medicineman
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And you thought libertarianism would be good for the working man. Here's a sample of what they're working on:
Corporate Greed
Multilateral Agreement on Investments
Corporations as nation-states
By Cheryl Bishop
Multilateral Agreement on Investments
Corporations as nation-states
By Cheryl Bishop
The American public is more incensed by corporate greed and lack of accountability than government interference or corruption, according to a recent study by the Preamble Center for Public Policy. Unfortunately, they haven’t seen anything yet. As the media obsess on alleged presidential debauchery, a secret pact is being negotiated by 29 of the world’s wealthiest countries that threatens to give multinational corporations the same standing as nation-states, including the power to sue national governments in retaliation for passing legislation thwarting the corporate bottom line.
Renato Ruggerio, Director General of the World Trade Organization nakedly boasts, "We are writing the constitution of a single global economy." But according to Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, this international investment treaty is the next step toward one large global market where people are merely laborers or consumers, the environment is for production or sale, and governmental regulations are market inefficiencies. It’s called the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) and if you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone. The majority of Congress hasn’t been briefed even though the U.S. State and Treasury Departments have spearheaded negotiations since 1995.
Before a 170-page draft copy of the text was leaked by French activists in January 1997, Public Citizen tried for a year and a half to confirm that negotiations were even happening. According to Wallach, when asked directly about the agreement, the Clinton administration claimed it was only a "general discussion" with no text or rules. It was shortly after this conversation that the text materialized. When a member of Congress demanded to know why he had not been informed, he was sent a list of meetings on the MAI that supposedly occurred. When another member asked the same question, he was sent an entirely different list. None of these alleged briefings could be verified. This secrecy is not limited to the U.S. Recently, Wallach was asked to brief the Foreign Relations Committee of the French Senate on the MAI because they couldn’t get information from their own government.
Why all the secrecy for an agreement that proponents claim will "give new impetus to growth, employment and higher living standards?" In a Catch-22 statement a Clinton aide rebuked, "It just isn’t something we get a lot of questions on. There isn’t a huge public interest in this." But Public Citizen’s Chantell Taylor says, "This agreement is so far reaching and intrusive into local, state, and federal governments that the minute people start to hear and read about it, there will be opposition." Even the traditionally conservative Western Governor’s Association issued a report expressing grave concern on the effect of state sovereignty under the MAI.
The MAI is being negotiated in a basement room of the private invitation-only Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an economics club for the rich whose member countries house 477 of the Global Fortune 500 corporations. In the past, the OECD has been more of a think tank than a venue for binding treaty negotiations but when the idea of a far-reaching global investment treaty was presented to members of the World Trade Organization, developing countries were adamantly opposed. According to Amy Holman, one of the U.S. negotiators who spoke in January at the MAI Treaty Conference in Dallas, when some members of the WTO were opposed, negotiations were moved to the OECD where "like-minded" countries could come together.
Essentially, the MAI is an investor’s rights agreement designed to remove obstacles to the increasing globalization of the world economy. Its goal is to open all markets and ensure protection of foreign investments. By seriously limiting governments’ ability to restrict foreign investment or even pass laws that unintentionally do the same, the flow of capital will be unimpeded. The MAI gives investors and corporations the right to directly challenge national laws as well as sue governments for cash compensation. In terms of its effect, "the MAI would operate as a virtual amendment to the United States Constitution," said Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center Robert Strumburg at the MAI Conference.
The main chapter of the MAI, entitled "Investor Rights," includes the absolute right to establish an investment and also stipulates that no government can "impair... the operation, management, maintenance, use, enjoyment or disposal of investment in its territory" that is foreign-based. Essentially, this obligates governments to be the protectors of foreign investment. The key provision in MAI, "National Treatment," ensures foreign investors will not be "discriminated" against. Under this provision, nations are required to treat foreign investor or investments no less favorably than they treat their own. Not only does national treatment ensure foreign investors are treated the same (or better) than domestic investors, it also ensures they have assess to local markets. For example, restrictions cannot be placed on what a foreign investor can own.
Proponents of the MAI point out that national treatment is a standard provision in most trade agreements, including NAFTA, but what they fail to note is the MAI also includes those laws that may have the unintended effect of discrimination. For example, a city that places a freeze on all development because their sewer system is at capacity could be considered a "lock-out" to foreign investment.
Most Favored Nation (MFN), another non-discrimination provision, requires nations to give each other the most favorable treatment they give any trading partner (regardless of their labor, human rights, or environmental practices). In other international trade agreements, MFN is given to the country itself but the MAI accords this privilege to the corporations of that country as well. All countries and their corporations must be treated equally with respect to regulatory law. This provision could seriously jeopardize the use of economic sanctions as a tool in fighting human rights abuses. One example is the Massachuset/Burma Law, which forbids corporations with investments in Burma from bidding on state contracts. Wallach predicts "if the MAI had been in effect, and South Africa, the EU, and the U.S. had been parties, Nelson Mandela would still be in jail."
The MAI also includes a broad ban on performance requirements, even those that have no discriminatory effect. Performance requirements are standards many countries use to shape investment to benefit the public interest. Many are concerned that performance requirements in laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks opening a branch in a low-income community to also lend there, could be banned. Other examples are laws requiring foreign corporations to maintain a certain percentage of local labor in their workforce or use local resources in their production.
The government claims U.S. federal, state, and local laws will be grandfathered under the agreement or protected under exemptions also know as "carve-outs." Holman argued in the same breath that exemptions will be made for U.S. laws but we are fighting tooth and nail against France and Canada’s request to protect their cultural industries from U.S. domination through exemptions. Because they can be challenged under the dispute mechanism, they essentially offer no guarantees. Under the MAI "standstill" and "rollback" provisions, grandfathering also offers no protections. Rollback requires the offending laws be eliminated over time and standstill halts the implementations of similar laws. Scary eh! More on next page!