Why the TPP Must be Opposed at All Costs

[polly7]

29. And you think this is a good thing???

Last edited Mon Nov 9, 2015, 08:21 AM - Edit history (1)

Canada is the MOST sued nation under NAFTA. I hate it, as do so many of us here.

NAFTA has destroyed the lives of millions of Mexican farmers, forcing them to flow to the cities and work under slave labour conditions. These new agreements will further undermine every right we have with regard to safety nets, healthcare, environment, industry, resources, pharmaceuticals - think of the consequences for all of these for nations and people already suffering horribly. If Canada hasn't been able to fight off these disgusting suits under NAFTA, HOW EXACTLY will poorer nations with weak or corrupt gov'ts do it? Their citizens will go the way of the Mexican farmers, the poorest of the poor will suffer first. YOU WILL ALSO, one day ......... but you'll be the last to. I'm sure of that.

I'm also sure that is why Obama and Harper fought so hard for them - to ensure we have ours for as long as possible and fuck the rest of the world. They're nothing but disgusting corporate coups using cheap/disposable labour to ensure the enrichment of those corporations already with all the power - and to keep it out of the hands of those who 'might' possibly elevate their own economic status in the world - as with China. They're like the 'war on terror', only this time it's enhanced economic terrorism by the 1% posing as what were made out to be fair trade agreements. You really think people are stupid.


NAFTA's Chapter 11 Makes Canada Most-Sued Country Under Free Trade Tribunals

Canada is the most-sued country under the North American Free Trade Agreement and a majority of the disputes involve investors challenging the country’s environmental laws, according to a new study.

The study from the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that more than 70 per cent of claims since 2005 have been brought against Canada, and the number of challenges under a controversial settlement clause is rising sharply.

snip~

“Thanks to NAFTA chapter 11, Canada has now been sued more times through investor-state dispute settlement than any other developed country in the world,” said Scott Sinclair, who authored the study.

snip~

There are currently eight cases against the Canadian government asking for a total of $6 billion in damages. All of them were brought by U.S. companies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/14/canada-sued-investor-state-dispute-ccpa_n_6471460.html

The study notes that although NAFTA proponents claimed that ISDS was needed to address concerns about corruption in the Mexican court system, most investor-state challenges involve public policy and regulatory matters. Sixty three per cent of claims against Canada involve challenges to environmental protection or resource management measures.

Currently, Canada faces nine active ISDS claims challenging a wide range of government measures that allegedly interfere with the expected profitability of foreign investments. Foreign investors are seeking over $6 billion in damages from the Canadian government.

These include challenges to a ban on fracking by the Quebec provincial government (Lone Pine); a decision by a Canadian federal court to invalidate a pharmaceutical patent on the basis that it was not sufficiently innovative or useful (Eli Lilly); provisions to promote the rapid adoption of renewable energies (Mesa); a moratorium on offshore wind projects in Lake Ontario (Windstream); and the decision to block a controversial mega-quarry in Nova Scotia (Clayton/Bilcon).

Canada has already lost or settled six claims, paid out damages totaling over $170 million and incurred tens of millions more in legal costs. Mexico has lost five cases and paid damages of US$204 million. The U.S. has never lost a NAFTA investor-state case.

More: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/newsroom/news-releases/nafta-investor-state-claims-against-canada-are-out-control-study

My taxes help pay for this.


Canada is the most sued country in the ‘developed’ world, that should sound alarm bells in the EU

Maude Barlow

30 October 2015 Trade

Several weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and the UK marched to protest the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a massive planned new trade deal between Europe and the US. They were rightly sounding the alarm as TTIP will greatly reduce the ability of local governments to spend public money for local development, impose new limits on the right of governments of all levels to regulate on behalf of their citizens and environment, endanger public services and jeopardize Europe’s higher standards on labour, food safety and social security.

TTIP also includes Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a provision that will allow American corporations to sue European governments for laws and practices that threaten their bottom line. There are now over 3,200 bilateral ISDS agreements in the world, and foreign corporations have used them to sue governments over health, safety and environmental laws.

Cigarette maker Phillip Morris used ISDS to challenge Australian rules around cigarette packaging intended to promote public health. A Swedish company, Vattenfall, is suing Germany for a reported €4.7 billion relating to Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear power. ISDS is profoundly anti-democratic and threatens the human rights of people everywhere.

