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CETA Signed Off As Wallonia Folds Under Pressure (freezenet.ca)
Dangerous_Minds writes: The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been signed off. The government of Wallonia appeared to be holding off on the agreement, but has since folded under the pressure. Two days after Wallonia agreed to the trade deal, countries signed off on the agreement. The agreement contains provisions surrounding a three strikes law, a global DMCA, site blocking, and the hugely controversial ISDS provisions to name a few. The deal still needs to be ratified for these laws to take effect.
Is this british english? What does that mean? It was cancelled? (Just kidding, I read the article). But, WTF? Signed off.
ISDS = workers rights gone as big corps can say they are bad for profits.
Wallonia is a real place, it's a region of Belgium, which is a country in Europe.
When companies can sue a country because polluting can yield bigger profits but the government opposes it, there's something really wrong with the world.
Don't forget the $50 Billion in job losses to offset the $25 B in gains. We tried this crap with NAFTA etc and it only benefits the rich.
https://stop-ttip.org/what-is-...
Investors will be able to sue states.
The so-called Investor-State-Dispute-Settlement (ISDS) – even in it’s new disguise as the EU’s “Investment Court System” (ICS) model – will grant foreign investors (i.e. Canadian and US companies) the right to sue European states if they believe that laws or measures of the EU or any member state have damaged their investments and reduced their expected profit. This will also affect laws and measures enacted in the interest of the common good, such as environmental and consumer protection.
Read up on Investor State Tribunals in CETA here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Basically it allows corporations to sue states in arbitrary "tribunals" if a state violates its Non Discriminatory Treatment obligations (CETA, section 3, p 156 f) or because of a violation of the guaranteed investment protection.
So corporations can claim that environmental protection laws are arbitrary and give unfair advantages to domestic companies that comply with those laws, while penalizing foreign companies that do not comply.
The fear is that corporations will claim, "You are only enacting those environmental, worker protection, and social justice laws to penalize us, it's just code for 'protect local business.'" This is a realistic fear because it has happened before.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And it's a hyped up fear. This sort of tribunal exists in NAFTA and has never lead to this result. Not only that but the agreement that got Belgium onboard heavily modifies this tribunal, and corporate interests will no longer be able to name anyone to these tribunals. The tribunals will be picked from a fixed body of experts chosen by the EU and Canada and called in deal with disputes on a rotating basis.
Unless you think nations who are signatories to treaties can just wantonly abrogate the obligations they agreed to and the affected party should have no right to seek a hearing. If that's the case, then just come out and say you reject any agreements between nation states of any kind, and believe treaties, big or small, are absolute wrongs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
CETA includes exactly the same ISDS, as the summary states. Now before you judge others' reading skills...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement#NAFTA_Chapter_11
This kind of tribunals have been and will be used this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay
Don't forget the $50 Billion in job losses to offset the $25 B in gains. We tried this crap with NAFTA etc and it only benefits the rich.
People who actually have studied this and know something about it disagree with you.
I don't blame you, it is an easy mistake to make because benefits are diffuse while costs are concentrated and easy to identify, especially due to the inadequacy (in the USA) of the trade-adjustment assistance program.
and nothing else. You can literally do anything else. And you can squeeze as hard as you want on 10% of the population. The US used to do it to black folks, India to the "untouchables", Japan to Islanders and the Chinese/Koreans, etc, etc.
The 1% have long since learned how hard they can squeeze. What few wars break out are when one member of the 1% pisses off another. We moved on Iraq so we could move on Afghanistan too. We did that so we could build an oil pipeline the Afghanistan gov't opposed.
Don't wait for the revolution. It's not coming. Do something about wealth inequality now before it drags you down.
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Yes it does and it has been used a dozen times against the Canadian government. Search for "nafta mmt lawsuit". Canada had to pay a private US corporation $12 million dollars (the company had sued for a quarter billion) because we'd banned MMT, an additive to gasoline that is a suspected carcinogen. The Canadian government didn't only loose, but was forced to re-legalize MMT.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/14/canada-sued-investor-state-dispute-ccpa_n_6471460.html
From your own link:
"Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says anxiety over trade deals has grown because wages haven’t kept pace with labor productivity while income inequality has risen. To some extent, he says, trade deals have hastened the pace of these changes".
The fact that "most estimates conclude that the deal had a modest but positive impact on U.S. GDP of less than 0.5 percent" (from your link) is largely irrelevant when most people do not get to see the benefits. Indeed, median American income has been shrinking since the late 1990s (when adjusted for inflation) even while the mean has increased.
Don't get me wrong. I'm one of the people who has done well out of the whole arrangement. But I totally appreciate others have not and are angry about it.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
You miss the point, I guess.
The opposition to the tribunals exists because it means any and all laws that are passed in the future will have to be inspected from a "possible impact on foreign trade" perspective. Member states can't pass an environmental protection law any more to protect the environment, it needs to be written so that it doesn't harm trade. They can't pass a workplace safety law anymore just to safe workers health and life, it has to be written so that it doesn't harm trade. Everything becomes a matter of international trade.
