What Happens When Elizabeth Warren Sells Out to Powerful Interests?

[PatrickforO]

21. Well trade is a very complicated subject and your second sentence seems to imply that because

I may disagree with you about trade issues, I'm somehow flawed, or worse, in the Trump camp. I actually do resent that, not because it isn't true, which it isn't - I'm most definitely NOT in the Trump camp, but because I have seen many of your posts on here and they are much more thoughtful than this one is. So...I'm answering you now because I felt you deserve a thoughtful answer.

Trade is complicated. There are three major players - workers, businesses and government. And, yes, there are pros and cons to free trade as an economic concept. If you think it through, you'll also hit on some moral conundrums that go with it as well, particularly if you believe, like most billionaires and CEOs seem to, that we live in a zero sum world and that for me to win, you must lose.

I won't belabor those recognized pros and cons out of respect for you, because your post to me suggests you are aware of them.

Instead, lets merely explore the types of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and see why having these provisions in a trade agreement can be good or bad. Or both.

Clearly, the main 'pro' around having ISDS provisions in place is that they protect companies that invest in operations in a foreign country from losing that investment to nationalization or other corruption. That is a good thing, at least on its face.

But what happens when we take the concept too far, as the TPP did? In the TPP, a company based in say, Seattle, could sue the city, the state of Washington and the federal government for loss of profits due to the imposition of regulations. Now, you know as well as I that there are some of these suits in court now. One example that comes to mind is the oil companies suing the US government for loss of profits over the Keystone Pipeline.

So, to be truly effective, an agreement must have benefits for all the stakeholders, and protections for all the stakeholders. Unfortunately, by the nature of these ISDS agreements, protections for the environment as a stakeholder simply is not included.

Now, stakeholders in any trade agreement are a country's people, workers in affected industries, consumers of product, shareholders and the environment. Right now, in this business climate, the pendulum has simply swung too far toward the primacy of the shareholder over all else, and it is materially hurting workers, consumers and the planet we live on.

Eliminate that doctrine by expanding fiduciary responsibility of C-Suite officers to recognize the interests of these four stakeholders as coequal would go a long way toward rectifying many of the seemingly intractable problems that beset us.

The proverbial bottom line here is that yes, we do need trade agreements, and yes, these agreements need ISDS provisions because there is corruption all over the earth, and a business expanding into an area in good faith needs those protections, PROVIDED that expanding business also must, by virtue of the way those ISDS provisions are (should be) written, protect the interests of the other stakeholders too.

In my opinion, the ISDS provisions in the TPP did not do this, thus I opposed the TPP based on that. Be mindful of the secrecy that surrounded the entire thing - members of Congress being allowed to go into a room alone, not take notes and simply read the thing was very strange to me. The 'fast tracking' of Senate approval was problematic. And the lack of any kind of open debate was problematic.

So you see, you cannot really just assume, as you did, that because I disagree with X must mean I agree with Y. That is a fallacy in logic and you are better than that. It is better to say, in a mathematical sense that I agree with X(business) + X(community governance) + X(workers) + X(consumers) + X(environment), but not merely X(business). And, since the TPP was written primarily by corporate attorneys deliberately trying to be obtuse - I know because I read it on wikileaks - to my mind other stakeholders were NOT considered as they should have been.

But again, please do not put words in my mouth or try in the heat of argument to impose some position that has nothing to do with my actual thinking on the matter.

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The primacy of the shareholder doctrine, and our desperate need to expand fiduciary responsibility of CEOs in publicly held corporations is why I'm supporting Warren. This is the root cause of most of our problems. It really is, and in August 2018, she introduced legislation called the 'Accountable Capitalism Act.' She 'gets' it. I like Warren a lot.

And, you know, none of the candidates are perfect, including Warren. But Trump is a monster. Now, for a time, our primary race was pretty good in terms of not ripping each others' guts out. Now, just in the space of a few days, that has changed. Not good. The people on here have positions along a continuum between progressive left (social democrat) and centrist (like Eisenhower Republicans - if you read Ike's brilliant 1963 essay titled, "Why I'm a Republican," you will see what I mean).

I loved Obama and still do, but he was a centrist. I supported Bernie in 2016 but voted for Clinton when Bernie lost the primaries. That was a bitter battle on here, too. Now, we have a whole bunch of younger, fresher candidates that look a whole lot more like the American people, and they are elevating the dialog. People are talking about healthcare and the environment now, and our job is to advance arguments so people actually understand that medicare for all won't make private insurance illegal. Or my favorite - it will 'rip away the employer coverage you love,' when the truth is actually that what you will have will be better than what you did have. But that's a different debate.

Hopefully this clarifies my positions on the ISDS provisions in TPP and on ISDS provisions in general.