New Study Confirms: Private 'Trade' Courts Serve the Ultra-Wealthy

[eridani]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/01/new-study-confirms-private-trade-courts-serve-ultra-wealthy

A new study confirms what many activists have suspected for a long time: The private courts set up by international “trade” deals heavily favor billionaires and giant corporations, and they do so at the expense of governments and people.

Smaller companies and less-wealthy individuals don’t benefit nearly as much from these private courts as the extremely rich and powerful do. Other interested parties – whether they’re governments, children, working people, or the planet itself – are unable to benefit from these private courts at all.

The “investor-state dispute settlement” process, or ISDS, is built into treaties like NAFTA and the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). It allows foreign investors to sue participating governments if they do anything that harms their investment in that nation. Corporations can sue governments through this process, but governments can’t sue corporations.

As Todd Tucker pointed out in The Washington Post, a “wide range of policies can be challenged” under ISDS: “Argentina has had its macroeconomic policies challenged, Australia its anti-smoking efforts, [and] Costa Rica its environmental preservation laws.”

Suits are not brought through a normal, public court process. Instead, they are heard before private panels of arbitrators, often made up of attorneys who represent corporations as part of their practice. These hearings are conducted under rules set up by independent arbitration bodies that include the International Chamber of Commerce.

[Human101948]

1. Gee, and I thought that these trade agreements were designed to bring us more jobs...

Who could have known that they would enrich the rich?

[bemildred]

2. Duh. There is no other reason for them to exist.

That's what they are, a way to circumvent normal legal process and normal legal tort accountablility.

[pampango]

3. It seems the study proves the arbitration panels under the WTO and others favors the wealthy.

The solutions would seem to be to go back to the pre-FDR days when every country unilaterally resolved trade disputes in its own favor or restructuring the the dispute resolution process to include labor, human rights and environmental standards and the arbitration panels so that they enforce these standards fairly.

Trump and many, many others prefer the 'every-country-for-itself', stick it to the Mexicans, the Muslims, the Chinese, etc., protect "us" from "them". I am not sure that FDR and Truman would be in that back-to-the-future camp. FDR because he introduced the concept of international arbitration in trade disputes and Truman because he negotiated the agreement that did that. (Only to see it killed by a republican congress that saw it as a threat to 'national sovereignty'.

Do we go 'back-to-the-future' of Coolidge/Hoover's unilateralism on trade, raise tariffs on our own and dare other countries to do anything about it? (That did not work well for CC and HH but, history meaning nothing to republicans, tariffs - like 'trickle-down economics - will surely work this time.)

Do we just leave the WTO, NAFTA, et al in charge and complain about them? Or do we negotiate new agreements (not TPP) that include enforceable (if not using trade courts then enforced how?) labor, human rights and environmental standards? Or are we as liberals just doomed and we have no answers?

[eridani]

5. Only 5 of the 29 articles in TPP have anything to do with trade n/t

[tk2kewl]

4. every time a Hillary supporter tries to justify global "trade" deals

i ask for their opinion on ISDS and if they think it's a danger to democracy. An every time that is where the discussion ends