TPP branded as trade agreement, but what's really at stake. From Public Citizen. [View all]

Branded as trade agreement, but what's really at stake.

Trade officials from twelve Pacific Rim nations--Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile,
Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vi-
etnam are in intensive, closed door negotiations to sign the TransPacific Partner-
ship (TPP), a sweeping Free Trade Agreement (FTA), in 2014. Every Pacific Rim na-
tion from China to Russia could eventually be included. There are draft texts for
many of this pact’s 29 chapters, most of which have nothing to do with trade, but
rather impose limits on domestic food safety, health, environmental, and other policies. The governments won’t release the texts to the public. But about 600 U.S. corporate “trade advisors” have full access. America’s worst job offshoring corporations, global banks, agribusiness, and pharmaceutical giants want this deal to be another corporate power tool like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Consumer, labor, environmental, and other public interest advocates want a transparent process and a “Fair Deal or No Deal.”

A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for the TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor state” system. This system allows foreign corporations to challenge before international tribunals national health, consumer safety, environmental, and other laws and regulations that apply to domestic and foreign firms alike. Outrageously, this regime elevates individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory
country’s government and above all of us citizens. This regime would empower corporations to skirt national courts and directly challenge our governments before tribunals of private sector lawyers operating under UN and World Bank rules to demand taxpayer compensation for domestic regulatory policies that investors believe
diminish their “expected future profits.” These regulatory policies can be anything from government procurement contracts and environmental protection to financial regulation.

If a corporation “wins”, the taxpayers of the “losing” country must foot the bill. Over $400 million in compensation has already been paid out to corporations in a series of investor
state cases under NAFTA style deals alone.

And a little from one of my favorite columnists, Michael Hiltzik.

On the other side of the argument is the trade pact's potential to foster economic growth and job creation — "650,000 jobs in the U.S. alone," as Secretary of State John F. Kerry asserted last month. But that widely challenged figure is extrapolated from a 2012 report by the Peterson Institute of International Economics, which didn't offer a jobs estimate. In fact, the report said the TPP might dislocate workers and drive older people out of the workforce — and that any benefits might be canceled out by the resulting costs to workers and society. Evidence from earlier trade pacts, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, suggests that the benefits for developing countries among the treaty signatories are similarly oversold.

Here is more from the Public Citizen website about the Investor State system.

Investor-State Attacks: Empowering Foreign Corporations to Bypass our Courts, Challenge Basic Protections

Among the most dangerous but least known parts of today's "trade" agreements are extraordinary new rights and privileges granted to foreign corporations and investors that formally prioritize corporate rights over the right of governments to regulate and the sovereign right of nations to govern their own affairs. These terms empower individual foreign corporations to skirt domestic courts and directly challenge any policy or action of a sovereign government before World Bank and UN tribunals.

Comprised of three private attorneys, the extrajudicial tribunals are authorized to order unlimited sums of taxpayer compensation for health, environmental, financial and other public interest policies seen as frustrating the corporations' expectations. The amount is based on the "expected future profits" the tribunal surmises that the corporation would have earned in the absence of the public policy it is attacking. There is no outside appeal. Many of these attorneys rotate between acting as tribunal "judges" and as the lawyers launching cases against the government on behalf of the corporations. Under this system, foreign corporations are provided greater rights than domestic firms.

This extreme "investor-state" system already has been included in a series of U.S. "trade" deals, forcing taxpayers to hand more than $400 million to corporations for toxics bans, land-use rules, regulatory permits, water and timber policies and more. Under a similar pact, a tribunal recently ordered payment of more than $2 billion to a multinational oil firm. Just under U.S. deals, more than $38 billion remains pending in corporate claims against medicine patent policies, pollution cleanup requirements, climate and energy laws, and other public interest policies.

At the bottom of that link there are more examples of other cases going on.

I was also reading a post here today that I had missed.

Fact or Fiction: Does the Hatch-Wyden-Obama Trade Promotion Authority Bill Protect U.S. Sovereignty

Thanks, Cali, for posting that.

I am surprised at how many still compare sincere questioning about such a drastic policy to being a hater of Obama. I still get feedback that is ugly when I question how public education and public school teachers have been steamrolled by this administration's corporate education reform.

I hope the use of terms like hater soon stops, or else it is going to be a tough time until next November.

My late hubby and I supported Obama both times, not just donating but locally taking part as well. It makes me feel like I am no longer part of a party when questioning policies brings labels like that.