George Monbiot has what I think to be an accurate and frightening price in the Guardian this morning under this headline:
As he argues:
The purpose of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is to remove the regulatory differences between the US and European nations. I mentioned it a couple of weeks ago. But I left out the most important issue: the remarkable ability it would grant big business to sue the living daylights out of governments which try to defend their citizens. It would allow a secretive panel of corporate lawyers to overrule the will of parliament and destroy our legal protections. Yet the defenders of our sovereignty say nothing.
And this is exactly what the deal is meant to do: it is meant to give the world's corporations the right to profit whatever democracies might decide is in the best interests of the people who live in a country. If a decision - say on the environment - might deny profit then we might, no will, have to compensate the companies who could have profited from that so called opportunity, however harmful it was.
This is the sale of the state and its right to revenue to major corporations and the elite that own and control them without those companies even having to work for the benefit; they can just sue for it instead.
I argued for The Courageous State in 2012 and suggested it must replace the Cowardly State as I described it; that is the state we have which does all it can to profit business at the expense of the rest of us. George Monbiot is doing us a powerful service drawing attention to how far this process has advanced.
Be worried: corporate control of the state is the route to fascism. That's what this will deliver.
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This does feel like something that is more important than any of the individual struggles over loss of control on important specifics like taxation, health and welfare. If its significance and scope are as far reaching as you and George Monbiot suggest then it trumps all notional (or even international campaigns) to reassert democratic influence.
Taken to a logical conclusion it makes national democratic atates pointless.
You are right
“notional campaigns” are possible – but I intended to type “national”. I have misplaced a closing bracket as well. My apologies.
Richard, surely this is a re-run of the infamous MAi (multi-klaterail Agreement of Investment) scam attempted some 15 years ago or so? That was killed off, but theise shyters are like TESCO’s and Sainsbury’s, with their planning applications – if one fails, they just carry on, piling money in to the equaltion, until resistance crumbles. Democracy has been seriously under attack ever since globalization and financializations took of in the 80’s. Only “we the people” really coming together, can halt it – and even that is a faint hope.
This really in the re-feudalization of society, always remembering that Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Third Reich were, in effect, feudal societies, remembering that one of the crucial distinction between feudal society and its successor was the change “from status to contract” – from a society in which status defined your relations and place in society, to one where everyone could enter into contractual relations on the basis of equality of arms.
The distinction may not be absolute – there was law and agreement in a feudal state, and a contractual society did not entirely escape the effects of status or class, but at least the gorund rules suggested how disputes and relations should be governed. I fear we are returning to a “status” society, wehere who you are will entirely define your rights – clearly the aim of our current Government, I would argue.
It is vital that the decision makers in Brussels who are negotiating this treaty, explain precisely why they think it is necessary to hand over this power. Let us hope that the UK can choose to stay out of it. It is not too hard to imagine that brown envelopes have changed hands here.
I heard Linda Kaucher (one of your commenters in the past) speak about this on Sunday. She is a real expert – has been working on this and other trade agreements for years. I’m so glad that it is now getting a better hearing.
You are right
I feel Linda needs to adopt social marketing, at least Twitter, to better spread her message. We’d all benefit, I believe. She’s dead against it though. Alas.
These people aren’t elites, they’re predators. If we’re going to solve problems we have to properly identify them so let’s properly identify these people and their behaviour.
We should stop using the word ‘elite’ with its notion of ‘superiority’ – as you say, these people are thugs and deliver depredation of our communities leaving the populace as debt ridden burnt out husks. language should reflect ‘reality’.
When I heard of the proposed deal, I felt it should be rejected. I feel the individual nation state-except for China, USA,Japan and maybe Russia is unable to control its future. The EU potentially is big enough to limit the power of the corporations. We can vote directly for MEPS and the Council consists of people elected by the member states. The issue is whether it can be reformed to do so in the interests of the 99%. The media and neo-Liberal politicians peddle the seductive line ‘it will make us better off’.
Yet they don’t say that extra competition kills off companies as well expanding others.
The other line is that we need to be more independent of the EU, as though national dominance was the aim of our Continent’s politicians as it might have been in the last two centuries. I think it’s s diversion from the real issues and UKIP is very useful to them.
I feel part of the answer is strengthen links across Europe between those parties and people who want to limit the growing power of the corporations and work together. As Franklin said in the time of the American revolution, ‘we must hang together or we will hang separately.’
