It’s almost funny how neatly they’ve tied us up in liberal sounding treaties that are designed to conveniently facilitate the looting of our nations. Oh no, it’s all to protect investors from ‘discriminatory practices’ Oh we need arbitration to make sure foreign investors get fair legal protection so international trade can flow! Honest! It’s all a design to let foreign capitalist vulture bastards profit at the expense of the working classes of our nations. Let’s let foreign corporations a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever a government passes a law to, say, discourage smoking See Togo, curb the use of child labor or any marginally progressive policy to curb the excesses of colonialism. Any hint of this and the ISDS comes in to save investors from the horrors of ethical legislation. These treaties are cleverly written so that any legislation causing lost profits is by definition a treaty violation, so fucking cunning so innovative. So much more elegant and civilized than stationing colonial troops when you can extract all the resources you need via treaty instead. Any attempt to craft legislation in the public interest will quickly find itself smothered in the cradle by the threat of exorbitant fines. And guess what according to a 2011 paper, “In terms of wins and losses, the U.S. has never lost a case as the respondent country. U.S. investors have won 15 cases, lost 22 cases, and settled 14 cases. In terms of performance with respect to developing countries, U.S. investors have won 14 cases and lost 17.” But hey that’s just happenstance, right? It’s not an active design of the system! Right?
Not just third world. Any country. The western clients just get a better deal and act as buffers for the extraction.
They’ll coup western governments so damn fast at the hint of a pro-china or anti IMF policy.
Third world governments get fucked by it the most though. Just the thought of having to pay the fines or even worse being excluded from international trade kills any legitimate regulation. The lack of transparency in ISDS proceedings, the lack of consistency in arbitral decision-making, and the lack of appellate authority to correct substantive errors serve as a vicious beating into submission for any Oliver twist country asking for more gruel. The gruel being any piecemeal pathetic inadequate reform that they’d even manage to get through. I’ve stretched the metaphor but you get the idea
