Trans-Pacific Partnership says if a corporation claims it’s true, it must be true

Corporations are elevated to the same status as national governments under “free trade” agreements, but if the Trans-Pacific Partnership is approved, corporations will be elevated above governments. New language inserted into the text of the TPP declares that, in certain circumstances, arbitrators hearing a suit by a corporation must assume the corporation’s claim is true.

We know this thanks to WikiLeaks, which has published another section of the TPP, the investment chapter that spells out the enforcement mechanism — the muscle — that will codify corporate dominance over democratic processes and governments. There is this tidbit, found within Article II.22 (“conduct of the arbitration”), which specifies what an arbitration panel is to do if a government objects that a complaint brought by a corporation does not qualify for a hearing:

“In deciding an objection under this paragraph, the tribunal shall assume to be true the claimant’s factual allegations in support of any claim in the notice of arbitration (or any amendment thereof).”

Thus, there is no basis on which a government can block the most frivolous of claims. TPP apologists might object that only a “technical” issue is being addressed in the above passage. But given the context, it is not a large step to go from a presumption that a corporation’s argument is true on its face for eligibility to be heard to presumptions in the hearing itself. The corporate lawyers who double as the arbitrators in the secret, unappealable tribunals in which cases are adjudicated under “free trade” agreements have interpreted the text of past agreements to strike down safety, health and environmental laws, and that “investors” should be guaranteed the highest possible profit. These are rulings that governments obligate themselves to carry out.

Protest at TPP negotiations in New York on January 26. (Photo by Cindy Trinh; puppet by Elliot Crown)

All the elements of agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the many bilateral “free trade” agreements that mandate arbitration in secret, unappealable tribunals are in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In fact, TPP mandates the same arbitration body, the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes — an arm of the World Bank. ICSID is no friend of regulation.

No limitations on eligibility to sue for ‘lost profits’

Who will be eligible to sue under TPP? No, not the governments that wish to sign the agreement. Only “investors” are eligible to sue. There is no limitation on who or what is an “investor” — any person or entity that has “an expectation of gain or profit” in any form of participation in any enterprise, holds any financial instrument, possess any intellectual property right or has a “tangible or intangible” right in any “movable or immovable property,” even liens, is qualified to sue. Any decision, regulation or law by any level of government can be challenged, regardless of the democratic procedures used to promulgate it.

The real-world effect is that any corporate entity can move to overturn any government action, simply on the basis that its “right” to the maximum possible profit, regardless of cost to a community, has been “breached.”

Worse still, the expansive language of the TPP means that even more corporations will be eligible to sue governments, a Public Citizen analysis of the leaked investment chapter reports:

“Existing ISDS-enforced agreements of … developed TPP countries have been almost exclusively with developing countries whose firms have few investments in the developed nations. However, the enactment of the leaked chapter would dramatically expand each TPP government’s ISDS liability. The TPP would newly empower about 9,000 foreign-owned firms in the United States to launch ISDS cases against the U.S. government, while empowering more than 18,000 additional U.S.-owned firms to launch ISDS cases against other signatory governments.”

Corporations not based in a TPP country but which operate in a TPP country, even when they have no real investment in a TPP country, will be eligible to sue. (The “ISDS” in the above passage refers to “investor-state dispute settlement,” the technical term used to refer to rules that mandate the use of the secret arbitration bodies.) Additionally, previous language that purported to provide support for health, safety and environmental rules is missing from the latest text, according to Public Citizen.

That does not mean that the boilerplate language in past “free trade” deals concerning health, safety and the environment has any meaning. The most recent ruling on a complaint brought under the North American Free Trade Agreement, handed down on March 17, put Canada and the province of Nova Scotia on the hook for a minimum of C$300 million because a U.S. concrete company was denied a permit to turn an environmentally sensitive beach into a quarry.

Health and environment laws swept away

The list of decisions (which become precedents for future disputes) under NAFTA alone is infamous. Here is a sampling:

• Ethyl Corporation sued Canada for $250 million because of a ban on a gasoline additive known as MMT, a chemical long believed to be dangerous to health. Ethyl claimed the Canadian ban was an “expropriation” of its “investment” and a violation of the principal of “equal treatment” of foreign capital even though had a Canadian producer of MMT existed, it would have been subject to the same standard. Canada settled to avoid a total defeat, paying Ethyl a smaller amount and reversing its ban.
• A U.S. company, Metalclad, sued Mexico because a city government refused to grant it a permit for a waste dump (similarly denied to a Mexican company that previously wanted to use the site). Mexico lost, and had to grant the permit despite the environmental dangers and pay $15.6 million to Metalclad.
• Another U.S. company, S.D. Myers, sued Canada because of a ban on the transportation of PCBs that conformed with both a Canada-United States and a multi-lateral environmental treaty. A tribunal ordered Canada to pay $5.6 million and reverse the ban, negating the two environmental treaties and ignoring the fact that PCBs are known carcinogens banned since 1979 in the U.S. The tribunal ruled that, when formulating an environmental rule, a government “is obliged to adopt the alternative that is most consistent with open trade.” So much for democracy!