I’m afraid that George has misunderstood this. It does not mean that regulation cannot take place. Here is the description from the EU itself:
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/questions-and-answers/
“Why is the EU including Investor to State Dispute Settlement in the TTIP?
The European Commission, the EU Member States and the European Parliament all believe that Investor to State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) is an important tool for protecting EU investors abroad.
The fact that a country has a strong legal system does not always guarantee foreign investors will be adequately protected. A government could expropriate an investor (e.g. through nationalisation) or pass laws which render their investment worthless, for example, by suddenly banning a product made in a factory owned by a foreign investor without paying compensation whilst not banning products made by domestic companies. If investors are prevented from going to local courts or local courts are unable to deal with a claim effectively, then they have nowhere to bring a claim for compensation. In such circumstances, an ISDS provision in an investment agreement provides security for investors because it guarantees them a forum in which to bring a claim for compensation.
Although the EU and the US are developed economies, investors can still come across problems affecting their investments which their domestic courts systems are not always able to deal with effectively. That is why we believe there is a clear added value in including provisions in the TTIP that protect investors. And, as it brings together the world’s two major economies, the TTIP will set standards for the future.
Including measures to protect investors does not prevent governments from passing laws, nor does it lead to laws being repealed. At most, it can lead to compensation being paid. The EU’s Member States have been regulating for years although they have around 1,400 such agreements already in place. Eight Member States have investment agreements with the USA. These agreements have not prevented them from aligning to the whole EU acquis during their EU accession negotiations. In any event, the EU is working on providing even greater clarity to ensure that genuine regulatory action cannot be successfully challenged.
The European Commission recognises that improvements to the system can be made and has been very active in developing new United Nations’ rules for transparency for ISDS. In bilateral trade agreements it is negotiating, the EU is aiming to have better rules, e.g. on government control of arbitrators, on a code of conduct for arbitrators etc.”
George himself gives the example of the Argentine utilities that were foreign owned and then nationalised/price controlled. Absolutely nothing at all in such agreements says that you cannot either nationalise or price control. Only that you must properly compensate the owners when you do so.
And as that makes clear, George has it absolutely right
For example, a democratic decision to nationalise would be banned
Why should that be?
Don’t bother to reply – I ma fed up with your abuse
As George reports, some small states are already being fined for trying to run their economies for the benefit of their citizens. What Linda was saying was that under the proposed trade agreements states will hence feel constrained to nationalise or otherwise interfere in the market for fear of prosecution. How much more clear can it be that transnationals (with their base in the City of London) have a mortal grip on all our economies and democracy is confined to the non-economic?
“Absolutely nothing at all in such agreements says that you cannot either nationalise or price control. Only that you must properly compensate the owners when you do so. ”
Did you miss that bit?
And I have dealt with that issue in another comment
What I would add is that if compensation is due then leave it to a court, not this arbitrary process that over-rules the court and law
“For example, a democratic decision to nationalise would be banned”
I don’t think it does say that, it just says that a country might have to pay compensation if it nationalised something.
I assume you’d have been against nationalisation without compensation of your accountancy business when you ran it?
I can see reasons where nationalisation without compensation would have been right
RBS would have been one such case
Northern Rock another
Tim Worstall, you seem to me to miss the crucial point that only the democratically elected Government of a sovereign nation (or a democratically legitimate multi-state authority) should decide what is “properly” done about any given issue. The consequence of denying that is to consider violent invasion, a procedure that the UK more or less abandoned after 1957 following the Suez crisis.
It’s not surprising you miss this because your frame of reference does not allow it. It’s a frame of reference that I personally find chilling and inhuman, a point that I simply assert. I can no more be shaken from it than you from yours. However, if Cameron and his friends have the same outlook (as I suspect) they have taken care not to explain it to voters in any detail because they know it would ensure their non-election.
You forget the fact that Tim hates the state
The last sentence is interesting. I wonder who would decide on whether compensation was due and how much?
“A government could expropriate an investor (e.g. through nationalisation) or pass laws which render their investment worthless, for example, by suddenly banning a product made in a factory owned by a foreign investor without paying compensation whilst not banning products made by domestic companies. If investors are prevented from going to local courts or local courts are unable to deal with a claim effectively, then they have nowhere to bring a claim for compensation. In such circumstances, an ISDS provision in an investment agreement provides security for investors because it guarantees them a forum in which to bring a claim for compensation.”
