How Trade Agreements Amount to a Secret Corporate Takeover - Joseph Stiglitz/HuffPo...

[WillyT]

How Trade Agreements Amount to a Secret Corporate Takeover
Joseph E. Stiglitz - Professor at Columbia University and a Nobel Laureate in Economics
HuffPo
Posted: 05/18/2015 2:59 am EDT Updated: 05/23/2015 8:59 am EDT


Rick Gershon via Getty Images

<snip>

NEW YORK - The United States and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called "free-trade agreements"; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the European Union. Today, such deals are more often referred to as "partnerships,"as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America's "partners" are becoming increasingly resistant.

It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries' legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions.

Perhaps the most invidious - and most dishonest - part of such agreements concerns investor protection. Of course, investors have to be protected against the risk that rogue governments will seize their property. But that is not what these provisions are about. There have been very few expropriations in recent decades, and investors who want to protect themselves can buy insurance from the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, a World Bank affiliate (the US and other governments provide similar insurance). Nonetheless, the US is demanding such provisions in the TPP, even though many of its "partners" have property protections and judicial systems that are as good as its own.

The real intent of these provisions is to impede health, environmental, safety, and, yes, even financial regulations meant to protect America's own economy and citizens. Companies can sue governments for full compensation for any reduction in their future expected profits resulting from regulatory changes.

This is not just a theoretical possibility. Philip Morris is suing Uruguay and Australia for requiring warning labels on cigarettes. Admittedly, both countries went a little further than the US, mandating the inclusion of graphic images showing the consequences of cigarette smoking.

The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits.

In the future, if we discover that...

<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-e-stiglitz/trade-agreements-amount-to-corporate-takeover_b_7302072.html

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Who's this Stiglitz character anyway,

and why does he hate Obama?

[WillyT]

2. Yeah... That's What It Boils Down To...

If it's good enough for the President, it's good enough for me...

GW had that sort of support.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. As a well-known DUer said of Krugman's break with the TPP,

"He's entitled to his opinion."

I guess if your hero gets a Peace Prize in advance of having done anything particularly peaceful, you figger maybe Nobel Prizewinners in economics get their awards before having done any economics or something.

[bvar22]

37. Sheep Shearing

[redruddyred]

4. I just called my reps today over fast track.

fucking voice mail. REPUBLICANS.

[99Forever]

30. I know the feeling. Here's a strategy for you:

When you call a Teapublican Rep about TPA or TPP, call it Obamatrade and remind them of all of the power they are putting in his hands. Doesn't hurt to use all of the tools in your box. I'll do whatever it takes to stop this rape of the 99%, done at the behest of one Barack Obama.

[Populist_Prole]

36. Yeah, that's what Thom Hartmann advised too

Whatever it takes to defeat this tragedy of public policy.

[raindaddy]

5. If we had a free media, with real journalists Stiglitz would be appearing on every news show....

to make this point.

Interesting how Cheney is continually invited as a foreign policy expert....

[jwirr]

6. How absolutely true.

[Enthusiast]

12. It's pretty obvious ain't it?

Extreme bias. And we are supposed to accept it.

[sabrina 1]

24. That's why Corporations took over the media. The country is run by Corporations. Our

Representatives are bought by Corporations, the media is run by Corporations. What the people want is of no consequence anymore.

[erronis]

32. And Cheney makes for good eyeball attendance. Sneer and snark. Glad to see murder and mayhem.

[bvar22]

38. Cheney IS a Foreign Policy Expert...

..when that Policy is mass murder of foreigners who do not and can not threaten the USA.

[neverforget]

7. Great read. K&R

Thanks WillyT!

[840high]

8. Thanks.

[abelenkpe]

9. Stiglitz, Krugman, Robert Reich,

Elisabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders....even Dean Baker. Gee, this isn't popular with those once respected on DU.

[BeanMusical]

25. Is there any place left under the bus?

[CharlotteVale]

10. K&R

[Enthusiast]

11. K&R! This post deserves hundreds of recommendations!

Thank you, WillyT!

[ucrdem]

13. FUD fail.

see: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026723402

.....
note: FUD = "Fear uncertainty and doubt" and is a signature GOP swiftboat technique.

[WillyT]

16. So... Dean Baker , Joeseph Stieglitz, Elizabeth Warren, Benrnie Snaders, Sherrod Brown... Are All...

Swift-Boaters ???



Good luck with that.

[Fuddnik]

41. It was only a matter of time.

You expected anything more than an awkward diversion?

[nashville_brook]

17. that's OUTRAGEOUS!

those wily leftists and their swiftboating ways...they'll never get between us and our Investor State protections! no siree...there WILL be justice! if we can't live in a country where other countries are free to sue our cities for mandating worker and environmental protections, then, what's the point?

this is about our FREEDOMS! and the god-given right of multi-national corporations to profit from the weakness of our citizens!

courage, my friend. fight on.

[WillyT]

18. LOL !!!

[GoneFishin]

23. +1. Very nice job.

