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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsElizabeth Warren: "Trade agreements should not benefit industry only"
by Elizabeth Warren
June 23, 2015
...We live in a largely free trade world. Over the past 50 years, weve opened up countless markets, so that tariffs today are generally low. As a result, modern trade agreements are less about reducing tariffs and more about writing new rules for everything from labor, health, and environmental standards to food safety, prescription drug access, and copyright protections.
Even if those rules strike the right balance among competing interests, the true impact of a trade deal will turn on how well those rules are enforced. And that is the fundamental problem: Americas current trade policy makes it nearly impossible to enforce rules that protect hard-working families, but very easy to enforce rules that favor multinational corporations.
For example, anyone who wishes to enforce rules that impose labor or environmental standards must plead with our government to bring a claim on their behalf.
Reports from the Government Accountability Office, the Labor Department, and the State Department have shown that the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations have rarely brought such claims, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of violations.
Without strong enforcement, promises that American workers wont have to compete against 50-cent-an-hour foreign laborers or promises that countries with terrible environmental records will raise their standards are meaningless.
But multinational corporations dont have to plead with the government to enforce their claims. Instead, modern trade deals give corporations the right to go straight to an arbitration panel when a country passes new laws or applies existing laws in ways that the corporations believe will cost them money. Known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), these international arbitration panels can force countries to pony up billions of dollars in compensation. And these awards stick: No matter how crazy or outrageous the decision, no appeals are permitted. Once the arbitration panel rules, taxpayers must pay....
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/06/23/warren/CJluXWm4B5VDTdUDsCkwEL/story.html
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Their work, now monetized, moves offshore where its new owners are safe from the tax man and is free to go and grow across new borders of opportunity.
Seeing how Obama campaigned as a Democrat who said he favored workers over corporations, I can understand why it's the working families' own fault for not being born billionaires.
added.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)CEOs.
I wish this was
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)LuvNewcastle
(16,844 posts)Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)A clause stating that all awards from the ISDS court will be paid entirely by special taxes levied upon those worth more than 10 million dollars, so the millionaires and billionaires are merely moving money around between themselves, not bothering the rest of us.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)jalan48
(13,860 posts)It's becoming much clearer every day.
Thespian2
(2,741 posts)have always looked UP to corporate leaders and politicians...unfortunately, since RayGun started the process of giving America to business interests, we didn't notice that the people we looked UP to were actually pissing DOWN on us...