Even more significantly the U.S. economy has been decelerating for over half a century. Taking a 20- year moving average, to eliminate the effects of short term business cycle fluctuations, Figure 2 shows that U.S. annual average GDP growth fell from 4.4 percent in the late 1960s, to 3.5 percent by 2000, and 2.4 percent by 2015. Detailed analysis shows this was rooted in the falling percentage of fixed investment in U.S. GDP, but for present purposes it is sufficient to note the impossibility of rapidly reversing a half century long decelerating trend.

Figure 2

Given the impossibility of short term U.S. growth acceleration the only way to maintain U.S. economic and geopolitical supremacy is therefore to slow competitor economies. Once this is understood then the apparently illogicality of grouping a number of relatively slowly growing and closed economies into the TPP becomes clear.

In essence the TPP extends the mechanisms responsible for slowing U.S. growth to cover competitors. To secure this the TPP enshrines that the legal rights of private companies in participating economies are superior to those of member governments. Private companies, therefore principally U.S. ones, have the right under the TPP to sue participating governments in courts which will be dominated by the U.S. but whose decisions are binding on national governments. As the well-known U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs noted of these TPP provisions: "Their common denominator is that they enshrine the power of corporate capital above all other parts of society, including… even governments…The system proposed in the TPP is a dangerous… blow to the judicial systems of all the signatory countries."

Some TPP features are astonishing. For example Article 14.17 gives de facto legal protection to software companies, overwhelmingly U.S., to spy in member states: "No Party shall require the transfer of, or access to, source code of software owned by a person of another Party, as a condition for the… sale or use of such software… in its territory." While it is stated this does not apply to "critical infrastructure" this does not exclude banks, commercial companies etc.