In another infamous case, the tobacco company Philip Morris moved some of its assets to Hong Kong so it could declare itself a Hong Kong company eligible to sue Australia under the Australia-Hong Kong bilateral investment treaty, which, unlike some Australian trade pacts, allows corporations to sue one or the other government. Philip Morris seeks to overturn Australia’s rules limiting tobacco advertising and packaging, enacted in the interests of public health, which were found to be legal by Australia’s supreme court, the High Court. (This case is still pending.)

That case is shocking enough in itself, but there is an extra twist — the lawyer for Philip Morris, David A.R. Williams, is one of the judges appointed by New Zealand to the arbitration body hearing the case, ICSID. That is far from an isolated case as many ICSID judges are lawyers who specialize in representing multi-national corporations in front of these arbitration bodies. In another example, a judge ruled in favor of Vivendi Universal against Argentina in a failed water-privatization scheme, and her ruling was allowed to stand even though the judge served on the board of a bank that was a major investor in Vivendi. The TPP is completely silent on conflicts of interest. The leaked TPP chapter reveals for the first time that ICSID would hear disputes brought under TPP.

You won’t be able to buy local anymore

Those corporate lawyers, and especially the multi-national capital they represent, have had their wish lists brought to life in the leaked TPP text. No capital controls of any kind are allowed, “buy local” rules would be prohibited, “investors” can sue for large damages even when their claim has been covered by insurance, and the arbitration body hearing a case should apply “customary international law.”

That last item may sound bland, but in practice it means that rulings declaring reasonable laws and regulations to be illegal impediments to corporate profits are precedents that must be followed. Consider, for example, a London Court of International Arbitration panel, ruling in July 2005 for a unit of the Occidental Petroleum Corp. in a case heard under the U.S.-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty, which declared that any change in business conditions constitutes a violation of “investor rights.” If such a ruling is accepted as precedent, any attempt at regulation is at risk of being ruled an illegal “expropriation” of future profits.

The TPP, along with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Trade In Services Agreement, are not done deals. The TPP is much closer to the conclusion of negotiations than the others, but can be stopped. Grassroots opposition across the 12 countries currently engaged in TPP talks continues. Militant opposition is critical in all countries, but perhaps the single most important factor at the moment is what the U.S. Congress will do.

Reports consistently say that several governments will not commit themselves to passing TPP until the U.S. Congress passes what it is commonly called “fast-track authority.” Officially known as “trade promotion authority,” fast-track is a method of sneaking unpopular bills into law. Under fast-track, Congress has a limited time to debate a bill and can not make amendments or change so much as a comma, only vote yes or no. The Obama administration is pushing hard for Congress to re-authorize fast-track because that is the only way the TPP, which can not stand the light of day, can be passed into law.

Because of opposition from most Democrats and some tea party Republicans, fast-track passage is not assured. The introduction of fast-track into the Senate depends on a Democrat from Oregon, Ron Wyden, who is being heavily pressured by his constituents not to introduce a fast-track bill he has been negotiating with a conservative Republican from Utah, Orrin Hatch. One of several groups pressuring Senator Wyden, the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, has rented a recreational vehicle to shadow him across the state.

Where ever you are, voicing your opposition to the TPP to your elected officials, and joining a local or national group in opposition, is critical. The U.S. government is pushing the hardest, and attempting to insert the most draconian rules, to cement the control of U.S.-based multi-national corporations over the world’s resources and markets, and the other governments are willing to throw overboard what sovereignty remains to them so that their multi-national corporations get a slice of the pie.

Allowing the TPP to pass means nothing less than an end to democracy and a world where corporate power and money becomes more dominant than ever, where corporate profits are codified in law to be above all other human concerns.

Clean water as an impediment to corporate profits

An Australian mining company insists its “right” to a guaranteed profit is superior to the right of El Salvador to clean drinking water  — and an unappealable World Bank secret tribunal will decide if that is so.

Drinking water is the underdog here. It might be thought that Salvadorans ought to have the right to decide on a question as fundamental as their source of water, but that is not so. It will be up to a secret tribunal controlled by corporate lawyers. And as an added bit of irony, the hearing began on El Salvador’s Independence Day, September 15. Formal independence, and actual independence, alas, are not the same thing.

The case, officially known as Pac Rim Cayman LLC v. Republic of El Salvador, pits the Australian gold-mining company OceanaGold Corporation against the government of El Salvador. OceanaGold is asking for an award of $301 million because the Salvadoran government won’t give it a permit to open a gold mine that would poison a critical source of drinking water on which millions depend.

Cerro Cacahuatique, El Salvador (Photo by Amilcar moraga)

OceanaGold — or, more specifically, its Pacific Rim subsidiary, which it bought in November 2013 — has spent only a small fraction of the $301 million. That sum isn’t an attempt to recover an investment; it represents the amount of profits the corporation alleges it would have pocketed but for El Salvador’s refusal to give the company a permit. (El Salvador has had a moratorium on new mining permits since 2008.)

