Free trade agreements: dictatorship of transnational corporations

Jordan Bishop

13/01/2014

Opinión

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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico has a disposition according to which corporations can lodge a complaint against any of the three signing states, in the event that one of these states enacts legislation that impacts the profits of the corporation. Some years ago, the Canadian government enacted a regulation that prohibited the use of a new additive to gasoline, considered to be prejudicial to the health of the population. In this case the Canadian government surrendered, eliminating the regulation and paid a healthy indemnity to the corporation involved.

Several U.S. states had imposed a similar prohibition, and these are still in force, since NAFTA does not apply to individual states in the U.S.

There is another dimension. Even though these corporations can succeed in eliminating the Canadian regulation, they cannot impose the use of this additive to gasoline sold in Canada. And in fact there are a number of companies that do not add this additive to their product.

NAFTA is an agreement between the three North American nation states. At the present time there are negotiations, undertaken in absolute secrecy, without a minimum of transparency, between the European Union, Canada and the United States. No details have been made public, since if they were it is probable that the peoples involved would reject the agreement. According to some leaks, the agreement would allow transnational and national corporations to impugn, under secret tribunals, any legislation that "limits the profits" of these corporations, without any right of appeal against the decisions of these secret tribunals. This could result in eliminating legislation for environmental protection, legislation for the health and safety of citizens, possibly without exceptions. That is to say, the proposed treaty would establish a dictatorship of national and transnational corporations. As professor Jorge Marchini has written, "The future of our countries could be completely compromised by a faulty negotiation" (http://www.alainet.org/active/70309).

Professor Jorge Marchini has pointed out some of the serious problems inherent in this kind of negotiations. Transparency is absolutely necessary to prevent that transition from democracy to a dictatorship of corporations.

(Translation by the author)

Ottawa, Ontario, January 10 2014.

- Jordan Bishop retired as professor of humanities with the University College of Cape Breton, Canada, in 1989

https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/82264?language=es