Hillary Clinton Addressed TPP in Iowa Event

[leveymg]

63. Non State-to-State ISDS is new. What's new about this is that individual companies

will no longer have to go to court or their governments to challenge regulations. The trade dispute process is now essentially either judicial, through national courts, or state-to-state, through grievances brought by national Trade Representatives to international arbitrators. The TPP would strip out the courts and the national governments, and allow investors to go directly to the WTO or another arbitration body.

The TPP removes public review of investor disputes effecting such things as the environment, labor standards, and food quality. It allows corporations to sidestep judicial review in their own countries and go directly to a binding tribunal in a third country or international organization. Previously, either the company went to court to settle its trade dispute or persuaded the Trade Representative for its own country to seek a ruling on their behalf from international arbitrators, such as the WTO, and this entailed getting the Administration to agree to go along with the corporation's case. Of course, that opened the dispute process to the public. That layer of national politics in the existing trade dispute system is either a good or a bad thing, depending upon how you look at it.

Personally, I think getting rid of judges and governments in the trade dispute process is highly undemocratic and will have highly undesirable effects, such as preempting regulations of food, environmental standards, and other public regulation of products and services, and making it more difficult to regulate in those areas.