...but beware.
The TPP (Trans Pacific Trade Treaty) currently being "negotiated" in secret by the Obama Administration may supersede local laws that interfere with a Global Corporation's Right to Make a Profit.
Much attention has been turned in recent months to the fact that the agro-chemical/GMO industry -- corporate giants Dow, Pioneer DuPont, Syngenta, Monsanto, BASF -- have been using Hawaii since the 1990s as one of their main testing grounds for experiments engineering new pesticide-crop combos. On the "Garden Island" of Kauai, the industry controls over 15,000 acres of prime agricultural land, which they drench with over 17 tons of restricted-use pesticides each year, and likely at least five times that amount in non-restricted pesticides that may be equally as harmful (such as glyphosate).
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At the international level, through the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) these same chemical corporations are seeking to lock us in to arrangements that guarantee their profit interests will not be impeded by pesky democratic governments protecting people's health or other common interests. The TPP is a highly secretive international agreement being negotiated under the pretext of "trade" between twelve Asian and Pacific Rim countries, including the United States. If passed, it will amount to perhaps the biggest corporate power-grab in history, putting the rights of corporations above those of elected governments and sovereign nations.
Under the cryptic title of "Investor State Dispute Settlement" (ISDS), foreign corporations could challenge national and local laws and regulations that undermine their expected profits, holding tax-payers liable for these losses. Challenges could be brought for everything from attempts to regulate pesticide use to health warnings on cigarettes. Governments would be tried in private offshore tribunals that lack transparency and due process.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrea-brower/gmos-kauai-tpp_b_3883371.html
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