So here we have an increasingly common scenario under “investor-state dispute mechanisms” — environmental laws designed to safeguard human and animal health are challenged as barriers to corporate profit. Not simply to recover an investment that didn’t pan out, but supposed future profits that a company claims it would have earned. Should El Salvador prevail, it would still have lost because it will spend large sums of money to defend this case, money that could have been used for the welfare of its people.

An added insult in this case is that it is being heard not under one of the “free trade” agreements that elevate corporations to the level of (or above) a country, but under an El Salvador law passed by the former Right-wing government that has been since reversed. Pacific Rim originally sued El Salvador under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, but the case was dismissed because Canada, where Pacific Rim had been based before its acquisition by OceanaGold, is not a party to CAFTA. But the tribunal allowed the suit to be re-filed under an El Salvador law that granted corporations the same right to sue in secret tribunals ordinarily found only in “free trade” agreements.

Lawyers for corporations sit in judgment

The tribunal judging El Salvador is known as the International Centre for the Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID) — an arm of the World Bank. Neither the public nor the press are allowed to witness ICSID hearings and there is no appeal to its decisions. Under the “investor-state dispute mechanism,” governments legally bind themselves to settle “disputes” with “investors” in the secret tribunals. Cases are decided by a panel of three judges selected from a roster. The judges are appointed to the roster by the national governments that have signed on to ICSID.

Because ICSID, similar to other arbitration panels, does not have rules against conflicts of interest, most of the judges are corporate lawyers who specialize in representing corporations in these types of disputes. To provide just one example, one of New Zealand’s selected judges is David A.R. Williams, who is currently representing Philip Morris in its suit seeking to force Australia to overturn its tobacco regulations, which were ruled legal by Australia’s High Court.

The three judges in this week’s hearing are V.V. Veeder of Britain, Brigitte Stern of France and Guido Santiago Tawil of Argentina. Mr. Veeder and Mr. Tawil are veteran corporate lawyers; the former has carefully omitted any mention of who his clients are in his CV, while the latter’s bio page boasts he has assisted in the privatization of Argentina’s assets while representing corporations in several industries. To put that in some perspective, an austerity program was imposed in the early 1990s in conjunction with selling off state enterprises at below-market prices. This fire sale yielded $23 billion, but the proceeds went to pay foreign debt mostly accumulated by the military dictatorship — after completing these sales, Argentina’s foreign debt had actually grown.

The third member of the tribunal, Ms. Stern, is an academic regularly called on to arbitrate investor-state disputes. One of her previous rulings awarded Occidental Petroleum Corporation $2.3 billion against Ecuador because Ecuador had canceled an Occidental contract over a dispute in which the tribunal agreed that Ecuadoran law had been violated. The oil company was in the wrong but was given a windfall anyway!

Among the precedents these three ICSID judges will consider are separate rulings ordering Canada to reverse bans on PCBs and on the gasoline additive MMT, both dangerous to human health, because the bans hurt corporate investments.

Didn’t meet its obligations, but so what

The former Right-wing Arena government of El Salvador in 1999 passed a law enabling “investors” to sue the country in ICSID, thereby circumventing the local judiciary, as part of its effort to encourage foreign investment. A subsequent Right-wing government yielded to public pressure in 2008 by issuing the mining-permit moratorium, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) administrations of Mauricio Funes (elected in 2009) and Salvador Sanchez Ceren (elected in 2014) have kept the moratorium in place.

In addition to the general moratorium, the Salvadoran government cites not only environmental and health concerns specific to the mine, but also says Pacific Rim has failed to meet its legal obligations nor has it secured more than a small fraction of the local permissions it must have to develop the land it seeks to mine. Some observers fear that a ruling in favor of OceanaGold could lead to violence in a country in which 70,000 were killed in a civil war a generation ago. Luke Danielson, a researcher with the Sustainable Development Studies Group, told the Inter Press Service news agency:

“This mining project was re-opening a lot of the wounds that existed during the civil war, and telling a country that they have to provoke a civil conflict in order to satisfy investors is very troublesome.”

Local communities are shut out of arbitration forums like ICSID, but it is community organizing that is responsible for the, so far, successful pushback against environmentally destructive mining. The National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining, or “La Mesa,” is an organization of civil society groups that has led the opposition to OceanaGold. Several corporations have prospected in El Salvador’s inland highlands areas since the Right-wing Arena government passed the law allowing investors to sue in ICSID.

A now closed mine in the area, on the San Sebastian River, operated by the U.S. company Commerce Group, left behind water too dangerous to touch, never mind drink. The El Salvador Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources tested the river and found cyanide levels nine times above the maximum allowable limit and iron levels more than 1,000 times the maximum allowable limit. So polluted is the river that it runs yellow, orange or red at times.

