The company behind the Keystone XL pipeline has filed a legal challenge to its rejection, contending that President Barack Obama violated the North American Free Trade Agreement in killing the project…
In its challenge under NAFTA, TransCanada seeks monetary damages that could number in the billions for what it alleges is an "arbitrary" rejection by the White House, that was made more for symbolic value to bolster Obama's fight against climate change.
Got that? Monetary damages could be “in the billions”.
Investor State Attacks like this are a fundamental part of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions of trade agreements like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If anything, the TPP gives even more power to corporations to sue for loss of projected future earnings for things like limitations imposed by environmental concerns.
Public Citizen:
...A major goal of U.S. multinational corporations for the TPP is to impose on more countries a set of extreme foreign investor privileges and rights and their private enforcement through the notorious “investor-state” system. This system allows foreign corporations to challenge before international tribunals national environmental, land use, health and other laws and regulations that apply to domestic and foreign firms alike. Outrageously, this regime elevates individual corporations and investors to equal standing with each TPP signatory country’s government – and above all of us citizens. This regime empowers corporations to skirt national courts and sue our governments before tribunals of private sector lawyers operating under UN and World Bank rules to demand taxpayer compensation for domestic regulatory policies that investors believe diminish their “expected future profits.” Many of these regulatory policies are designed for environmental protection. For example, in 2012, the U.S. Lone Pine company launched a $250 million NAFTA investor-state case against a Canadian ban on fracking.
If a corporation “wins,” the taxpayers of the “losing” country must foot the bill. Over $400 million in compensation has already been paid out to corporations in a series of investor-state cases under NAFTA-style deals alone. This includes attacks on natural resource policies, toxics bans, zoning and permits, health and safety measures, and more. In fact, of the nearly $14 billion in the 15 claims now pending under NAFTA-style deals, all relate to environmental, financial, public health and transportation policy – not traditional trade issues. Governments have paid out over $3 billion to investors in investor-state disputes under U.S. FTAs and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) – over 85 percent of this related to oil, mining, gas, and other environmental and natural resource disputes...
Read on at the above link for a detailed description of “A review of just some of the outrageous anti-environment cases brought under this system [highlighting] the extreme peril of these radical investor privileges, and their investor-state private enforcement, being included in the TPP”.
Of course, the concerns about the TPP go far beyond its potentially devastating effect on environmental regulations.
But the 22nd anniversary of the implementation of NAFTA was just a few days ago. Here we are, almost a generation later, with a brand new example of the costs, both financial and environmental, of a neoliberal “trade” agreement, pushed by a Democratic President with the overwhelming support of Republicans, for the exclusive benefit of multi-national corporations.
Of our two Democratic candidates for the presidency, only one has shown a clear understanding of the very real devastating consequences of trade agreements that aren’t really about trade at all, but about protecting multi-national corporations and their profits. Bernie Sanders voted against NAFTA and other “free trade” agreements, and Bernie Sanders has been strongly opposed to the TPP from the outset. For Hillary Clinton, the TPP was the “gold standard” until a few days before the first Democratic Debate. (Some of the other words Clinton used to describe the TPP before she left the State Department in 2013: "exciting," "innovative," "ambitious," "groundbreaking," "cutting-edge," "high-quality" and "high-standard.”) And after saying that the TPP “did not meet the high bar” she’d set, she made clear she would not work to promote opposition to the TPP amongst Democrats for the upcoming vote in Congress.
And as to opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline?
Hillary Clinton finally declared KXL “a distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change” on September 22, 2015.
Make sure you vote in MoveOn’s Presidential Endorsement Poll. Members only; you have to be a member before the poll opens tomorrow.
UPDATE (7:20 pm MST) — I just became aware of an important diary about the TPP posted today by ShoshannaD: So, Tell Me How You Really Feel, Comment Deadline Approaching Soon — in fact, the deadline to send your comments to the US Trade Representative is one week from now, on January 13. Tell The USTR What You Think About The TPP. The diary includes additional discussion and comments about ISDS. Please drop by ShoshannaD’s diary, and consider sending in your comments to the USTR.