Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
As of 5 October 2015, a super-secret
12-nation treaty called TPP is set to be signed by the 12 nations, and
the terms of this massive international contract will be kept secret
until the contract has been in force for four years, at which time the
contents might (but won’t necessarily) be revealed. This will be a large
new international government that has been negotiated for years by
international corporations, and which is now to be rubber-stamped by
corrupt politicians on their behalf. Whereas those international
corporations know the contract’s terms, the people who elected and are
ruled by those politicians don’t, and (for four years, at least) they
won’t.
These are the 12 nations:
Australia
Brunei
Canada
Chile
Japan
Malaysia
Mexico
New Zealand
Peru
Singapore
United States
Vietnam
Everyone who has seen the agreement (the negotiators for those international corporations, and their politicians) has signed a form promising:
“to treat negotiating texts and other
documents exchanged in the course of the negotiations as confidential
government information,” and “that these confidentiality requirements
shall apply for four years after entry into force of the TPP.”
The reason why the publics in these
‘democratic’ countries will not know until four years have passed under
those secret terms, what their government had signed to, is that their
government will have signed to allow international corporations to sue
their government (those taxpayers themselves) for potentially crippling
sums, not in a court of law in a democracy to which the public had
elected the judges or had elected the people who had appointed the
judges, but instead in a panel of, typically, three ‘arbitrators,’ who
will be selected in accord with something called the “ICSID Convention”;
and “the ICSID Convention provides that the majority of arbitrators
should not be the nationals of the parties having dispute” — in other
words: most of the arbitrators will be foreigners; all but one of the
arbitrators will be chosen by international corporations; and, even the
one arbitrator who isn’t, won’t necessarily be chosen by one’s own
country; but, in any case, no more than one of the arbitrators can
possibly be selected by one’s own country. If the non-corporate
arbitrator happens to be selected by a foreign country, then one’s own
country will not possibly be represented at all in these proceedings,
which might set fines that will cripple the sued nation, and that might
enormously enrich the suing international corporation. This will not
necessarily mean that the fine, if any, will be higher than it ought to
be, but simply that there is no democratic accountability in the process
of determining what, if any, fine will be imposed upon the sued
country.
Furthermore, the decisions that are reached in these panels, unlike court decisions which may be appealed to a higher court, cannot be appealed (53.1 in the ICSID Convention).
Furthermore, in this TPP contract, no
nation will possess the right to sue any international corporation — the
right to sue is alotted only to international corporations, and they
may, in these proceedings, sue only a national government.
Most of these panels will consist of three arbitrators. The ICSID states
(37.2.b): “Where the parties do not agree upon the number of
arbitrators and the method of their appointment, the Tribunal shall
consist of three arbitrators, one arbitrator appointed by each party and
the third, who shall be the president of the Tribunal, appointed by
agreement of the parties.” So: two of the panel-members will be private,
one will be the sued government, and the third will be some individual
whom both of the other two arbitrators believe will be acceptable. That
choice of the third person will be crucial, and will introduce an
unpredictable element, which likely will determine the outcome. There is
no resemblance in this to decisions that are made in a court of law in a
democratic country. Each and every case will therefore be more like a
coin-toss. However, since corporations cannot be sued in these
proceedings, the weight can only be against the signatory nations
themselves, which have chosen, through secret and undemocratic process,
to submit themselves permanently to this form of international corporate
tyranny.
The purpose of these arbitration panels
isn’t specifically to enrich international corporations at the expense
of a sued nation’s taxpayers. (Though it certainly does that.)
It’s not mainly a means directly to provide yet another source of
income to stockholders. It is instead to terrorize legislators and
regulatory agencies within each member nation, to issue only laws and
regulations that are no stricter in limiting what the international
corporation is allowed to do under the (secret) terms of the TPP, than
the maximum requirement that is set forth in the TPP agreement. What
those requirements are in the TPP is what will be kept secret for four
years. For example: there might be a requirement to place no more than a
certain standard for the safety of drugs, chemicals, foods, or other
products; so that, if the sued nation issues a stricter safety-standard,
than that, then the nation’s taxpayers will have to pay to any suing
international corporation, a fine for violating that suing corporation’s
‘rights’ under the TPP agreement, as interpreted by these arbitrators.
TPP, in any member-nation that signs it,
will, basically, set in stone how strict each given standard can be;
and, if subsequent scientific findings concerning that standard turn out
to indicate that the standard should have been stricter (for example,
that CO2 emissions should be even less than previously thought), then
that’s just unfortunate, but modifying the standard will be virtually
impossible, because it would require renegotiating the TPP, with all of
the participating countries.
In short: laws and regulations
restraining corporations, will be crippled, essentially permanently,
within the TPP area, if TPP gets signed. The benefits to stockholders in
international corporations will be that TPP will terrorize
member-nations not to raise any given safety, labor, or environmental
standard, in addition to (of course) the fine awarded, which the
taxpayers of the charged country will pay to the given corporation for
the alleged trangression of the terms (which, at least for four years,
are secret) of the TTP.
Here is how the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, put this:
Imagine what would have happened if
these provisions had been in place when the lethal effects of asbestos
were discovered. Rather than shutting down manufacturers and forcing
them to compensate those who had been harmed, under ISDS, governments
would have had to pay the manufacturers not to kill their citizens.
Taxpayers would have been hit twice – first to pay for the health damage
caused by asbestos, and then to compensate manufacturers for their lost
profits when the government stepped in to regulate a dangerous product.
Increasing a regulation will present that type of Hobson’s choice to any nation that has signed such an agreement.
Furthermore, the vast majority — over 70%
— of ICSID appointments of arbitrators, the decisions that likely will
control the outcomes in these cases, are appointments that are made by
people from “developed” countries; fewer than 30% are by individuals
from “developing” ones. (See footnote 23 here.) Consequently, for example, Peruvians are far likelier to be exploited under the TPP than Canadians or Americans are.
Also, ICSID
arbitrators are a more closed, tightly-knit, group of people than are
arbitrators in other types of economic disputes such as WTO cases; and,
whereas WTO arbitrators tend to come from government, ICSID arbitrators
tend to come from the private sector. So: this system works
for more concentrated economic power, the benefits of which will go to
stockholders in the developed world, and the losses from which will go
to consumers, taxpayers, and especially to the residents in
underdeveloped countries. (Of course, the higher pollution and the more
toxic foods etc. will diminish lives in all of the participating countries.)
Additionally, ICSID
arbitrators are paid an average of $200,000 per case, whereas WTO
arbitrators get paid only 20% as much if they’re from the private
sector, and zero if they’re government officials; so, the profits from arbitrating in the ICSID system are far higher — yet another example of privatizing the benefits.
What will make this treaty — and, if they
also get passed, then also Obama’s proposed TTIP treaty with Atlantic
nations, and also Obama’s TISA treaty regarding financial and other
services — “the most criminal treaties in history,” will be not only the
collapse of democratic national sovereignty regarding these regulatory
and legal matters, but, also, the huge size of the market-area that’s to
be corrupted in this systematic treacherous (profoundly
anti-democratic) fashion, which privatzes ‘justice’ in ways that will
funnel wealth from the many to the very few.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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