Word: naftas
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...maintain democratic control over economic, health and environmental laws and regulations. This treaty, the most far-reaching trade agreement in history, will see intensive negotiations in Quebec over the weekend of April 20-22. In essence, the Bush Administration seeks to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to all of the Americas by 2003; if ratified, the FTAA could compromise the potential for democratic self-government of over 800 million people on two continents...
Hyperbole? Not at all. The FTAA is based in part upon the innovations in international trade law crafted under NAFTA, which has developed an extensive track record since its ratification in 1993. To get a sense of the potential impact of the FTAA, we can start by looking at what provisions the FTAA is importing from NAFTA and the effect these provisions have already had under the latter agreement...
First, the FTAA, like NAFTA, would govern not only disputes between nations but also disputes between investors and nation-states. Corporations gained for the first time in Chapter 11 of NAFTA an institutional mechanism through which suits can be filed against foreign governments...
Second, the FTAA, like NAFTA, would expand the jurisdiction of trade agreements well beyond the traditional realm of tariffs: corporations can sue foreign governments for taking “measures tantamount to nationalization or expropriation” of an investment. Such measures can include health, safety, environmental and labor protection laws. Who gets to decide which laws and regulations are “tantamount to expropriation”? Under NAFTA and under the would-be FTAA, when an investor sues a government the case is submitted not to a national court but to an international tribunal that holds private proceedings...
What has been the impact of these provisions under NAFTA? In 1998, an Ohio-based hazardous waste disposal company won a suit for $20 million against Canada for expropriation of its business due to a Canadian ban on the import of PCBs, a highly toxic coolant used in electrical transformers. The same year, another U.S. corporation filed suit against Canada, claiming a law passed by the Canadian Parliament (which had banned the use of the gasoline additive and potentially harmful neurotoxin MMT) was a “measure tantamount to expropriation.” The Canadian government, hearing that...