Call to Vote "NO" on TPP, Trans-Pacific Partnership trade.
President Obama’s wise decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline could end up costing U.S. taxpayers many billions of dollars in fines and legal costs because TransCanada, foreign oil company building the pipeline, has challenged a POTUS decision using the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process in NAFTA – giving an unaccountable panel of international lawyers the power to award the oil company billions in damages for the pipeline not being built without any appeal or review by American courts. And the lawsuit remedies TransCanada seeks may preclude future presidents an ability to deny similar pipeline permits!
See: TRANSCANADA KEYSTONE PIPELINE,LP and TC OIL PIPELINE OPERATIONS INC. Plaintiffs, vs. JOHN F. KERRY, Secretary of the Department of State; LORETTA E. LYNCH, Attorney General of the United States; JEH CHARLES JOHNSON, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and SALLY JEWELL, Secretary of the Department of Interior; Defendants ~~~online at keystone-xl.com/...
See: TransCanada Corporation & TransCanada PipeLines Limited Disputing Investors, v. The Government of the United States of America Respondent ~~~online at keystone-xl.com/...
Further, The Disputing Investors seek damages of over US$ 15 billion arising from the United States’s breach of its NAFTA obligations. The Disputing Investors reserve the right to adjust the claimed damages during the course of the arbitration. So it is clear that through the arbitration processes this ISDS action will seek even more (or less) judgments and awards for the benefit of many businesses including enterprises that they own or control pursuant to NAFTA Article 1117 including (i) TransCanada PipeLine USA Ltd.; (ii) TC Oil Pipeline Holdings Inc.; (iii) TC Oil Pipeline Operations Inc.; (iv) TransCanada Oil Pipelines Inc.; (v) Marketlink, LLC; (vi) TC Terminals LLC; (vii) TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, LLC; (viii) TransCanada Keystone Pipeline GP, LLC; and (ix) TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, LP.
TransCanada asserts the U.S. Administration's action was contrary to Congress' power under the U.S. Constitution to regulate interstate and international commerce. Passing TPP will only enhance future such claims by corporate oligarchs.
see: Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
Also, TransCanada said it will also take an after-tax write down of C-$2.5 billion (USD-$1.76 billion) to C-$2.9 billion (USD-$2.05 billion) in the fourth quarter after the permit denial.
This is just the latest example of how ISDS can discourage countries from protecting the environment and acting in the best interest of working families instead of corporations. Further, notice how the TransCanada litigation filed this week (01-06-2016) in Southern Texas District cites U.S. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security as a co-defendant, demonstrating that this action has national security implications and consequences as well!
Defendant Jeh Charles Johnson is named in his official capacity as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency primarily responsible for law enforcement at the nation’s borders. Johnson has oversight responsibility for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two agencies devoted to border concerns.
Action Items:
Contact U.S. Senators and Representatives to oppose the including ISDS in the massive new Trans-Pacific Partnership, TPP, trade deal. ISDS was a bad idea for NAFTA, and it’s a bad idea for TPP. The vote in both congressional houses can be within the next few weeks so call now and keep calling either of the congress-capital switchboards, 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121 and ask for a Senator or Representative by name.
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch online at www.tradewatch.org (Jan. 6, 2016) said this: "Release of the final TPP text after more than seven years of secretive talks revealed two surprising ways the agreement could undermine U.S. national security interests:
1.) The TPP eliminates language included in past U.S. trade pacts that explicitly authorized the United States to take action to protect its own national security interests regardless of whether any such action or policy violated trade pact rules and to do so without facing trade sanctions.
2.) While other TPP nations safeguarded their domestic national security review processes for foreign investors, the United States did not take an exception to TPP rules that grant foreign investors new rights to acquire land, firms, natural resource concessions, infrastructure or other investments and operate them. Thus, even if the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) opposed on national security grounds a U.S. acquisition by a firm also operating in a TPP country, if that investment was stopped the firm could drag the U.S. government before an extrajudicial investor-state tribunal and demand taxpayer compensation."
— read more here —
Defeat TPP because ISDS threatens national security, national sovereignty, best protection of environment and best interests of working families.
Recordings of previous National TPP Resistance calls, Wednesday nights at 9 pm Eastern/6 pm Pacific, are here! Most recent call was January 6th. Please spread the word to those in your networks. You can also sign up to participate in these calls on that same web page.
According to the Federal Register, the Office of the US Trade Representative ( USTR ) announced on Dec. 28 that it “is seeking public comments on the impact of the TPP Agreement on U.S. employment, including labor markets.”
The USTR open comment period extends until January 13, 2016.
It is critical that as many people as possible write to them about this. (For example, in 2014, millions of public comments pouring into the FCC saved the Internet!)
USTR strongly encourages commentators to make on-line submissions, using the www.regulations.gov website. To submit comments via www.regulations.gov, you can go directly to the comment page using this link: www.regulations.gov/... Find and click on the link entitled “Comment Now!”
Ideas for technical data to include in a comment about how these kinds of trade packages cause huge trade deficits that lead to lost jobs and lower wages can be found in the August 2015 report “Prosperity Undermined The Status Quo Trade Model’s 21-Year Record of Massive U.S. Trade Deficits, Job Loss and Wage Suppression”. Also, as shown in the main topic of this diary, Investor State Dispute Settlement ISDS provisions allow foreign firms to sue the U.S. claiming U.S. laws interfere with profits as in claims of TRANSCANADA KEYSTONE PIPELINE,LP et al., vs. JOHN F. KERRY, et al. Therefore, raises in minimum wage, worker and environmental protections and more can be cited by the plaintiffs.