Why Exactly Do We Need To 'Protect' US And EU Foreign Investments Through TAFTA/TTIP Anyway?
from the risky-business dept
Techdirt has already examined the issue of corporate sovereignty many times over the past year, as it has emerged as one of the most problematic areas of both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP. A fine article by Simon Lester of the Cato Institute examines a hidden assumption in these negotiations: that an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism is needed at all.
Most of his post is devoted to the background of corporate sovereignty, and it provides a useful primer if you're still wondering what exactly ISDS is supposed to do, and why. Having established the framework, Lester concludes by making two key points:
First, if a U.S. (or EU) company chooses to make an investment abroad, why should the U.S. (or EU) government go to bat for it at all? In the past, we used "gunboat diplomacy" to protect our companies. Now we use international lawyers. But why should we do anything? These companies have chosen another jurisdiction for their investment, which is fine. Companies should invest in whatever location makes the most economic sense. But in that situation, it is not clear why the investment is "ours" to worry about anymore. When multinationals invest all over the world, are they really "ours," or are they now just global entities?
Business is inherently about taking risks -- if there were no risk, there would be no need for entrepreneurs. So why should a nation be expected to offer a kind of free insurance policy against those risks when they are incurred abroad -- not least because commercial policies doing that are readily available? Since fans of the free market think that the government should just get out of the way, surely they should extend this to foreign investment too?
Lester's other point is one that many people have made -- that ISDS is in any case unnecessary in an agreement between the US and EU:
when the place of the investment is the EU or US, which have plenty of their own protections in domestic law, international law seems largely duplicative. International investment rules are an opportunity for lawyers to bring additional claims, but are not necessary for "protection" of foreign investment. Without some evidence that more is necessary, perhaps US-EU investment rules should be limited to a basic promise to treat each other's investors equally, let governments settle disputes between themselves, and leave the international constitutional protections out of it.
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Filed Under: corporate sovereignty, europe, investor state dispute settlements, isds, tafta, tpp, ttip, us
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Obamabots
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Re: Obamabots
Stuff like this is not a partisan problem. Both sides are more than happy to dance to their corporate paymasters' tunes, and screw over the public in the process, to pretend that 'It's all those dirty Democrats!' or 'It's all those dirty Republicans!' does nothing more than distract from the core problem: they are both to blame.
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Who cares what political party a person/group belongs to when they do something questionable/objectionable, if the action is a problem, it's a problem whether it's a republican backing it, or a democrat, and vice versa, getting fixated on the political party just misses the real issue, something they know, and bank on, quite well.
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Re: Obamabots
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Re:
The problems with ISDS are not the literal intentions, the problems are the inevitable effects on legal dynamics.
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Excuse me? Please, please tell me you don't think Europe is an actual country. I need to hear it!
Europe is a CONTINENT made up of different sovereign states. Some of these sovereign states, e.g. the UK, are members of the European Union, a trading bloc that is working towards political union via legislation passed by the European Parliament.
So now you know, AC.
@Glyn Moody
Methinks you just answered your own question, sir. If they don't put into the pot, they shouldn't get anything out. And corporations who don't pay tax but demand taxpayers' resources such as war against sovereign nations to protect their interests are counter-intuitive to sound economics. It's just the MIC giving freebies to their cronies. And it's not new. See Iran's 1953 coup for details. I'd be interested to learn how much, if any, of the spook/military expenditure was recouped from their tax contributions.
A cost/benefit study prior to taking up the causes of these global corporations might be in order prior to taking up arms against a sovereign nation on their behalves. We the people are the ones who end up with the bill for these costly adventures, after all.
By the way, I'm not sure it's reasonable to refer to the free market as if it actually exists. There's no such thing, since the market is actually distorted by monopolies and oligopolies, not to mention restrictive legislation and subsidies.
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in other words, fuck the people, profits are what count the most! and usually, USA companies profits!!
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Source: Wired: Google and Apple Surge Ahead in Race for Patents
7 of the top companies that are filling patents are from Asia.
What would happen if they chose to assert their rights against US interests using US law?
See the law in this case is a liability not an asset for any local economy, only idiots believe they can get ahead in the game by trying to play the rules instead of the game.
What game?
The competition game, the partnership game.
The do as I told you or else will fail eventually.
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here's the nub of the dilemma...
(you POS spel-czech, INIMICABLE is TOO a word! ! !)
well, you've answered your own question: because thisy here ball-o-mud is NOT run for the interests of us 99%, but the interests of the 1%...
that's our problem in a nutshell...
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When did awareness of the new Big Three change?
So now we have China, corporate terrorists and third world terrorists.
When did people start recognizing the threat from the corporate world? I've been beating that drum since at least the 90s.
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Maybe because said nation created those risks with their awful foreign policy?
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Neoliberal Ploys
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Re: Neoliberal Ploys
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