TransCanada Is Now Suing America Because Of NAFTA...

[thomhartmann]

[Hoyt]

1. They are not likely to get far in this or the action they are taking in federal court.

http://www.vox.com/2016/1/7/10732124/keystone-xl-nafta

[jwirr]

2. And we are going to pass TPP this month. Thank you Clinton,

Rs and President Obama.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. " a claim that will ultimately be decided by a private arbitration panel,

not the American legal system."

A hint of TPP to come.

[passiveporcupine]

4. Maybe this is a much needed wake-up call?

I'm afraid it won't be, but it should be.

[stuffmatters]

5. Ben Norton's excellent piece in Salon yesterday sums it up

This was an entirely predictable development of the Nafta ISDS into TPP expansion of global antidemocratic corporate tribunals.
Norton has a good summary yesterday, it was still on SALON's frontpage this morning,easy to pull up.
If I knew how, I'd start a thread highlighting his article. It covers the basic atrocities of this hideous "trade" bill. The TransCanada suit is simply the proof positive of everything that's been argued against ISDS in the NAFTA into TPP corporate coup(s) d'etat.
About the only obvious consequence of ISDS that Norton doesn't mention is one Stiglitz pointed out: Any American corporation can "invert" to a T member country & sue for billions in "anticipated profits" if they're denied. The public "welfare" (i.e. environmental, health, labor protections) will become subservient to all (not just foreign) corporate profits through the "magic" of inversion.

Just a couple of thoughts I've not heard: It seems that class action lawyers (mainly Dems) will be replaced by Corporate lawyers (mainly Repubs) as the highest rolling winners in the coming era of corporate preemininence.
Clinton's State Department and Obama played a very long game of snuggle up to Transcanada. Before it was discovered how
corrupt the State Department's first "environmental studies" were (and how heavily personally invested highest ranking State Dept officials were in Canadian dirty energy & Keystone) , Transcanada was pretty much assured a slam dunk. When Obama finally bowed to public pressure & denied Keystone, this was similar to a 6-10 year engagement resulting in a no show at the altar.
Transcanada was kind of the butt hurt dumped at the altar fiance. It would have been naive to expected them to just go away without seeking financial and legislative retaliation. But ISDS from NAFTA into TPP corporate courts should not be the absolute and extrajudicial machine for any corporation to gain "satisfaction" from American taxpayers when they're denied.

First the WTO (per NAFTA) does away with country of origin meat labels, and Congress quickly passes a bill to comply. Now Transcanada sues for 15 Billion in lost "future profits"
The writing is on the wall and, no, there's no reason to believe that corporate courts and judges with absolute power will
consistently rule against the corporations that employ, enrich them and their cronies. That's simply turnip truck time.

[Wibly]

6. Not Canada

It should be mentioned here, before there's any confusion, TransCanada Pipeline is a publicly traded company. Most of its principles and shareholders are not Canadian. Its actually an American owned Company suing its own government under the free trade agreement.

[appalachiablue]

7. That's really something. TransCanada an American company suing the US...