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The Trans-Pacific Partnership clause everyone should oppose
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post


Washington Post, February 25, 2015
Posted: March 8th, 2015
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kill-the-dispute-sett...

The United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive free-trade agreement. Who will benefit from the TPP? One strong hint is [a provision] called Investor-State Dispute Settlement, or ISDS. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldnt be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions and even billions of dollars in damages. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldnt employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgement the next. If the tilt toward giant corporations wasnt clear enough, consider who would get to use this special court: only international investors, which are, by and large, big corporations. So if a Vietnamese company with U.S. operations wanted to challenge an increase in the U.S. minimum wage, it could use ISDS. But if an American labor union believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the union would have to make its case in the Vietnamese courts.

Note: The above article was written by courageous US Senator Elizabeth Warren, and further clarifies why the TPP is a pending disaster.


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