[BeanMusical]

29. Lol!

[DirkGently]

31. But but ... It's the magic "FUD" argument!

Ever notice how people trying to *practice* propaganda often give themselves away by claiming everyone else's argument is just propaganda?

Like the way Republicans are obsessed with Saul Alinsky?

Easy to spot after a while. There's no actual counter argument or logic or anything. Just a claim that whoever is speaking has "an agenda."

[raouldukelives]

34. Trollers gotta troll. nt

[whereisjustice]

33. lol, a kodak moment!

[cui bono]

20. Let me guess...

the link goes to yet another OP so ridiculous you have to rec it yourself to try to get it on the greatest page.

[Elwood P Dowd]

22. He recs his own posts and then uses his own posts as linked proof of some corporate BS he is

pushing. Sounds to me like he is doing this for a living at some astro turf group.

[BeanMusical]

26. How pathetic.

[woo me with science]

28. +1000000

[cui bono]

39. The only thing they prove

is that he doesn't make any sense.

Most of the replies on a couple of the ones he had to rec were that it was an idiotic OP.

[neverforget]

21. other GOP techniques include framing bills as "Good for

American workers" and "what's good for business is good for America". Sorry we're not buying what they're selling.

[xocet]

40. Your linked thread is only to your propaganda. Link to the actual text and argue from there....

That is to say, your claims are unverifiable.

However, your ad hominem attacks against people who are not for blind acceptance of the TPP etc are very clear and semi-frequent.

[rhett o rick]

42. I will give you credit for speaking out. Rarely see TPP supporters speaking out.

But your attempt to paint the many, many good people that are against the TPP as "like GOP swiftboat(ers)" is not really a good tactic to win the argument. Here is a list of concerns raised that NO ONE has attempted to rectify:

From what we've seen the TPP will:
1. make it easier to offshore more jobs now performed in the United States.
2. generate downward pressure on wages.
3. empower another 25,000 foreign corporations to use Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) tribunals to gut our net neutrality, environmental, health, labor and safety laws and regulations.
4. give big pharma new monopoly patent rights.
5. provide for rolling back financial regulations put in place after the crash of 2008.
6. provide for banning buy local and buy domestic policies.
7. undermine climate change and energy policies by constraining the permissible policies governments can use to implement them.
8. potentially prevent the Treasury from replacing the practice of issuing Treasury debt to fund deficit spending with alternative funding methods.
9. potentially prevent the Fed from using negative interest rate policies if it chooses to do so.
10. potentially force the US to bail out insolvent banks through ISDS settlements.
11. constitute ISDS tribunals as criminogenic environments with corporate advocates who play the roles of both judges and corporate attorneys at different times and who have substantial incentives to both drag out and sustain corporate suits against governments at all levels.
12. turn over the legislative power of the Federal government to the investor state dispute settlement courts and the corporations buying their loyalty.
13. paralyze action by future Congresses that might reduce corporate “expectations of profits,”.
14. create a permanent political fight over repealing the horror of the TPP while the US economy declines year after year.
15. create an unconstrained and unconstitutional trade agreement fusing judicial and legislative authority whose overnight judicial undoing would create international instability.
16. demand that the American public ought to ensure them against the business risks they take abroad.
17. insist on classification of the TPP drafts, hiding them from the public and making it an impossible burden for Congresspeople to evaluate them, and then on keeping the proposed or actual agreement secret so that the American people can’t even know what the law is that may result in international levies of many billions of dollars upon them, for four years after the TPP is either passed or defeated.
18. create the possibility that one ISDS case, decided by a biased three-judge panel dominated by attorneys who primarily work for corporate clients could deliver a financial crisis to an American State or local government.
19. provide multinationals protections against risk that would not be accorded to domestic corporations.
20. define “investment” so broadly that it applies to any asset that is either owned or controlled and therefore to any new regulation that may be passed by any democratic government placing chains on all of them and defeating the requirement of the consent of the governed.
21. prohibit “Buy American” laws and regulations.
22. fail to provide a clear legal provision allowing regulating investments for public purpose through laws and regulations that would not be subject to the interpretations of ISDS tribunals dominated by representatives of corporations making decisions in accord with the principle that national level rule making must not interfere with the “expectations of profits” held by multinational private corporations, or to any other tribunals not subject to the consent of the governed.
From: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2015/04/indicting-the-trans-pacific-partnership-even-one-of-these-counts-is-sufficient-to-vote-to-kill-it.html

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. As unusual the usual crowd has only one word FUD

The labeling is working. It is discouraging smoking. So now Philip Morris is demanding to be compensated for lost profits.

From the reporters notebook, this was precisely the worry of the Australian delegation at the San Diego round.

[WillyT]

19. Yep... FUD... For The Symbol-Minded !!!

[whereisjustice]

15. kick

[ananda]

27. This could be the big tragedy of the century..

.. for the USA and the world.

Sigh

[Rex]

35. Done deal way back in 1918.

It was inevitable (after WWI) that stock markets of the world would rule over the world one day. Cash is king. Money trump all other things. War is an amazing money maker.

[WillyT]

43. A Last Kick From Me...