Jane Kelsey: (TPP) Leak shows trade deal may prove tricky

[unhappycamper]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11188945

Jane Kelsey: Leak shows trade deal may prove tricky
5:30 AM Monday Jan 20, 2014

Trade ministers from the 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) injected real momentum into the negotiations when they met in Singapore in late December. It seemed they might actually pull off a deal in the next few months. Trade Minister Tim Groser announced they would meet again in January and the officials would work tirelessly over summer to prepare.

But the plan to meet around the margins of next week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, proved too difficult. The latest rumour is ministers will reconvene in Singapore in late February, with officials holding negotiations shortly before then.

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The draft environment chapter confirms expectations that the TPPA's "gold standard" is for the corporations, not to protect people and the planet. Environment chapters are used as fig leaves to deflect criticisms of other chapters that confer legal rights on foreign corporations that can seriously harm the environment. In the investment chapter, these rights are enforceable through the notorious investor-state dispute settlement processes. Most investor-state disputes involve government measures to regulate natural resources or protect the environment or public health.

The leak also provides insights into the negotiating process and how ministers are trying to break the deadlock in key chapters. Asking one country, in this case the Canadian chair of the environment working group, to prepare a new text "on their own responsibility" is a controversial strategy used at the World Trade Organisation to isolate countries that are holding outlier positions.