TPP Financial Stability Threats Unveiled: It’s Worse than We Thought
Initial Analysis of Key TPP Chapters

New Analysis of TPP Investment Chapter: U.S. Laws Face Expanded Threats from Foreign Investors

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch has gone carefully through the 50-plus pages of the very troubling investment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal –-as well as the lengthy country-specific annexes. We found that the final text is worse than we thought, with almost every remaining undecided issue left in the March 2015 leaked draft resolved by eliminating various reform proposals.

The TPP would VASTLY expand both the number of foreign investors that could use ISDS to attack U.S. policies (more than 9200 new firms, which would double the current U.S. ISDS exposure), and it would expand the kinds of ISDS cases that could be brought. Instead of reforms to scale back ISDS, for the first time the TPP would allow ISDS attacks against financial regulations investors say undermine their “reasonable expectations” and hurt their expected profits.  And TPP would be the first U.S. trade pact that would allow drug firms to demand cash compensation for claimed violations of World Trade Organization rules on creation, limitation or revocation of intellectual property rights.

Meanwhile, the reforms to the ISDS process that the administration has been advertising did not materialize. There are no new conflict interest rules. There is no appeals mechanism. There is no cap on tribunal costs or discretion about how much governments can be ordered to pay the investor. The ONLY improvement in the text from a public interest perspective is a partial carve out of tobacco control policies from ISDS attack, and that clause in part highlights how no other public health or environmental policies are similarly safeguarded. 

Please read the analysis here: http://www.citizen.org/documents/analysis-tpp-investment-chapter-november-2015.pdf

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