Mining for gold is a process that uses large amounts of dangerous chemicals in the extraction. A National Geographic blogger, Vladimir Pacheco, writing about OceanaGold’s proposed mine, reports:

“The cyanide-leach processes at the company’s El Dorado mine will use approximately 900,000 liters of water a day. In comparison, it would take 30 years for an average Salvadoran family to use that amount of water. … Will water needed for the project aggravate the already perilous state of water access in the country? A study by the Ministry of Environment found that only two percent of the rivers contain water that can be made fit for human consumption, or used for irrigation or recreational activities and in another study the Global Water Partnership warns that water supply in El Salvador is hovering on the threshold of 1,700 cubic metres of water per person per year, the upper limit for the definition of water stress.”

Fighting back but at a cost

La Mesa has continued its struggle against mining and for the ability to decide its own pattern of development despite the violence that often seems to accompany mining. Three anti-mining activists were murdered in a six-month span in 2009. A report on Salvadoran activists published last year by Common Frontiers, a Canadian coalition, said:

“The fact that the government of El Salvador stopped issuing mining permits to companies was a real boost for their movement but at the same time it brought a significant shift in Pacific Rim’s tactics towards them. The company is accused of utilizing kidnapping, intimidation and even murder against community members opposed to the mining project.”

OceanaGold, which now owns Pacific Rim, did not address these charges in its glossy Fact Book 2014, but did have this to say:

“We have a staunch commitment to making sure our operations enrich, empower and improve the lives of our stakeholders, by creating a positive, long-lasting legacy that respects human rights and delivers enduring benefits and opportunities beyond the life cycle of our operations.” [page 28]

The Philippines Commission on Human Rights might beg to differ. In 2011, the commission recommended that the Filipino government revoke OceanaGold’s license to operate because of “alleged violation of the rights of the indigenous people of Barangay Didipio in Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya,” including forced evictions. (The license was not revoked, and the mine is operating.)

La Mesa calls OceanaGold’s suit “a “direct attack against the sovereignty and legitimate right of the Salvadoran population to reject an industry that is a threat to our lives.”

This history is not likely to be under consideration by the ICSID tribunal. It is not known when it will hand down a decision, although it is likely to be at least several months. Two fundamental questions that can’t be avoided are: Does a community have the right to make decisions on its own development? Do multi-national corporations have the right to a guaranteed profit without regard to the cost imposed on communities?

That such questions must be asked — and that “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second are increasingly common answers — is emblematic of dictatorship, not democracy.

Putting a gun to their own heads: Governments give themselves a ‘free trade’ offer they can’t refuse

A frequent criticism of “free trade” agreements is that corporations are elevated to the level of a country. It might be more accurate to say that corporations are elevated above countries.

The muscle in trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement or the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is the mandatory use of “investor-state dispute mechanisms.” That bland-sounding bureaucratic phrase is anything but bland in its application — these “mechanisms” are the tools used to turn corporate wish lists into undemocratic reality.

Labor, environmental, social-justice and other groups rally on the steps of New York City Hall during a January 14 snowstorm to demand Congress vote against fast-track legislation.
(Photo courtesy of New York State AFL-CIO)

The concrete form of these “mechanisms” are corporate-dominated secret tribunals that hand down one-sided decisions with no oversight, no public notice and no appeals. This is so is because governments that sign trade agreements legally bind themselves to mandatory arbitration in these secret tribunals despite (or because of) their one-sided nature. It is a virtually certainty that, should be they passed into law, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will contain some of the most draconian language yet in this area.

Activists in the TPP countries, as well as those in the European Union, should pay particular attention to the experience of Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Canada has been the principal target within NAFTA because of its superior environmental laws in comparison to the United States and Mexico, with U.S.-based multi-national corporations the primary suers. Environmental, safety, labor and “buy local” laws around the Pacific and in Europe will be targets should the TPP and TTIP be implemented.

The rules of NAFTA allow multi-national corporations to sue national governments because rules safeguarding the environment, for example, are interpreted to “unfairly” reduce profits. Decisions handed down in the secret tribunals — in which corporate lawyers who specialize in representing corporations in these kinds of cases sit as judges — further stretch the bases on which corporations can successfully sue governments. NAFTA, and tribunal judgements stretching it, constitutes the starting point from which the U.S. government, sometimes assisted by other governments, seeks to impose still more draconian rules.

Corporations can change laws to suit themselves

Decisions made under NAFTA rules are noteworthy because of their outrageousness, but also merit attention because they provide a preview of what is in store for other countries under the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Here are some “highlights”:

