Zen Ben
04-05-2015, 12:06 AM
TPP: The Global Corporate Coup
30708This secretive trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has been quietly under negotiation by corporate lawyers and trade representatives for years, is finally surfacing to public attention as Congress is set to vote for ‘fast track’ authority, which would limit Congress’s role to a simple up-or-down vote. What the American public has seen so far has come from a few scattered leaks. On March 25th, WikiLeaks blew the lid off the deal by releasing the TPP chapter on investment and arbitration. The contents are shockingly anti-democratic.
The TPP, if enacted, would transfer the capacity of national governments to regulate healthcare, labor rights, the financial sector, and the environment to special TPP corporate tribunals, which have the power to sue our federal, state or local governments for compensation over laws and regulations that they deem would cause “loss of expected profit” or create a “competitive burden.” The TPP tribunal consists of three judges (who can include corporate lawyers on temporary leave from their day jobs) with the power to levy fines in the billions of dollars against any country that passes environmental or labor regulations that they adjudicate a “restraint of free trade.”
Now do you get why they wanted to keep this quiet?
30708This secretive trade pact, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which has been quietly under negotiation by corporate lawyers and trade representatives for years, is finally surfacing to public attention as Congress is set to vote for ‘fast track’ authority, which would limit Congress’s role to a simple up-or-down vote. What the American public has seen so far has come from a few scattered leaks. On March 25th, WikiLeaks blew the lid off the deal by releasing the TPP chapter on investment and arbitration. The contents are shockingly anti-democratic.
The TPP, if enacted, would transfer the capacity of national governments to regulate healthcare, labor rights, the financial sector, and the environment to special TPP corporate tribunals, which have the power to sue our federal, state or local governments for compensation over laws and regulations that they deem would cause “loss of expected profit” or create a “competitive burden.” The TPP tribunal consists of three judges (who can include corporate lawyers on temporary leave from their day jobs) with the power to levy fines in the billions of dollars against any country that passes environmental or labor regulations that they adjudicate a “restraint of free trade.”
Now do you get why they wanted to keep this quiet?