We already see the effect of this focus on the economy as the only god. In Germany, Schaeuble, the minister of finances, is without a doubt the most powerful minister and his opinion is asked and reported in the media on everything. Every law about work, immigration, foreign policy, health, education, literally everything. They made a law some years ago that forces the government to keep a balanced budget, and Schaeuble's "sorry, we don't have the money for this, and it would break the budget" can stop any law being discussed, no matter the subject.
The tribunals lead to self-censorship. Laws will be written so that they don't damage corporate interests. You will probably be proven right that the tribunals are actually called on very little - because their main effect is not in the trial, but in the chilling effect it causes.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU. CETA has also a system which allows to modify the treaty later without parliamental control. So in short it is undemocratic and I want to keep my democracy.
The fact that "most estimates conclude that the deal had a modest but positive impact on U.S. GDP of less than 0.5 percent" (from your link) is largely irrelevant when most people do not get to see the benefits. Indeed, median American income has been shrinking since the late 1990s (when adjusted for inflation) even while the mean has increased.
The obvious rebuttal is "Compared to what?" There is this mythology that the US's economic conditions of the 1950s and 1960s would continue, if only the US stopped trading with the rest of the world (or at least imposed punitive tariffs on goods and services from the poor parts of the world).
But back in 1950 after the end of the Second World War, aside from the US and a handful of other countries, no one was developed world. Europe was a vast mess and the rest of the world was as poor as it was going to get.
Trade changed that. Trade with the US was a key factor in helping keep western Europe and Japan free of the communist menace. And the US benefited as well with a golden age of expansion in STEM fields and industry.
Since then, we've seen a huge improvement globally. I don't know how some people can rationalize away the signs of growing prosperity (things like road networks where dirt roads existed before, for example). But it's turned out to be quite easy for some to not see the benefits.
And that brings me to your quote. Just because people "don't see the benefits" doesn't mean that the benefits don't exist. I see several really large warning signs from recent history that should encourage us to resist such unthinking protectionism.
First, the US went from benefiting hugely from trade in the 1950s and 1960s to its current state. What changed? Some would say "greed" as if corporations had suddenly invented the idea back then. The obvious answer though is that the rest of the world got a lot better and a lot more competitive with respect to the US.
Second, despite a lot of claims to the contrary, the US continues to enjoy strong labor protections, social safety nets, etc. These just haven't turned out to be very useful when the problem is labor competition with the rest of the world.
Third, while a number of countries have used selective protectionism to build economic powerhouses, labor always sacrifices in those cases.There is no historical example where some country put up tariffs or stronger defenses against competition, gave their labor all sorts of advantages and privileges, and ended up doing better for it than the outside world. If you're behind economically, then labor has to take a haircut.
Fourth, there's a lot of labor or socialism-friendly economic fantasies out there that are treated as fact, such as the model of demand-driven economics (which of course, completely blow off the demand from employers, a big part of real world economies) or Keynesian economics (which is basically used as a political excuse to spend public funds, no adherents bothers to save money when times are good). But where's the evidence that these things actually work? Too much of the time, it's confirmation bias with the thrashing of the moment assumed to have fixed things that would have fixed themselves anyway.
Another sort of fantasy which drives the demand-driven model is the assumption that what we want must be good for the economy. Want basic income? Must be good for the economy. Don't want to compete with darker skinned folk from other countries who work for far less than you do? NAFTA must be bad for the economy. Have large medical bills? Any public system of paying those bills for you, no matter how badly run or how harmful it'll be in the future, there's always someone who thinks it's hot stuff, economically because it paid for a relative's bill. There seems to be this huge unawareness that things we want can be bad for our society. It leads to cargo cult economics where we recall what was wonderful about economies of the past (say having the same job fo
Workers supply what employers demand. You need an approach that is reasonably balanced IMHO not something that heavily favors one side. .
You're already wrong because workers DO do that now, since most workers ARE replaceable and cogs. Walmart is subsidized by the taxpayer and shows their employees how they can collect food stamps and other government assistance programs.
Duh, Walmart employing poor people and helping them get government assistance is precisely the sort of thing we want to subsidize. Also keep in mind that it costs Walmart some to provide that service.
But I don't see that as being relevant to my point. In the absence of an official minimum wage, Walmart isn't going to get free labor.
And that minimum wage will reach the "homeless starvation" wage in our lifetimes. Well, mine anyway, you may be extra old with that extra white attitude. Taxi and truck drivers are being replaced by robots and there isn't a new sector being created that they can migrate to, free training or not.
Unless, of course, you're wrong, then it won't. I'll just note that I have already mentioned that the rest of the world is getting wealthier. It's not going to take many decades before most of the world's population enjoys developed world status. At that point, there won't be starvation wages, instead there will be a growing demand for labor just like there was in the first few decades of the 20th Century in the US.
The realists, the pro trader AND pro basic income crowd is simply saying let's not let Walmart and other mega corps benefit disproportionately through regulatory capture at the expense of small businesses who can't afford to hire the legal, tax and accounting staff.
Any actual realists would know that this isn't a real problem now. The benefit of social programs are not benefits for employers who have to pay for them in higher taxes. And there's plenty of other regulation that's enabling these mega corps, which doesn't get touched by basic income.