• Eli Lilly and Company is suing Canada for $500 million because Canada would not grant it two patents, rulings upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada. Eli Lilly claims the denial is an illegal confiscation of profits — it is using NAFTA as a tool to dismantle Canada’s well-developed patent system. No tribunal ruling yet.
• Ethyl Corporation sued Canada for $250 million because of a ban on a gasoline additive known as MMT, a chemical long believed to be dangerous to health. Ethyl claimed the Canadian ban was an “expropriation” of its “investment” and a violation of the principal of “equal treatment” even though, had a Canadian producer of MMT existed, it would have had the same standard applied. Canada settled to avoid a total defeat, paying Ethyl a smaller amount and reversing its ban.
• A U.S. company, Metalclad, sued Mexico because a city government refused to grant it a permit for a waste dump (similarly denied to a Mexican company that previously wanted to use the site). Mexico lost, and had to grant the permit despite environmental concerns and pay $15.6 million to Metalclad.
• Another U.S. company, S.D. Myers, sued Canada because of a ban on the transportation of PCBs that conformed with both a Canada-United States and a multi-lateral environmental treaty. A tribunal ordered Canada to pay $5.6 million and reverse the ban, negating the two environmental treaties and ignoring the fact that PCBs are known carcinogens banned since 1979 in the U.S. The tribunal ruled that, when formulating an environmental rule, a government “is obliged to adopt the alternative that is most consistent with open trade.” So much for democracy!

The above is merely the tip of the iceberg. How do such extraordinarily one-sided decisions get handed down? Because the corporations dominate the tribunals and play a heavy role in writing the trade agreements to begin with. There are 605 corporate lobbyists who have access to the Trans-Pacific Partnership text — officially known as “trade advisers” — but no members of any legislative body are allowed to see it, and the public is completely shut out. The “advisers” are eagerly working to make the TPP a repository for their wish lists.

The key to making corporate dreams come true is the “investor-state dispute mechanism.” Under these mechanisms, governments legally bind themselves to settle “disputes” with “investors” in the secret tribunals. By far the most used of these tribunals is the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID) — an arbitration board that is an arm of the World Bank. Cases that go before one of the Centre’s tribunals are decided by a panel of three judges that are selected from a roster. The judges are appointed by the national governments that have signed on to ICSID, which include most of the world’s countries.

Working to overturn Australian laws, but he’s ‘neutral’

These judges are not disinterested arbiters. For example, one of the judges appointed to the ICSID by New Zealand is David A.R. Williams, who is currently representing Philip Morris in its suit seeking to force Australia to overturn its tobacco regulations. Australia’s rules limiting tobacco advertising and packaging, enacted in the interests of public health, were found to be legal by Australia’s supreme court, the High Court.

Not willing to accept the Australian constitution, Philip Morris moved some of its assets to Hong Kong, so it could declare itself a Hong Kong company eligible to sue Australia under the Australia-Hong Kong bilateral investment treaty, which, unlike some Australian trade pacts, allows corporations to sue one or the other government. (This case is still pending.)

The ultimate arbiter of a constitution, or writer of laws, are not domestic bodies subject to democratic checks, but unaccountable corporate representatives acting in secret. Who are these mercenaries? As an example, each of the eight ICSID judges appointed by the United States has a long career dedicated to serving large corporations. Six are currently partners in some of the world’s most formidable corporate law firms, one is an academic who formerly was a corporate lawyer and one is a lobbyist for a business group that seeks to codify pro-corporate trade rules under law.

That is a common pattern. One of Australia’s appointees is Doug Jones, a lawyer with one of Australia’s largest corporate law firms, and one of Chile’s is Carlos Eugenio Jorquiera, a corporate lawyer and president of the country’s National Chamber of Commerce.

Further titling the scales are that only corporations, not governments nor public-interest groups, can sue under these treaties. Governments must pay expenses that can total tens of millions of dollars, regardless of outcome, with no provisions to block frivolous claims. The judges are paid by the hour, with no defined limits on costs, giving them an incentive to drag out proceedings, which in turn favors deep-pocketed “investors.”

In fact, the TPP would place no limits on who qualifies as an “investor”: Anyone who applies for a permit or license, or who “channels” resources or capital to set up a business, without placing any limits on what qualifies for such a status, would be eligible to sue.

‘Customary law’ is what a corporation says it is

Leaked article 12.7 of the TPP, for instance, provides a long list of prohibitions against government actions. Under it, laws imposing capital controls (even to ameliorate a crisis), rules governing domestic content of products or any protections of any domestic industry would be illegal. It then provides a generic exception allowing environmental or other measures “that are not inconsistent with the Agreement; necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health; or related to the conservation of living or non-living exhaustible natural resources.”

But that exception is rendered meaningless not only by other, superseding, rules but by the rulings of the corporate-lawyer judges in the secret tribunals. Leaked TPP language specifically requires that excepted rules must be “not inconsistent with the Agreement.” The key sentence opens Article 12.6: “Each Party shall accord to covered investments treatment in accordance with customary international law.” The “Party” here are national governments, and the “customary international law” is that already established by NAFTA and the decisions made by ICSID and similar tribunals concerning disputes under NAFTA and other trade agreements.

Last year’s change of government in Australia has left working peoples in the 12 TPP negotiating countries more vulnerable. Under the previous Labor governments, Australia had refused to agree to the insertion of an investor-state dispute mechanism in the TPP. The new Tony Abbott government, however, has shown worrisome signs of reversal on this critical issue, claiming that such mechanisms would provide “greater market access for Australian exporters.”

