Guitar Globalization

Ex–Rage Against the Machine axman Tom Morello decides to Rock Against the TPP.

- Vincent Caruso

President Barack Obama has taken his Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pitch on the road, hoping to rally support for the controversial trade deal. Meanwhile, ex–Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has kicked off a politically fueled road trip of his own. With the support of nonprofit Fight for the Future, Morello’s own Firebrand Records, and a musically diverse lineup of ideologically unified comrades, the nationwide Rock Against the TPP tour will compete with the president for hearts and minds with the ultimate goal of stopping “the biggest corporate power grab in history.”

For the Morello militia, no sphere of civil life is safe from the ravages of trade. “If it becomes law, the TPP... poses a grave threat to good-paying jobs, internet freedom, the environment, access to medicine, food safety, and the future of freedom of expression,” the tour’s website warns hysterically.

But the very concept of “rocking” against the TPP has an unavoidable irony embedded in it. To rock, one must have a guitar. And the reason so many Americans own guitars today is thanks, in large part, to past trade agreements like the TPP.

The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan, adopted in 1960, was the first nudge toward opening up trade relations between the two historic enemies. By the following decade, Japan-based Ibanez had started experimenting with the electric guitar template pioneered by U.S. monoliths Fender and Gibson.