TPP-11 Countries Sign a Deal — While We Dodged a Bullet on ISDS Expansion Here, Our International Allies Face a Major Fight

Thanks to years of organizing, we in the United States saved ourselves from the corporate-dominated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) by ensuring that the controversial deal was universally reviled across party lines and could never gain a majority in Congress.

But it is deeply unfortunate for our international partners that this week the remaining 11 TPP countries — including Canada and Mexico — signed the deeply flawed TPP model for their countries in a cynically renamed “Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.” We know from our years-long, internationally-coordinated TPP campaign that our sisters and brothers in those nations fought against the corporate-rigged TPP model as hard as we did. We stand in solidarity with them as they continue to mobilize to block the ratification and implementation of this TPP-11 deal in their countries.

While some of the most egregious provisions pushed by Big Pharma that would have further threatened access to life-saving medicines were fortunately set aside (for now) in the revised TPP-11 deal, most of the TPP’s dangerous rules remain intact. It is shocking, for instance, that Canada, Mexico and others agreed to maintain the infamous investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system (with only some minor tweaks), that empowers multinational corporations to attack public interest laws before panels of three corporate lawyers.

We dodged a bullet here in the United States — the TPP would have doubled U.S. exposure to investor-state attacks against U.S. policies by newly empowering more than 1,000 additional corporations in TPP countries, which own more than 9,200 additional subsidiaries in the United States, to launch investor-state cases against the U.S. government.

But, it is beyond perplexing that Canada and Mexico would agree to expand their liability to these ISDS attacks on their laws in the TPP-11. In the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiations, the United States has proposed to radically roll back ISDS, which should be good news for Canada and Mexico, since Canadian and Mexican taxpayers have paid $392 million to mostly U.S. corporations who won ISDS attacks against their public interest laws using NAFTA.

The corporate lobby, which has been doing all it can to block the positive NAFTA proposal to roll back ISDS, is undoubtedly rejoicing that the TPP-11 countries have signaled their willingness to accept expansion of the controversial ISDS system.

But the diverse consensus to end ISDS in NAFTA and elsewhere spans the political spectrum, with stark criticism coming from voices as disparate as U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, the pro-free-trade libertarian Cato Institutethink tank, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, unions and environmental groups.

We will continue to push to remove ISDS from NAFTA and support our allies in Canada, Mexico and in the other TPP-11 nations as they fight ISDS expansion.

Comments

[dawn regier]

unfortunately Trump has gotten rid of regulations making the ISDS win without going to court