Oh please…..you’re breaking my heart! By all means, we must protect those poor transnational corporations from those evil governments. Fancy exercising their democratic right to run their affairs as they see fit. I mean, unelected corporations should always take precedence over democratically elected government’s, shouldn’t they?
Recently the Government released a report , “Cut EU Red Tape”, which is a report from the Business Taskforce, whoever they might be. Ostensibly it is a report into preventing EU red tape interfering and slowing down business opportunities within the UK. The real mission it would seem is to advertise the Transatlantic Trade Agreement, and proposes amongst other things, unnecessary proposals on shale oil, intended meaning remove all restrictions, Crop protection rules that make EU farmers less competitive, substitute bring in Monsanto and GM crops, reduce Workers rights etc etc. In fact pretty well scrap any legislation which in the slightest way protects the Environment, Workers Rights, Human Rights, Trialling of Medicines, the list goes on. This is pretty dangerous and scary stuff.
You may well be right about the real mission
The link Tim Worstall has provided above does give an insight into the official thinking behind TTIP but it is not easy to see why the existing trade agreements, based on English Contract Law, could not achieve the projected growth in business if import/export rules and duties were tweaked from time to time to cover changing commercial situations.
One can only conclude that there is another agenda here. Think of the past involvement by Peter Mandelson in this department and his banking chums.
Sam Saunders: “only the democratically elected Government of a sovereign nation (or a democratically legitimate multi-state authority) should decide what is “properly” done about any given issue.”
I can’t see how that could fit with international attempts to tackle the abuses in places like Lichtenstein or the Caribbean or even the UK (e.g. CFCs, patent box)
Donning a tin foil hat while I make this remark, I can’t believe that this is anything other than a further step on the road to a “New World Order”. Unfortunately, the result will not be a democratic world government, it will be neo feudal ziggurat run by the elite hiding behind multi nationals.
Even the likes of dearest “Timmy W” are unlikely to be high enough up the power/wealth pyramid to avoid the the effects of the truly diabolical agenda of the elite that wish to take control of this planet and its resources.
“I can see reasons where nationalisation without compensation would have been right
RBS would have been one such case
Northern Rock another”
Northern Rock was nationalised without compensation, wasn’t it? Which, given that it was bust, seems entirely fair.
“Tim Worstall, you seem to me to miss the crucial point that only the democratically elected Government of a sovereign nation (or a democratically legitimate multi-state authority) should decide what is “properly” done about any given issue. The consequence of denying that is to consider violent invasion, a procedure that the UK more or less abandoned after 1957 following the Suez crisis.
The issue is really that said governments of sovereign nations must abide by the rules, laws, contracts, they already had in place when someone made the decision to invest there. Take, for example, the Argentine nationalisation of that oil company’s local assets, Repsol I think it was?
No one at all is arguing that the sovereign government of Argentina cannot nationalise that oil company. This is entirely within the powers of that government. Plenty of people, myself included, believe it’s a bad idea but it’s certainly well within the legal rights of that government.
But what is being said is that the Argentine government must properly compensate the former owners of that oil company as a result of the nationalisation. And the point about this clause is that the valuation should be done outside the courts of that country making the nationalisation.
For, amazing as it may seem, not all local courts in every single sovereign nation are known to be entirely free of political influence. Something we’re seeing in the Ecuador/Chevron compensation case. And something we saw in the Greek law sovereign bonds when the country unilaterally changed the rules on collective action clauses. Something that did not happen to those bonds that had been issued under English law.
And that’s where you and this agreement are wholly wrong Tim – because it destroys sovereignty
You want that because you hate the state
Some of us don’t
Argentina must be able to decide what it will do itself for itself – and face the consequences if it gets it wrong – but we do not have the power to over-rule it
That puts the right of the corporation above the state – and that cannot happen
“But what is being said is that the Argentine government must properly compensate the former owners of that oil company as a result of the nationalisation. And the point about this clause is that the valuation should be done outside the courts of that country making the nationalisation.”
…And I will agree with you the moment private companies put up proper consideration for a newly privatised government entity instead of obtaining it at fire sale prices like they usually do.
But that would prevent them from making quick and obscene profits from the newly privatised entity as its share price is often many times over-subscribed due to it being sold on the cheap! JP Morgan valued the Royal Mail at almost £10 billion, losing the taxpayer a potential £6.7 billion!
But doesn’t this assertion of total sovereignty also validate countries that choose to turn themselves into tax havens?
I have never said a country cannot set a tax rate
I have set it has no right to interfere with and undermine the decisions of another state
They are different issues