People are freaking out about the Trans Pacific Partnership’s investor dispute settlement system

[cali]

Why should you care?

The recent leak of a secret chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement system (ISDS) is getting many people on both the left and the right upset. Left-wingers don’t like a system in which corporations can push back against government regulations. Right-wingers don’t like a system where U.N.-affiliated tribunals can overturn U.S. law. I asked Rachel Wellhausen, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin who works on investor treaties, to explain the basics of ISDS.

HF — What is ISDS?

RW — ISDS, or Investor-State Dispute Settlement, is the international system whereby multinational corporations (MNCs) can sue the governments of countries in which they invest for violating their property rights. International treaties give MNCs access to ISDS, under which ad hoc international tribunals decide whether or not an MNC deserves compensation. There is no appeals system in place.

For example, an MNC just won $455 million in compensation from Venezuela, because in 2010 Venezuela nationalized and seized the MNC’s two bottling plants in the country. Another MNC is suing India over a retrospective tax bill, which the MNC says unlawfully devalued its property by reducing its share prices. An MNC recently lost a case against Uganda, where the tribunal found that Uganda’s regulation of transactions in the oil and gas industry was legitimate.

HF — How many ISDS arrangements are there, and how many times have governments been sued?

RW — Currently, about 3000 international treaties give MNCs the ability to sue governments. Some 2700 of these are Bilateral Investment Treaties. The rest are trade treaties, including NAFTA. These treaties have spread rapidly around the world since the 1990s.

From 1990 through the present, over 100 different countries have been sued over 550 times. Most of these are developing countries. The U.S. and Canada have been sued under NAFTA, but Western European countries have been sued only a handful of times (and Japan never). Sometimes these cases are brought at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Sometimes they are brought under special U.N. rules (UNCITRAL). Because these cases can sometimes be private, we don’t know the full number of cases.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/26/people-are-freaking-out-about-the-trans-pacific-partnerships-investor-dispute-settlement-system-why-should-you-care/

[Cosmic Kitten]

1. Didn't you hear? ISDS is tilted in OUR favor!!!1!!111!

[GoneFishin]

2. Makes sense. Above all else, multinationals and their 0.1% owners always watch out for the little

people. Empathy trumps profits, don't ya know.

[jeff47]

5. I know, reading the quoted part of the article is so tiresome

The U.S. and Canada have been sued under NAFTA

[el_bryanto]

6. I'm sorry I missed that part. I'll shut up.

[aspirant]

4. When will these trade deals

make America and our form of government obsolete?

The time is here when the laws of government will only apply to the little people and function for collecting revenue to dole out to the MNC's. Private contracts, the Fed handing out TRILLIONS in with virtually no interest and "The People" paying out huge sums to MNC's in dispute settlements, where is the lowly citizens piece of that pie?

Why worry about SCOTUS when the ISDS is the new Big Dog on Earth?

If these trade deals are to improve labor and environmental standards, where are the parts that improve Transparency standards?

[randome]

8. Since these type of trade deals have been in place since the 1990s, I would guess...sometime? Never?

Maybe the Apocalypse already happened and we didn't notice it.

I'm not sure what more transparency would need to be added since the result of a ruling is easy to see: either Company A won and will do business in Country H or not.

The standard of living of the world in general has improved over the past couple of decades. At least there's that.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it."
Tony Randall, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)[/center][/font][hr]

[aspirant]

11. 2015 and Beyond

The vanishing middle class and the wonders of trade. What happened to the free market, it solves everything.

Transparency; I'm glad you agree that the tribunal proceedings should be televised.

When corporations are too big to jail and fail in our legal system, how does that improve The People's living standards?

[pampango]

7. Good article, cali. To me the problem is not that countries agree to arbitration to resolve disputes

but the limitations of these arbitration bodies. In most instances cases would only be arbitrated if some type of settlement or compromise could not be worked out. In such a case, an objective (since both sides agreed to it) arbitration body would be a better solution than a 'my way or the highway' solution.

They should not be limited to investors and the flow of capital as they predominantly are now. What if the German autoworkers union could sue the state of Tennessee for attempting to prevent workers at a VW plant in the state from forming a union? What if VW joined the suit, since it apparently prefers for there to be a union as in German factories. Particularly if such a suit could be based, not on our flawed 'right-to-work' laws, which emasculate organized labor, but on principles of the International Labor Organization? The right would scream about and hide behind "national sovereignty" but if it empowered organized labor, would the left embrace it?

What if an American environmental group could sue TransCanada to prevent environmental damage that would result from the KeyStone-XL pipeline? Or if a Canadian environmental group could sue American power plants for the acid rain they caused to fall in Canada's east (and America's northeast) or another American-caused environmental problem? Big American power companies would undoubtedly pretend that 'national sovereignty' should prevent such suits, but would they be a bad thing?

The idea of arbitration bodies to resolve international disputes is a good thing. The details matter, however.

[randome]

9. It works both ways, doesn't it?

The way I see it, if a country's environmental and safety laws prevent any company from selling a certain product, including their own companies, that's all well and good.

But if a country imposes high tariffs or pulls an environmental regulation out of its ass simply to prevent an international company from operating within its borders, that's where a ruling would most likely be in the company's favor.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it."
Tony Randall, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)[/center][/font][hr]

[magical thyme]

10. that, and the makeup of the tribunals is more than a little disturbing. nt

[woo me with science]

12. kick