This is pretty funny, for many Europeans ISDS is one of the main reasons why they oppose TTIP [1]. They fear US companies suing European countries because of stricter regulations, with food and environmental standards being popular examples.
It's still an affront to democracy that commercial entities with enough political clout can sue whole countries because those countries dared to believe in their sovereignty.
I understand that it is a mechanism to reduce risk and therefore incentive wealth creation but when you have to make exceptions to democracy and sovereignty is when I say that your pursuit of wealth creation has become a bit too fanatical.
Source: The EU commission says “The protection given covers a limited number of specific actions which can concretely affect an investor’s daily business operations in a foreign market, i.e. discrimination, denial of access to justice, expropriation without compensation and the inability to transfer capital to invest.“
“ISDS is not about giving unlimited rights to multinationals to challenge any legislative measure taken by sovereign states in any area of regulation. Under TTIP, investors will not be compensated with taxpayers’ money just because of a fall in profits due to a change in the law. Nor will it be possible for investors to override bans of practices like fracking. The protection given covers a limited number of specific actions which can concretely affect an investor’s daily business operations in a foreign market, i.e. discrimination, denial of access to justice, expropriation without compensation and the inability to transfer capital to invest. Legitimate policy measures taken by public authorities to protect the environment or public health and which apply to all firms in the same way – foreign or national – cannot be successfully challenged under these provisions under the guise of investment protection.“
(from http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1008)
Not to mention that you make it sound like ISDS is a new thing that was marketed ineptly when in fact the notoriety stems from foreign businesses suing counties who tried to reduce trade in asbestos.
And besides, I'm not even sure whether it would be economically wise for a country to always threat foreign business and local business equally. Right now I'm sure many Europeans wish they had more local alternatives to US tech.
Why shouldn't commercial entities be able to sue the government? When a government has agreed to an ISDS agreement (if they hadn't, the agreement wouldn't be in effect), it's only appropriate that they are held accountable to keep up on their promise.
An ISDS agreement is simply about a government promising “We will not discriminate against foreigners (and also don't do a bunch of other terrible stuff, like expropriating foreigners), and if we still do, we will at least compensate them.“
It would now be interesting to know whether these are just one-sided views ignoring the potential damages EU companies could do to the USA respectively US companies to the other TPP countries, or if these agreements would really turn out to be one-way streets, Vietnamese companies hurting the USA and US companies hurting Germany because there is a very real gradient with regard to the relevant standards.
So can somebody tell what the US view on TTIP is? Are there the same concerns getting hurt by companies from EU countries?
Watch the John Oliver video elsewhere in this thread about Philip Morris using Hong Kong to sue Australia. No one knows how companies will use these proposed powers, it may become less legally clear what constitutes the home-nation of a corporation.
See also corporate inversions, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/tax-reform/report/20...