But people in the UK and Europe should be paying attention to another deal that has had way less attention. CETA – the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada – is equally disturbing and way further along in the process. I’m coming on a speaking tour of the UK to share a powerful story of Canada’s experience that is relevant for two reasons.

The first is that we Canadians have lived with ISDS for twenty years. It was first included in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, and has been used extensively by the corporations of North America to get their way. As a result of NAFTA, Canada is now the most sued developed country in the world.

Full article: http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2015/oct/30/canada-most-sued-country-developed-world-and-should-sound-alarm-bells-eu

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016112245

******************************************************************************************************

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101680974

Thanks to NAFTA, Conditions for Mexican Factory Workers Like Rosa Moreno Are Getting Worse

Texas Observer / By Melissa del Bosque

The difficult and dangerous working conditions that Rosa and at least 1.3 million other Mexican workers endure were supposed to get better. They didn't.



Photo Credit: Alan Pogue

December 11, 2013 |

.... On this night, Feb. 19, 2011, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, a premonition that perhaps she shouldn’t go. But she needed the money. It was the final shift in her six-day workweek, and if she missed a day, the factory would dock her 300 pesos. She couldn’t afford to lose that kind of money. Her family already struggled to survive on the 1,300 pesos (about $100) a week she earned. Unable to shake the bad feeling, she’d already missed her bus, and now she’d have to pay for a taxi. But the thought of losing 300 pesos was worse. She had to go. Rosa kissed her six children goodnight and set out across town.

In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, the hundreds of maquiladoras that produce everything from car parts to flat-screen televisions run day and night—365 days a year—to feed global demand. Rosa worked from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. at a factory called HD Electronics in a sprawling maquiladora park near the international bridge that links Reynosa, an industrial city of 600,000, to Pharr, Texas. Like the 90,000 or more workers in Reynosa, the 38-year-old Rosa depended on these factories for her livelihood. In the 11 years since she moved to the city, she had welded circuitry for Asian and European cell phone companies, assembled tubing for medical IV units to be shipped over the border to the United States, and worked on a production line assembling air conditioners for General Motors.

This was her second month at HD Electronics, a South Korean firm that had moved to Reynosa in 2006 to produce the metal backing for flat-screen televisions made by another South Korean firm, LG Electronics—a $49 billion corporation. LG also has a plant in Reynosa and could scarcely keep up with the North American demand for its plasma and LCD televisions.

At HD Electronics, Rosa operated a 200-ton hydraulic stamping press. Every night, six days a week, she fed the massive machine thin aluminum sheets. The machine ran all day, every day. Each time the press closed it sounded like a giant hammer striking metal: thwack, thwack, thwack. The metal sheets emerged pierced and molded into shape for each model and size of television. At the factory, 20 women, including Rosa, worked the presses to make the pieces for the smaller televisions. Nearby were 10 larger presses, each of which took two men to operate, to make backings for the giant-screen models.

Full Article: http://www.alternet.org/labor/after-20-years-nafta-thanks-nafta-what-happened-mexican-factory-workers-rosa-moreno?akid=11305.44541.10ylde&rd=1&src=newsletter939436&t=21

NAFTA Is Starving Mexico

Posted by polly7 in General Discussion
Thu Oct 20th 2011, 10:40 AM

By Laura Carlsen, October 20, 2011

http://www.fpif.org/articles/nafta_is_star...

"Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became the law of the land, millions of Mexicans have joined the ranks of the hungry. Malnutrition is highest among the country’s farm families, who used to produce enough food to feed the nation.

As the blood-spattered violence of the drug war takes over the headlines, many Mexican men, women, and children confront the slow and silent violence of starvation. The latest reports show that the number of people living in “food poverty” (the inability to purchase the basic food basket) rose from 18 million in 2008 to 20 million by late 2010.

About one-fifth of Mexican children currently suffer from malnutrition. An innovative measurement applied by the National Institute for Nutrition registers a daily count of 728,909 malnourished children under five for October 18, 2011. Government statistics report that 25 percent of the population does not have access to basic food."

