Would Martin Luther King Jr. Have Supported the TPP?

 JUSTIN TRUDEAU WAS IN DAVOS, SWITZERLAND, at the World Economic Forum yesterday reminding the world’s elite that Canada was a great place in which to invest. That’s exactly what prime ministers are supposed to be doing. The key issue however is how to invest.Our new Prime Minister has an important decision to make regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal involving 12 countries. Many have warned that this isn’t about trade at all but about the growing ability of corporate business interests to affect domestic policy. The rather stark opposition to the deal from a litany of civil society groups, economists like Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, and the founder of Research in Motion, Jim Balsillie – all normally strong promoters of globalization, has been noted. Even the United Nations has come out in opposition, claiming that the deal favours global capital instead of strengthening democracy by removing decision-making away from the average voter. Trudeau’s promise to leverage an increased voice for civil society seems, on the surface at least, to be violated by the TPP deal.The focus of this week’s blog posts have been on the abiding influence of Martin Luther King Jr. and how he approached vital files like poverty and civil rights. What would he counsel regarding the TPP if he were still present among us. We can’t propose to know the direct answer, but he would provide us some criteria regarding such a major decision. And he would ask questions, serious ones.He would surely remind us that the rash of trade deals in the last three decades have coincided with the growth of poverty in affluent nations, the lowering of labour standards, a threatening toll on the environment, and a burgeoning disillusionment with government and democracy. He would then challenge us to question if these things were related. The leaders in Davos will hear of the newest research from Oxfam showing that “income and wealth are being sucked up among the elite at a fantastic rate.” The same study will inform them that a mere 62 people have $1.76 trillion (US), or more than half of the world’s population.These aren’t easy questions, but must be asked, and King would ask them directly. It isn't just that with fabulous amounts of wealth being created that most of the planet gets little of it in proportion to the wealthy. King would look at this development through the lens of social justice and not mere economics. He would challenge us to do the same. And he would wonder why the world’s governing leaders would continue signing deals that move us down that perilous road. Better yet, he would ask if such deals could effectively be adjusted to solve these problems.I suspect he would hang his head in disillusionment, sensing that his great dream of equality would have to once again be deferred. He would be aware that most of the political leaders would have quoted him at one point or another during their respective tenures, but that they quietly refused to bring about the changes necessary for the dream to be realized. He would put it in the terms he used during his message at New York’s Riverside Church (April 4, 1967):

“When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people among our decision makers, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Today he would, with justification, add climate change, poverty, democratic decline, and the failure to build gender equality to the list.Those who maintain that deals like the TPP are ultimately good for us must tell us why past such deals have been unsuccessful in solving these problems. Furthermore, they will have to wonder if such arrangements haven’t actually had a hand in causing them in the first place.It is always a dangerous thing to suggest what a historical figure would say in the modern era, and I don’t wish to imply whether King would say yes or no. But he would ask the questions and he would wonder if all these economic dealings that benefit a few over the many are arcing our world towards justice or away from it.Ultimately King was a moral voice and it is that voice that is missing in the halls of both finance and parliaments today. His ethical strains cut through the fog of distortion and spoke truth to the establishment. To his credit, Justin Trudeau claimed such a voice when he brought gender equality to the federal cabinet and when he claimed a new day for the Indigenous people of Canada. These were moral victories, not mere political expediency. Now he must sit down and answer these questions that King would have asked and decide whether to side with civil society and citizens or with the elite money gatherers. No trade deal in the world brings about justice; only acts of conscience are capable of it. And if politics today is to be successful, and democracy itself to be saved, it is time for the latter.