A libertarian would say let the market decide.
My view is that we should let our democracy, our Congress, our people decide which products we want to import, and which we do not want to import.
Bilateral agreements on tariffs are cumbersome, but in my view probably the only way to work toward fair trade.
The so-called free trade we have now allows big corporations to manipulate things like currency, the use of tax havens, the avoidance or ignoring of regulations including environmental regulations to the detriment of everyone in the world.
By entering into the trade agreements we have, we have relinquished our ability to leverage the fact of our large market for the good of the world market and our own country. But people in other countries suffer too from the fact that we so readily import the cheap goods they produce at low wages.
I think also that we need to work hard to improve education, social policies, pensions, etc. in our own country before we start trading without restrictions or with unenforceable and impractical restrictions on countries that have other education, social, pension, healthcare, etc. policies. We have a lot of work to do here to prepare our children to compete in the world market against people who are willing to work for pennies on the dollar.
So, it is not at all that I am a libertarian. It is quite the contrary. I think that the free market advocates are the libertarians. We should reserve our sovereign right to make decisions about the import of products from other countries.
And the trade courts really are an abomination. Elizabeth Warren explains that very well.
Here’s how ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement, i.e., the trade courts) would work: Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge that regulation in a US court.
But with ISDS, the company could skip the US courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the multinational company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in US courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions – and even billions – of dollars in damages.
If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next. Really.
And if the tilt toward giant corporations wasn’t clear enough, consider who would get to use this special court: only international investors, which are, by and large, giant corporations. So if a Vietnamese company with US operations wanted to challenge our refusal to import a dangerous chemical, it could use ISDS. But if an American labor union or human rights group believed Vietnam was allowing Vietnamese companies to pay slave wages in violation of trade commitments, the American labor group would have to make its case in the Vietnamese courts – and if an environmental group thought the Vietnamese company was dumping waste in their rivers in violation of the new trade agreement, they would have to go to a Vietnamese court as well. In other words, the great deal for corporations is only for corporations – everyone else is left out.
I am quoting from a letter from Elizabeth Warren's Warren for Senate campaign. I received this in an e-mail. I do not have a link. But it explains the problem with the trade court very well.
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