by Martin Khor In the recent public debate surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), an issue that seems to stands out is the investor-state dispute settlement system (ISDS).
Jos EU:n sopimuksiin Yhdysvaltojen ja Kanadan kanssa sisältyy investointisuoja, ulkomaisille sijoittajille avautuu mahdollisuus toimia kansallisen lainsäädännön vastaisesti. Markus Kröger (Suomen Akatemian tutkijatohtori Helsingin yliopistossa)., HS Vieraskynä 31.10.2013: "... lyhyessä ajassa on syntynyt joukko mittavia voittoja tekeviä lakiasiaintoimistoja, jotka etsivät aktiivisesti asiakkaita syytteiden nostamiseksi hallituksia vastaan... Investointisuoja tekee mahdolliseksi kansainvälisen korvausvaatimuksen, vaikka esimerkiksi kaivos rikkoisi paikallista ympäristölainsäädäntöä tai kaikki maan asukkaat olisivat hanketta vastaan ja onnistuisivat pysäyttämään sen."
Par Zaki Laïdi, directeur de recherche au Centre d'études européennes de Sciences Po, Le monde 15.3.2013: " Les Etats-Unis ont fait le choix politique de tirer un trait sur le multilatéralisme, et Obama n'a fait qu'amplifier ce mouvement. L'Europe doit-elle forcément les suivre dans cette voie sans l'assumer politiquement et sans en mesurer toutes les implications ?" "Si cet accord venait à voir le jour rapidement, il faut tout d'abord prendre conscience qu'il mettra à terre le système commercial multilatéral organisé autour de l'Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC)."
Professor Drahos: "So farmers, librarians, educators, cultural innovators, young people who want to culturally innovate, who want to parody for example a trade mark and suddenly find themselves threatened become theyre making fun of somebody. I mean there are so many people that have an interest in this. We live in a networked world. I see more and more networking amongst NGOs. I think there is a growing sense in which we have to realize we are not alone. That we can fight back."
Phillip Dorling, Sidney Morning Herald , Nov 14, : "WikiLeaks has exposed details of secret trade negotiations that could leave Australians paying more for drugs and medicines, movies, computer games and software, and be placed under surveillance as part of a US-led crackdown on internet piracy."
Daniel Sandström, krönika i SvD 3.11.13 om GCHQs besök på The Guardian i juli. "vad händer med Amazons börskurs när CIA, som är storkund hos Amazons digitala molnservice, inte gillar vad Washington Post gör? Eller vad händer när tidningarnas avslöjanden påverkar USA:s handelsavtal med Europa, vilket i sin tur påverkar villkoren för Amazons globala expansion? Det kan mycket väl visa sig att Jeff Bezos inte är ett bättre försvar för journalistiken än vinkelslipen och borren"
Euractiv Nov 2022. The year 2022 saw a significant strengthening of ties between South Korea and Poland, thanks to major arms deals and a Korean firm contracted to build a nuclear power plant in Poland – with a touch of ‘kimchi diplomacy’.
"Poland and South Korea are alike in many ways. Both were relative latecomers to democracy in the early 1990s, and both presided over a notably conservative electorate. Now, 2022 appears to be the year the two countries cemented their ties. "
Devinder Sharma, NEW DELHI, Nov 28 2013 : "India, a country which lived in the shadows of a ship-to-mouth existence when food would go directly from the ship to hungry mouths has over the years emerged self-sufficient in food production. This historic turnaround was possible only because India had adopted the two planks of what I call a remarkable famine-avoidance strategy: providing farmers with an assured price support for their produce, and introducing a food procurement system that provided for a guaranteed market and at the same time helped get food to the poor in the deficit regions through a network of ration shops. Withdrawing the price support for farmers or freezing it at the de-minimis level of 10 percent as applicable under the Agreement on Agriculture will make farmers vulnerable to the vagaries of the market."
a paper (2003) by Bhagirath Lal Das (an international authority on trade and WTO issues) on the implications of this and the position that developing counties can take.
A new treaty being negotiated in secret between the US and the EU has been specifically engineered to give companies what they want — the dismantling of all social, consumer and environmental protection, and compensation for any infringement of their assumed rights. by Lori M Wallach
BRI, Shipping, "From Zeebrugge and Liège to the ports of Italy, Spain and France and to the Eastern part of the continent, Chinese corporations and the Belt & Road Initiative are accelerating the development of infrastructure megacorridors, putting trade in front of people and planet." "There is also the question of how the rest of the world will react to this new restructured global capital and the even more pervasive issue of accessing the last remaining natural resources. Is the trade war, which is very much about technology, only the beginning of a more serious conflict?