TPP trade deal would swamp Thailand
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Re: "Thailand should consider TPP trade deal with US", Letters, October 5.
Has Egon Wout read the “secret” Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal? Has anyone at The Nation been allowed to read it, or even to glance at it? How can someone support something that he or she is not allowed even to talk about?
Every week in Thailand, tonnes of unsold consumer goods, imported and domestic, are discounted or destroyed. Some of those make it into the semi-legal black and grey markets, but consumers are not “crying out” for even more imported goods. There is already a glut.
If the TPP floods Thailand with even more imported goods, someone has to “eat the losses” for the goods not sold, and inevitably Thai businesses will feel the pain of those losses.
Thailand is not a Third World country desperately in need of foreign goods. Far from it, Thais already have access to just about everything on offer in more advanced countries.
Guy Baker