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/polly7/9


http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002637336

Zalatix (8,994 posts)

Defenders of NAFTA might not want to hear a Mexican farmer's point of view on the subject.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-01/world/mexico.farmers_1_mexican-officials-mexican-government-nafta?_s=PM:WORLD

Mexican farmers protest NAFTA

February 01, 2008|From Harris Whitbeck CNN

Hundreds of thousands of farmers clogged central Mexico City Thursday with their slow-moving tractors, protesting the entry of cheap imported corn from the United States and Canada.

On January 1 Mexico repealed all tariffs on corn imported from north of the border as part of a 14-year phaseout under the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.

The farmers want the government to renegotiate the 1994 free trade agreement, which removed most trade barriers among Mexico, Canada, and the United States, saying livelihoods are at stake.

"NAFTA is very bad, very bad for Mexican consumers and for Mexican producers," said Victor Quintana, head of Democratic Farmers Front, which organized the protest.

The farmers complain that U.S. and Canadian grains are heavily subsidized and therefore undermine Mexican products.

http://prospectjournal.ucsd.edu/index.php/2010/04/nafta-and-u-s-corn-subsidies-explaining-the-displacement-of-mexicos-corn-farmers/
NAFTA AND U.S. CORN SUBSIDIES: EXPLAINING THE DISPLACEMENT OF MEXICO’S CORN FARMERS

The paper’s underlying hypothesis is that American corn subsidies, which led to the flooding of Mexican markets with American corn following the signing of NAFTA, is the primary factor responsible for the post-1994 internal displacement of rural farmers in Mexico. The trade agreement effectively eliminated all trade barriers and placed Mexico’s domestically produced corn in direct competition with highly subsidized corn imported from the United States. Consequently, Mexican corn farmers, who comprise the majority of the country’s agricultural sector, experienced drastic declines in the domestic price of their product and thus faced increasing difficulties to attain a sustainable living. Hence, we observe high levels of migration into Mexico’s cities in the latter half of the 1990’s, and the beginning of the 21st century, as these displaced farmers abandoned their previous livelihood in search of employment.

So not only did foreign outsourcing destroy millions of American manufacturing jobs, it also devastated Mexico's farmers.

Tell us again how free trade helped?


How NAFTA Drove Mexicans into Poverty and Sparked the Zapatista Revolt

By EDELO, Creative Time Reports

The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed 20 years ago, has resulted in increased emigration, hunger and poverty (with Video)

December 30, 2013

Mexico was said to be one step away from entering the “First World.” It was December 1992, and Mexico’s then-president, Carlos Salinas, signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The global treaty came with major promises of economic development, driven by increased farm production and foreign investment, that would end emigration and eliminate poverty. But, as the environmentalist Gustavo Castro attests in our video, the results have been the complete opposite—increased emigration, hunger and poverty.

While the world was entertaining the idea of the end of times supposedly predicted by the Mayan calendar, on December 21, 2012, over 40,000 Mayan Zapatis . tas took to the streets to make their presence known in a March of Silence. The indigenous communities of Chiapas—Tzeltales, Tzotziles, Tojolobales, Choles, Zoques and Mames—began their mobilization from their five centers of government, which are called Caracoles. In silence they entered the fog of a December winter and occupied the same squares, in the same cities, that they had descended upon as ill-equipped rebels on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA came into effect.

In light of the 20th anniversary of NAFTA’s implementation and the Zapatista uprising, we set out to explore both the positive and negative effects of the international treaty. The poverty caused by NAFTA, and the waves of violence, forced migration and environmental disasters it has precipitated, should not be understated. The republic of Mexico is under threat from multinational corporations like the Canadian mining company Blackfire Explorations, which is threatening to sue the state of Chiapas for $800 million under NAFTA Chapter 11 because its government closed a Blackfire barite mine after pressure from local environmental activists like Mariano Abarca Roblero, who was murdered in 2009.

Still, one result of the corporate extraction of Mexico’s natural resources and displacement of its people that has followed the treaty has been the organization and strengthening of initiatives by indigenous communities to construct autonomy from the bottom up. Seeing that their own governments cannot respond to popular demands without retribution from corporations, the people of Mexico are asking about alternatives: “What is it that we do want?” The Zapatista revolution reminds us that not only another world, but many other worlds, are possible

Full Article: http://www.alternet.org/world/how-nafta-drove-mexicans-poverty-and-sparked-zapatista-revolt?akid=11347.44541.RWB6aQ&rd=1&src=newsletter941851&t=19


Drug War Mexico, NAFTA and Why People Leave

#!

