Look what NAFTA did to Ecuador and then tell me I'm posting too much about the TPP [View all]

[cali]

and I haven't even started in yet with the TTIP. I'm outraged about it. And most of you probably are too.

<snip>

Consider Ecuador. Under U.S.-Ecuador's Bilateral Investment Treaty, which mimics the investor-state system enshrined in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the largest ever reward from one of these tribunals has hit the poor country of Ecuador hard. In a decision by a World Bank tribunal last year, Ecuador lost to Occidental Petroleum and now is being forced to pay a penalty of $2.4 billion for ending their oil contract. Ecuador, reeling from decades of environmental pollution by Chevron/Texaco in the Ecuadorean Amazon, had concerns with Occidental illegally selling off portions of the agreed-upon oil contract without government authorization, a move that abrogated the contract. Now the country is billions of dollars in debt.

Consider Peru. This case, involving Peru and a company called Renco Group Inc. and its subsidiary Doe Run Peru, owned by U.S. billionaire Ira Rennert, is equally disconcerting. Pollution from the company's lead and zinc smelters, which are operated in the mountain town of La Oroya, was linked with high lead levels in the town's children. After myriad cases emerged of mental retardation, convulsions, anemia and stunted growth, Peru ordered an environmental cleanup, to which Renco responded by launching an $800 million claim against the government under the U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement. The company claimed that the cleanup ran Doe Run Peru into bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the kids get sicker and the town poorer.

[Read the U.S. News Debate: Should Congress Interfere with China's Currency Policies?]

Consider Canada. After Quebec passed a moratorium on fracking two years ago because it wanted to conduct an environmental impact assessment on the impacts of leached chemicals and gases from fracking, U.S.-based company Lone Pine Resources demanded $250 million, saying Canada violated its NAFTA obligations. The company had planned to frack 30,000 acres near the St. Lawrence River, injecting toxic chemicals into a critical watershed. These kinds of cases where a nation's laws are usurped by extrajudicial tribunals are only becoming more common.

Recall that Obama was against this a few years ago: According to Barack Obama on the campaign trail, "We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications." U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman will be asking Congress for fast-track authority to move forward these investor-state provisions within any forthcoming trade agreements. Two-thirds of the Democratic freshman class in the House of Representative came out opposing it.

<snip>

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/07/08/us-eu-trade-agreement-needs-more-congressional-oversight