The world’s 99 percent can’t afford to lose any bulwark against substituting corporate-dominated secret tribunals for democracy because the Obama administration is pushing hard for the most draconian rules. Knowing that secrecy is the only way for the TPP to gain approval of the U.S. Congress, the White House is pushing for “fast-track authority” — under which, Congress could not change so much as a comma of an agreement, would be severely limited in its ability to debate and would be obligated to vote yes or no in a very short period of time.

An increasingly strong pushback by activists in the U.S. has led to more than 200 members of Congress publicly committing themselves to voting against fast-track, which only Congress can impose on itself. Many of the other 11 national governments negotiating the TPP are nervously watching this development, because if Congress votes against fast-track, it will be far more difficult for TPP to earn congressional approval, leaving those governments less willing to buck their own internal oppositions.

If you believe that democracy is preferable to corporate dictatorship, the time is now to join an international fight against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its spawn, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

‘Transatlantic Partnership’ intended to duplicate secret Trans-Pacific Partnership

Neoliberalism knows no borders, so perhaps it should not come as a bolt out of the blue that the United States and European Union are set to negotiate a “Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.”

It might be thought that the Obama administration would have its hands full with the ongoing, top-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership talks, but it seems that much can be done in the absence of any pesky oversight. It might be thought that European Union officials would have their hands full with their series of financial crises, but it appears this is an irresistible opportunity to safeguard austerity.

Ah, can’t you just imagine corporate leaders sitting around a camp fire singing, “We are all the Cayman Islands now.” Surely they would be jolly folks and allow the political leaders who so graciously granted their wishes seats close to the fire.

This dystopia is sponsored by the usual corporate organizations. The trans-Atlantic trade agreement evaded all radar until U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement in his State of the Union address but had been in the works for more than a year. To the applause of business groups on both sides of the Atlantic.

No details of any kind have emerged about the trans-Atlantic trade agreement, only generalities. It would seem that holding two sets of negotiations among dozens of countries would be difficult, but then it is remembered that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is designed to be “scalable” — a euphemism meaning that the terms will be final. Any countries not among the present negotiators can join at any time but must accept that no terms already agreed upon are negotiable. Could this be the model for the Trans-Atlantic pact?

Big Business already cheering on the negotiators

A “U.S.-E.U. High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth” was created at a United States-European Union summit meeting in November 2011, tasked with “identifying policies and measures to increase U.S.-EU trade and investment to support mutually beneficial job creation, economic growth, and international competitiveness,” according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative. It is unknown who sat on the “high-level” group, but it is chaired by European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Early in February 2013 — this seems to account for President Obama’s timing — the group said talks should go ahead.

Although it is impossible to be specific about the influences on the working group, the corporate interests who promote and benefit from “free-trade” agreements were not likely absent from the room. Eurochambres, a regional network of European chambers of commerce, published the paper it presented to the working group online. Eurochambres calls for harmonization of regulations, elimination of all tariffs and “the highest possible standards of protection for investors.”

That last wish should set off alarm bells. In pursuit of “protection for investors,” Eurochambres advocates that trade negotiators “Build on the Joint Statement of Principles on the Treatment of Foreign Investment elaborated by business organization on both sides of the Atlantic.” Those “principles” include:

“[T]he rule of law, transparency and predictability in government administration, regulatory fairness, the sanctity of contracts and private property, respect for intellectual property rights, and sound macro-economic policies. … This general approach should apply to the widest possible definition of investments, including all forms of assets and tangible and intangible property; property rights such as leases, mortgages, liens and pledges; intellectual property rights; rights conferred by law or contract, such as licenses and permits; business enterprises and equity and other forms of participation in them; claims to money and to performance; and returns.”

On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a hard-line organization that has never seen a regulation it likes or a tax that is justified — has similarly provided its wish list. The Chamber calls for the same things as its European counterpart, including a “a highest standard investment agreement.” The Chamber did go a bit further by demanding an immediate deal, insisting that negotiators:

“Complete a bilateral investment agreement between the United States and the 27 EU member countries. An updated and comprehensive bilateral agreement would improve the flow of capital, prevent discrimination against investors, and provide protection from expropriation. … The Chamber calls for a swift time frame to avoid delays from election calendars in any participating country.”

Trans-Atlantic echoes of the Trans-Pacific Partnership

These demands are staples of “free-trade” agreements, whether bilateral or multi-national. Bland-sounding calls for “equal treatment” for foreign and domestic investors and property rights only thinly mask a thicket of detail-loving devils. These platitudes form the basis of undemocratic, drastically one-sided trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, which in turn provides the starting point for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a negotiation being conducted in secret by 11 countries.

These agreements use the same language as that of the Big Business pressure groups quoted just above. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will contain rules mirroring those proposed for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP goes beyond NAFTA in several ways, via rules granting additional “rights” to multi-national corporations and further expanding the definition of “investor,” while containing no rules concerning labor, the environment, public health or safety.

For example, the TPP, if ratified, would overturn the policies of countries like Australia and New Zealand that force lower prices on medicines, significantly tighten corporate control of the Internet, and require that speculators be paid the full face value of a government bond even if bought at a deep discount from a third party.