Peter Watt teaches Latin American Studies at the University of Sheffield in the UK. He is co-author of the new book, Drug War Mexico, and is currently penning another with Observer journalist Ed Vulliamy about white collar crime and the Mexican 'drug war.'

http://www.zcommunications.org/drug-war-mexico-nafta-and-why-people-leave-by-peter-watt-1

**********************************************************************************************************

The protest, co-sponsored by 59 organizations, is being spearheaded by Popular Resistance and Flush The TPP and includes environmental, human rights, labor, climate change and good government groups. They have been organizing this mobilization for months knowing that the TPP would be made public around this time.

“At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western governments and their transnational corporations, including Wall Street banks, can dominate the economies of developing nations,” said Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance. She continued “The reality is that without trade justice there cannot be climate justice, food justice; there cannot be health justice or wage justice. That is why people are mobilizing to stop the TPP.”

Mackenzie McDonald Wilkins, organizer for Flush The TPP, said: “The TPP impacts every issue we care about as a result, a unified movement of movements to stop the TPP has developed. People who care about corporate power versus democracy and our sovereignty or about jobs and workers, the environment and climate change, health care, food and water, energy regulation of banks are mobilizing to make stopping the TPP their top priority.”

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/mass-mobilization-to-stop-the-tpp-announced-as-text-is-released/

bbm.

And, similar to the TPP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is having troubles in Europe. Europeans see TTIP either not advancing or going in the wrong direction because of the heavy handedness of the U.S. The French negotiator said: “France is considering all options including an outright termination of negotiations.” More than 3 million people across Europe signed a petition calling on the European Commission to scrap the agreement and hundreds of thousands marched in Berlin on October 10 opposing the TTIP. People realize that rather than opening up new markets, since the U.S. and EU countries already trade a great deal, it will privatize public services for corporate profits.

At its root, the TPP is about modern colonialism. It is the way that Western governments and their transnational corporations, including Wall Street banks, can dominate the economies of developing nations. To be part of the TPP, governments are required to allow foreign ownership of property, including buying land in signatory countries. The TPP allows corporate trade tribunals to overrule their laws, acquire resources cheaply and provide slave wages to workers. And, if all else fails, the U.S. and allied militaries will be there to enforce agreements.

The TPP gives incredible power to foreign banks to move money in and out of countries without restrictions. It minimizes regulation of big finance to allow risk-tasking that endangers the world economy. Countries that need money will be enslaved by loans from big finance like Citigroup, and once they are in debt, they will be unable to stand up to the demands of banksters who threaten them as we witnessed recently in Greece.

The reality is that without trade justice there cannot be climate justice, food justice; there cannot be health justice or wage justice. Injustice in trade undermines all the issues the social movement is working to correct.

As a result the largest trade justice movement has developed and is growing. Be part of this cultural shift that will challenge corporate power and build the power of people.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/10/spread-the-word-tpp-is-toxic-political-poison-that-politicians-should-avoid/#more-60210

ISDS is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process that is part of recent so-called trade agreements. The zealots pushing ISDS are those who worship Mammon and who seemingly are willing to sacrifice everything else on the altar of short-term greed. Specifically, ISDS is being pushed by Wall Street, transnational corporations and rich investors.

Under ISDS, if a foreign corporation/investor thinks that a government’s policy reduces its profits or expected future profits, ISDS allows the foreign investor to evade the usual judicial system. Instead, the investor can bring a nation before a hearing of a tribunal of trade lawyers. These lawyers may represent an investor in one case and be an arbitrator in another case. Public interests, such as protection of public health, the environment, buy local programs, etc. take a back seat to commercial considerations in these deliberations. Laws passed by a democratic process can be overridden and national sovereignty is out the window.

If the investor wins, the government must either change the policy or pay what can turn out to be a very substantial fee. If the state wins, there is no cost to the investor. In addition, the ISDS is even more one-sided as the state has no corresponding right to bring an original claim against the foreign investor.

According to an article by Robin Broad in the January/February Dollars & Sense issue, in 1964, 21 developing-country governments voted no on the establishment of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a predecessor of ISDS, as a new part of the World Bank. All 19 of the Latin American countries attending the meeting voted no.

