"This isn’t a partisan issue. Conservatives who believe in U.S. sovereignty should be outraged that ISDS would shift power from American courts, whose authority is derived from our Constitution, to unaccountable international tribunals. Libertarians should be offended that ISDS effectively would offer a free taxpayer subsidy to countries with weak legal systems. And progressives should oppose ISDS because it would allow big multinationals to weaken labor and environmental rules."
Any sufficiently complicated trade regime is going to need dispute arbitration. If we don't like the way that arbitration is playing out for us, our elected representatives are completely within their power to abridge or modify our agreements.
This is complete misdirection: If every bit of ISDS were pulled from the draft negotiations, Sen. Warren would still oppose the pact because she comes from the protectionist wing of the party.
Maybe we can get Al Gore to take a break from his climate change work and debate Sen. Warren as he did Ross Perot back in the day.
God I miss free trade Democrats like Bill Clinton.
National legislatures have had decades and centuries to develop governance models. The WTO process, while much younger, has a longer track record and greater international investment (than TPP/TTIP) in public debate on issues related to international trade, governance, disputes.
It would be helpful if trade agreements were documented like open-source projects which coordinate with larger upstream projects, while retaining private forks that are not accepted upstream now, but could become more relevant later.
Is everything in TPP unacceptable to WTO, by definition? If TPP can negotiate 20 chapters independently, why can't WTO unbundle problematic issues to regional agreements? Governance and trade agreements that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of humans should not require all-or-nothing bundling. There is no shortage of paper or electrons to negotiate interoperable agreements which segment risk and goals.
"Conservatives who believe that labor and environment rules are excessive and heavy handed, should support ISDS because it will also allow these rules to be challenged for being protectionist. Libertarians should be encouraged that the ISDS effectively would commit nations to smaller governments. And progressives should support ISDS because it makes government accountable for the impacts of their actions on the wider community, instead of focusing exclusively on narrow self-interest.
Yeah,your point about why democrates should support that stuff is a little silly. with the TTIP democracy stops being relevant . Elected representatives wont make laws.International Businesses and international tribunals will de facto since they will be able to challenge any national law. Minimum wage hurting corporation Z business? well corporation Z will challenge that.
As for Republicans,well,the idea of trading a big government for an even bigger government,only international, isn't going to fly.
Anyway,that shit will happen sooner or later. It's obvious that the world will be run not by states but by corporations,it's not just a science fiction fantasy.
(from the Warren article)