The TPP would require disputes be judged in the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes — a secret tribunal closed to the public that is an arm of, and controlled by, the World Bank. ICSID, and similar tribunals, are bodies that adjudicate disputes between investors and governments, but the judges who sit in judgment are often corporate lawyers who specialize in representing investors in disputes with governments. These tribunals issue a steady stream of rulings favoring corporate interests, and these decisions then become the standards to which future trade agreements will be held, building a floor for subsequent decisions that will be still more harsh.

The rules governing the TPP, if enacted, would require that maximizing corporate profits be the highest priority for governments, by law. Measures to reign in financial speculation, even during economic crises, would be illegal, and rules safeguarding workplace safety or the environment would be struck down as interference with corporate profits.

It is difficult to imagine that the corporations goading on the trans-Atlantic governments intend to settle for anything less. And also at risk for Europeans are laws blocking genetically modified foods — U.S. agribusinesses have sought to eliminate E.U. rules safeguarding food safety and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership may well be their route. “Harmonizing” rules ordinarily means “harmonizing” at the lowest level, and in this case that would mean the weaker safety regulations, and lackadaisical enforcement, of the U.S.

No Trans-Pacific Partnership text has ever been made available; the little that is publicly known is due to leaks published on the Internet by consumer organizations. The White House TPP page offers no substance. In its report on the most recent negotiation round, the White House provides this less than scintillating summary:

“Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators were pleased to report further solid steps forward in closing the remaining gaps between them during the 15th round of negotiations. … [T]he Leaders reaffirmed their mutual priority of concluding a state-of-the-art, comprehensive agreement as quickly as possible.”

The next round of TPP talks is in Singapore from March 4 to 13, where similar communiqués are likely forthcoming. Once again, it must be asked: What is being hidden?

Different ocean, but same concept

Information on the details of the Trans-Atlantic agreement are likely to be as scarce. Nonetheless, European leaders are mostly lining up in support. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, are pushing the idea. The corporate media is also lining up behind it, with “resistance” to an agreement portrayed as “interest groups” stubbornly clinging to parochial concerns. An excellent specimen of corporate ideology at work is provided by the centrist German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, which is presented not to single it out but rather because it is typical. Der Spiegel writes of potential opposition:

“Some interest groups have refused to budge. The powerful US agrarian lobby, for example, insists on unlimited access to European markets, including such products as genetically modified produce, which is controversial on the Continent. European companies, for their part, refuse to accept the diktats of US regulatory authorities regarding whether and how they can pursue state contracts. … Furthermore, promoting a trans-Atlantic agreement would allow Obama — on the eve of his planned visit to Berlin in June — to address European concerns that the US has turned away from the Continent in favor of Asia. … But in his Tuesday evening speech, Obama still lauded the benefits of a trans-Pacific trade agreement with Australia and Asian countries before he mentioned the trans-Atlantic deal.”

The primary controversy, a reader might be led to believe, centers on a potential lack of resolve in giving corporations what they want. That there might be interests other than that of corporate profits — say, workers’ ability to have jobs with good pay and dignity, or a desire not eat food untested and unlabeled, or avoiding environmental damage — are not mentioned. Such matters are immaterial, evidently, at most the concern of “interest groups.”

The only clue as to the contents of what a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership might contain are in the final report issued by the High Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth. Two key passages in the final report’s six pages state:

“The [High Level Working Group] recommends that a comprehensive U.S.-EU trade agreement should include investment liberalization and protection provisions based on the highest levels of liberalization and highest standards of protection that both sides have negotiated to date. … The HLWG recommends that the two sides explore new means of addressing these ‘behind-the-border’ obstacles to trade, including, where possible, through provisions that serve to reduce unnecessary costs and administrative delays stemming from regulation.” [page 3]

These provision could include:

“[R]educ[ing] redundant and burdensome testing and certification requirements … [and inserting p]rovisions or annexes containing additional commitments or steps aimed at promoting regulatory compatibility.” [page 4]

Stripped of bureaucratic niceties, what the above passages mean is that the most one-sided trade agreements (and tribunal interpretation) will be in force. For now, that arguably means the standards of NAFTA, under which taxation and regulation constitute “indirect expropriation” that require  compensation for corporations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, however, would supersede NAFTA if implemented, mostly because it would be more draconian but also because Canada and Mexico have formally joined the nine original TPP negotiating countries, making NAFTA superfluous. To add to the complexity, Canada is negotiating its own secret trade pact with the E.U. and, like the U.S. Congress vis-à-vis the TPP, Canadian members of parliament are being left in the dark.