Felix Ruiz of Chile spoke on behalf of these 19 countries and said:

The new system that has been suggested would give the foreign investor, by virtue of the fact that he is a foreigner, the right to sue a sovereign state outside its national territory, dispensing with the courts of law. This provision is contrary to the accepted legal principles of our countries and, de facto, would confer a privilege on the foreign investor, placing the nationals of the country concerned in a position of inferiority.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/06/a-real-threat-isds/


Are we overlooking the most dangerous aspect of TTIP?

Alex Scrivener

19 October 2015

Collateral damage. Enhanced interrogation. What’s the name for those phrases or words that sound relatively innocuous but are actually covering up something that’s very violent or very bad. Here’s another one: regulatory cooperation. Cooperation is a good thing, right? It doesn’t sound so threatening, but it’s a masterful example of the power of language to make something terrible sound benign. And it’s nestling at the heart of the trade deal being hammered out between the EU and the USA.

To most people, regulations such as air pollution limits and food safety standards are common sense protections against dangerous threats. However, to many big businesses, these rules are just red tape or “non-tariff barriers to trade” (NTBs) which inhibit profits. Proponents of TTIP say that 80% of the supposed benefits of the deal will come from getting rid of these NTBs.

Our new briefing shows how regulatory cooperation presents a unique opportunity for corporate interests on both sides of the Atlantic to lobby for these standards to be brought down to the lowest common denominator. Many of the major corporate interests pushing for TTIP actually think this, not ISDS, is the aspect of the deal that is most important to them. Some supporters of TTIP have even gone as far as to advocate sacrificing ISDS to protect regulatory cooperation. Corporate lobbyists have expressed the hope that regulatory cooperation will make them so powerful that it will allow them to effectively “co-write” regulation with policy-makers.

Proponents of TTIP say all of this is just scaremongering, but the reality is that this stuff is already happening. The mere prospect of the deal is already weakening certain EU standards. For example, US officials successfully used the prospect of TTIP to bully the EU into abandoning plans to ban 31 dangerous pesticides with ingredients that have been shown to cause cancer and infertility. A similar fate befell regulations around the treatment of beef with lactic acid. This was banned in Europe because of fears that the procedure was being used to conceal unhygienic practices. The ban was repealed by MEPs in a Parliamentary Committee after EU Commission officials openly suggested TTIP negotiations would be threatened if the ban wasn't lifted.

http://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2015/oct/19/are-we-overlooking-most-dangerous-aspect-ttip



These are just a few of the articles I happened to read over the years.


There are so many great threads here by DU'ers, I wish I'd kept track of them all.

Just one of the most recent ones with a lot of great comments:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027324270

packman (3,907 posts)

Just how bad the TPP is - guaranteed profits on EXPECTATIONS of profits

Banks and other financial institutions would be able to use provisions 43oOnEoin the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership to block new regulations that cut into their profits, according to the text of the trade pact released this week.
—In what may be the biggest gift to banks in a deal full of giveaways to Hollywood, the drug industry and technology firms, financial institutions would be able to appeal any national rules they didn’t like to independent, international tribunals staffed by friendly corporate lawyers.
—That could nullify a proposal by Hillary Clinton to impose a “risk fee” on financial firms — or the Elizabeth Warren/Bernie Sanders plan to reinstate the firewall between investment and commercial banks
language in the TPP could be directed to target American financial laws and regulations.

In prior deals, financial services providers were limited to making ISDS challenges based on discrimination — where foreign companies were subject to more stringent rules than their domestic counterparts — or an illegal “taking” of their investments. These types of challenges have been largely unsuccessful in ISDS tribunals.

But now, for the first time, financial institutions could make an ISDS claim based on not receiving a “minimum standard of treatment.” This is the most flexible type of claim. “Over time, tribunals have interpreted this to mean that the company gets compensation if the change in policy disappoints their expectations of future profits,” said Lori Wallach of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

In other words, a company can state it "expected" to get billions-but shit happens and they didn't - so an international tribunal can award them that phantom money. A movie bombs overseas or an overseas movie bombs here and they still make money. Count me in - I've got some crap to sell overseas worth millions.

http://extragoodshit.phlap.net/index.php/tpp-trade-pact-would-give-wall-street-a-trump-card-to-block-regulations/#more-324923