained.
3. Possible that generic pharma lobby + anti-capitalism, anti-
globalization NGOs created more fear than what the TPPA
actually provides.
4. More to fear in government taxation of medicines, mandatory
drug price discounts and price controls, than IPR protection.
―IPR create incentives for businesses to invest in ideas, to develop
new products, and to earn a profit from the sale of those products.
This in turn leads to improved customer satisfaction, improved
profitability, and greater employment opportunities.‖
– Prof. Sinclair Davidson, RMIT Univ. (Econ Dept.), Melbourne,