If you want to help stop Fast Track, please sign up for action alters on Fast Track and TPP at tradewatch.org At the bottom of the page you can sign up with your email.

You can also get regular news updates at our eyesontrade blog – follow the RSS feed! http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/

Also, check out http://www.ExposetheTPP.org it is a great action oriented site

Ron Paul ALWAYS opposed Fast Track in his many years in Congress. For instance, see him here railing against Fast Track’s constitutional threats during the 2002 debate Congressional Record, 105th Congress (1997-1998). GPO record: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CREC-1998-09-25/pdf/CREC-1998-09-25-pt1-PgH8765-2.pdf#page=32

It would be very interesting for folks joining on today who live in congressional districts represented by conservative GOP to write or call their Representative to inquire whether they intend to give their constitutional trade authority over to Pres. Obama and if so, why, given their general take on him not being, lets just say, in agreement with the same values and goals, as conservative GOP

Unfortunately, past efforts to challenge the constitutionality of the “trade” agts that resulted from Fast Track have not gotten past the technical “standing” phase… ie there must be a specific injured party and that injury standard does not include loss of democratic rights in general…

BUT, the best way to ensure that we do not have more of the same job-killing, unsafe-food-importing, sovereignty-killing agts is to make sure there is no more Fast Track and that requires each of us to write to our Representative and get a formal commitment that he or she will vote no against any request to give away their constitutional trade autrhority

BTW, folks who want to buy the Fast Track book, which is actually a rather fun read (says more than me and my mom…) you can get it here:
https://secure.citizen.org/t/13059/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=991

Nice one, Dave re meal… that is sadly accurate.

And, if there is Fast Track we will all be ON the table, with the public and Congress not having any seat AT the table..

That case Veolia vs Egypt – has not been decided, but yes Dave in principle what you suggest is consistent with this case… It was filed in June 2012 under the France-Egypt BIT. The company argues that changes to local labor laws – including recent increases in minimum wages – have impacted negatively on the company despite contract provisions designed to buffer the concessionaire from the financial implications of any such legal changes.”

The people in the administration negotiating these investment terms believe unbendingly that they are a good idea, that investors SHOULD get compensated for changes in policy and that these terms are “balanced” I kid you not…

The only thing to be done about that is to make sure that Congress does not give a Fast Track blank check to those officials…

The way we can stop TPP is to stop Fast Track. To do that, everyone must contact their House member and get a commitment that he or she will not vote for Fast Track!

The investment tribunals are one of the things that make TPP vulnerable on a trans-partisan basis… This is also in the new US-Europe FTA Obama has announced, which is even more lunatic given there is NO excuse for such a system in an agt between parties with developed courts and proprety rights laws (the ostensible reason for this system is if there is investment in a country where the courts do not function and the investment if expropriated)

The tribunals go beyond even the most extreme version of “regulatory takings” compensation, tho that is also required

Under a substantive standard called a guaranteed minimum standard of treatment, investors are promised that there wont be any change in regulatory climate or policy once they have invested. So, for instance, one case now underway is from a European firm suing Egypt over the increase in the minimum wage after Egypt’s revolution… seriously.

Another case is against Quebec’s fracking moratorium – by a gas company called Lone Pine that was invested before the moratorium went into [place

Check out my two part detailed blog on the tribuinals and TPP here

http://kluwerarbitrationblog.com/blog/author/loriwallach/

and, for memos and fact sheets and a chart of call tribunal cases under US FTAs, go herehttp://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=5411&frcrld=1

The investor tribunals are empowered to order unlimited sums of a nation’s resources to be paid to foreign investors’ whose new special privileges have been undermined. Thus, each nation’s Treasury must compensate foreign investors as the tribunals order. There is no outside appeal. And, failure to pay results in seizure of govt assets.

Lots on the conflict between the FTA financial services market access rules and robust regulation at http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=783

On what the previous agts allowed re. the foreign tribunals… Yes, this is an existing problem. NAFTA had these tribunals and do did CAFTA and some of the US FTAs – tho interestingly Australia said NO so the US-Australia FTA does NOT have this feature.

And, Australia is saying no to these tribunals in TPP – but the US is insisting on it.

What would be the big deal if these tribunals are in TPP?

1) MANY more corps in MANY more countries could attack each others domestic laws.
2) The substantive rights being proposed for TPP – the corp rights – are much broader – even to be able to go to the corp tribunals to enforce timber and other nat resource concessions against US govt on federal lands, procurement contracts and more
3) After 20 years of NAFTA – and over $400M paid out to corps under NAFTA’s tribunals over toxics bans, land use issues, timber, water, and other non-trade public interest policies – we should know better!! a la Australia which is saying NO or South AFrica which is getting OUT of its agts that have these tribunals or Brazil, which refuses to get into such deals

Spocko – please do get me on Fox! I also personally think that this provision is incredibly offensive. I don’t care if you call it sovereignty or democracy, either way these investor-tribunals are totally unacceptable.

On food safety, what we know of the proposed rules would require:
- we accept meat and poultry from all TPP nations fr any slaughter or processing facility that meets their domestic standards not our standards if they can show that their system provides “equivalent” protection to ours… This is a very worrying standard. Just for one example, before NAFTA we did not accept any meat imports from Mexico. After, we accepted meat for ALL Mexican facilities under the equivalence rule…

Fro TPP, seafood safety is especially worrying.

To answer Jeff, Froman’s answer to Sen Brown was very sneaky: he assumed no one knows that the TPP “Market Access” rules BAN countries’ use of 5 common financial regulatory mechanisms. Banned even when applied equally to domestic and foreign firms are: bans on risky products or services (a ban is a forbidden “zero quota”); limits on size; mandatory legal forms (ie you must incorporate in this form to offer that service); needs tests and more.

From the right, both TPP and Fast Track are really offensive…

TPP would involved submitting the US to the jurisdiction of United Nations and World Bank tribunals, which would be empowered to order payment of unlimited US Treasury dollars to foreign corps when they have to meet the same laws as US citizens and firms. A threat to our solvency and sovereignty

Fast Track rips up a fundamental check and balance the Founding Fathers put into the constitutions explicitly to CHECK imperial tendencies of presidents that might be inclined to use trade negotiations to impose policies against the national interest. Fast Track would lead to diplomatic legislating of U.S. submission to UN tribunals AND a trashing of states rights, as these trade rules internationally pre-empt US law

The key to getting folks to realize that they must engage to stop Fast Track is make clear that the issue is NOT “trade”

Rather, “free trade agreement” is the brand being stamped on delivery vehicles for wide swaths of non-trade retrograde policies, many of which could not get through Congress in the sunshine of normal process.