[News] WikiLeaks Reveals TPP Proposal Allowing Corporations to Sue Nations

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) - Investment Chapter


*https://wikileaks.org/tpp-investment/press.html*

WikiLeaks releases today the "Investment Chapter" from the secret 
negotiations of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement. The 
document adds to the previous WikiLeaks publications of the chapters for 
Intellectual Property Rights (November 2013) and the Environment 
(January 2014).

The TPP Investment Chapter, published today, is dated 20 January 2015. 
The document is classified and supposed to be kept secret for four years 
after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is 
reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor said: "The TPP has developed in secret 
an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. 
This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. 
Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane 
environmental protection, public health and public transport policies."

Current TPP negotiation member states are the United States, Japan, 
Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, 
New Zealand and Brunei. The TPP is the largest economic treaty in 
history, including countries that represent more than 40 per cent of the 
world´s GDP.

The Investment Chapter highlights the intent of the TPP negotiating 
parties, led by the United States, to increase the power of global 
corporations by creating a supra-national court, or tribunal, where 
foreign firms can "sue" states and obtain taxpayer compensation for 
"expected future profits". These investor-state dispute settlement 
(ISDS) tribunals are designed to overrule the national court systems. 
ISDS tribunals introduce a mechanism by which multinational corporations 
can force governments to pay compensation if the tribunal states that a 
country's laws or policies affect the company's claimed future profits. 
In return, states hope that multinationals will invest more. Similar 
mechanisms have already been used. For example, US tobacco company 
Phillip Morris used one such tribunal to sue Australia (June 2011 – 
ongoing) for mandating plain packaging of tobacco products on public 
health grounds; and by the oil giant Chevron against Ecuador in an 
attempt to evade a multi-billion-dollar compensation ruling for 
polluting the environment. The threat of future lawsuits chilled 
environmental and other legislation in Canada after it was sued by 
pesticide companies in 2008/9. ISDS tribunals are often held in secret, 
have no appeal mechanism, do not subordinate themselves to human rights 
laws or the public interest, and have few means by which other affected 
parties can make representations.

The TPP negotiations have been ongoing in secrecy for five years and are 
now in their final stages. In the United States the Obama administration 
plans to "fast-track" the treaty through Congress without the ability of 
elected officials to discuss or vote on individual measures. This has 
met growing opposition as a result of increased public scrutiny 
following WikiLeaks' earlier releases of documents from the negotiations.

The TPP is set to be the forerunner to an equally secret agreement 
between the US and EU, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment 
Partnership).

Negotiations for the TTIP were initiated by the Obama administration in 
January 2013. Combined, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per 
cent of global GDP. The third treaty of the same kind, also negotiated 
in secrecy is TISA, on trade in services, including the financial and 
health sectors. It covers 50 countries, including the US and all EU 
countries. WikiLeaks released the secret draft text of the TISA's 
financial annex in June 2014.

All these agreements on so-called “free trade” are negotiated outside 
the World Trade Organization's (WTO) framework. Conspicuously absent 
from the countries involved in these agreements are the BRICs countries 
of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20150326/354905d5/attachment.htm>