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In reply to the discussion: Is this true? Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promi [View all]PufPuf23
(8,771 posts)June 13, 2012
Controversial Trade Pact Text Leaked, Shows U.S. Trade Officials Have Agreed to Terms That Undermine Obama Domestic Agenda
http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2012/06/controversial-trade-pact-text-leaked-shows-us-trade-officials-have-agreed-to-terms-that-undermine-ob.html
PUBLIC CITIZEN PRESS RELEASE
After Two Years of Closed-Door Negotiations, Trans-Pacific Partnership Text Replicates Alarming Bush Trade Pact Terms That Obama Opposed as Candidate, and Worse
WASHINGTON, D.C. A leak today of one of the most controversial chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) reveals that extreme provisions have been agreed to by U.S. officials, providing a stark warning about the dangers of trade negotiations occurring under conditions of extreme secrecy without press, public or policymaker oversight, Public Citizen said.
The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of TPP negotiations, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. Via closed-door negotiations, U.S. officials are rewriting swaths of U.S. law that have nothing to do with trade and in a move that will infuriate left and right alike have agreed to submit the U.S. government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals that can order unlimited payments of our tax dollars to foreign corporations that dont want to comply with the same laws our domestic firms do.
Although the TPP has been branded a trade agreement, the leaked text of the pacts Investment Chapter shows that the TPP would:
limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S. boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;
extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;
establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges; and
allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms.
The document in PDF:
http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/tppinvestment.pdf