I attended a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Torrance, California and listened to a young man explain how the Trans Pacific Partnership would be a boon to business in the United States.
After he made his case, I stood up and told the room of approximately 25 people about the TPP's Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process. In short, any corporation in the TPP can sue a government (state or federal) for expected future profits if that country or state stands in the way of that corporation making money. For example, if the City of Torrance wanted to find a contractor to build a sewer line, and a large foreign corporation wanted to bid on that contract, they would have to let the corporation make their bid. And if the mammoth foreign company doesn't win the contract, the threat of a lawsuit (the average lawsuit costs $8 million) against the City of Torrance for loss of profits could, through legal intimidation, undermine the "buy local" movement.
These ISDS cases don't come before a court in the U.S. Instead, they are tried in front of a tribunal of hand-picked attorneys who may have taken turns between writing the TPP or working for the corporations as international trade lawyers and being one of the triad of judges who oversee these cases. There is no higher court, no attorney in the United States who can change venue on these lawsuits. In other words, they are extrajudicial courts, beyond the U.S. court system.
Here is the exact wording from the text of the 28th Chapter of the TPP: "...the dispute settlement provisions of this Chapter (28) shall apply ... whenever a Party (corporation or government) considers that a benefit it could have reasonably expected to accrue to it ... is being nullified or impaired as a result of the application of a measure of another Party that his not inconsistent with this agreement."
The key is "reasonably expected to accrue to it." Those words really say it all. If any party wants to sue another party, let the lawyers make money! Big corporations can sue governments, governments can sue corporations, but when would governments expect to ACCRUE something? Like money. So really, this is about corporations suing governments.
If a government wants to protect its lands, its waterways, its food system, from poison or chemical effluents, there is no accruing going on. In the process of trying to prevent these affronts to our ecology, the TPP has carved out a sweet deal for corporations-- they get to sue our government for any profits it could have accrued in the process of fracking our lands, selling pesticides that the EPA has banned, or competing against local companies.
After I gave a few examples of how the TPP can ruin the lives of Americans, (which I recorded), I admonished the young man from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for his dereliction of duty in laying out the whole truth. I said, with my best Jewish mother facial expression, "You should be ashamed of yourself!" I could tell that my time was up.
The Chamber then put it to a vote whether or not they would endorse the TPP. I felt like I was back in high school. I wasn't the popular kid, part of the "in" crowd. The class didn't "get" it, and the head of the Chamber asked, "all in favor, say 'aye'." A few members said their "ayes" and the motion was passed. Another loss for the American people. This is how bad bills get through. No one does the real homework, they just trust each other, thinking "how can this young man from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce be wrong?"
To fight the #TPP, call all the representatives who fast-tracked this bill by finding a list of them here and tell them to vote "no."