Market forces demand a race to the bottom

In the High Level Working Group’s six-page report, environment and labor safeguards are discussed in one paragraph. Here it is:

“The EU and the United States are both committed to high levels of protection for the environment and workers. The HLWG recommends that the two sides explore opportunities to address these important issues, taking in to account work done in the Sustainable Development Chapter of EU trade agreements and the Environment and Labor Chapters of U.S. trade agreements.” [page 5]

There are no effective environment or labor chapters in U.S. trade agreements, only boilerplate language that is meaningless. If that is the standard, then labor rights, workplace safety rules and environmental safeguards will be under sustained assault under any Trans-Atlantic trade agreement. Protections for the environment and employees are barriers to corporate profits, and will be treated as such. Regulations will be “harmonized” at the lowest level because that is what the “market” demands — the market simply being the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers.

In the context of European Union elites sparring over financial policy, Chancellor Merkel is not a stubborn holdout nor obsessed with Weimar-era inflation; she is simply reminding other national political leaders that financial harmonization will conform to the tightest policy among them and Germany so happens to have that tightest policy. Trade harmonization, regardless of where the borders are drawn, will follow a similar dynamic. The United States will seek to impose its looser regulations and weaker labor laws on Europe, and further weaken its own.

That is not because there is something inherently evil about U.S. officials or due to some particular moral failing of the Obama administration, but because the U.S. government, like all capitalist countries, reflect the dominant interests within their countries. Large industrialists and financiers dominate their societies through control of the mass media and a range of other institutions to the point that their preferred policies become, through heavy repetition, the dominant ideas across society and the ideas adopted by the political leaders who become intellectually and financially dependent on them. That is a crucial part of the puzzle as to why governments around the world enter into agreements that are so one-sided against themselves.

Coordinated international struggle is the only counter-force that can block these draconian trade agreements.

Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact more draconian than NAFTA

Imagine a world in which which labor safeguards, safety rules and environmental regulations will be struck down because a multi-national corporation’s profits might be affected. A world in which measures to reign in financial speculation are illegal. A world in which the task of governments, codified in law, is to maximize corporate profits.

Imagine a world in which corporations can bypass national laws and courts when they are in a dispute with a government, and instead can have their dispute adjudicated by a closed tribunal controlled by their lawyers.

Unfortunately, the above is not dystopian science fiction; it is the reality of the top-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership. If you like NAFTA, you will love the TPP.

Haven’t heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership? There is good reason. It is a proposed trade agreement being secretly negotiated that would not only codify the one-sided rules heavily favoring corporate interests exemplified in the North American Free Trade Agreement, it would go beyond them. And many of the harshest rules proposed to be included in the TPP are being pushed by the Obama administration.

Ottawa from the McKenzie Bridge (photo by Siqbal)

Nine countries — Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States — have negotiated for four years. No text has ever been released to the public, and even the U.S. Congress has been left in the dark as to the TPP’s contents. That we know anything at all about it is due to leaks. A portion of the text, the chapter covering investment rules, is posted at http://tinyurl.com/tppinvestment.

What the TPP represents is multi-national corporations going beyond lobbying for deregulation, bending rules and decisively influencing government policy to having their interests in profit maximization regardless of impact written into international law and controlling the tribunals that will adjudicate corporation/government disputes. “Free trade” agreements have become a favored route toward this corporate goal. In the nearly two decades that NAFTA has been in force among Canada, Mexico and the United States, there has been a steady procession of corporations filing complaints alleging that regulations “harm” them.

Thus we have had the spectacle of a U.S. corporate parcel-delivery service suing Canada in an attempt to have the Canadian postal system dismantled and chemical companies suing because a chemical they produce has been banned because it is poisoning water supplies. The key NAFTA provision is Chapter 11, which codifies the “equal treatment” of business interests in accordance with international law and enables corporations to sue over any regulation or other government act that violates “investor rights,” which means any regulation or act that might prevent the corporation from earning the maximum possible profit.

The usual result is either the complaining corporation wins its case or the defendant government settles on terms advantageous to the corporation to avoid a worse result. Multi-national corporations don’t win every time — for instance, Canada was graciously allowed to retain its postal service. The TPP is designed to tilt the scales still more heavily in favor of “investors” — not only via rules granting more “rights” to multi-national corporations, but further expanding the definition of “investor.” There are extensive rules governing the “right” to an near guarantee of profits, but no rules concerning labor, environment, public health or safety.

NAFTA, as draconian as it is, is a starting point. The TPP’s extraordinarily one-sided rules, which go beyond NAFTA in several ways, are intended to be a new floor in the ongoing effort to lock in the domination of industrialists and financiers through the multi-national corporations that they control. The TPP is intended to be “scalable” — that is, other countries can join but are forbidden to oppose any measure already agreed upon. Just two months ago, Canada and Mexico accepted invitations to join, so it is quite conceivable that TPP may supplant NAFTA.

The U.S. watchdog group Public Citizen issued an analysis of the leaked TPP investor chapter earlier this summer. Sounding the alarm, Public Citizen said:

“Over $350 million has been paid to investors by governments under the investor-state provisions in NAFTA alone over toxic waste dump permits, logging rules, bans of toxic substances and more. Currently, there are over $13 billion in pending corporate “investor-state” trade pact attacks on domestic environmental, public health and transportation policy. And, mere threats of such cases have repeatedly resulted in countries dropping important public interest initiatives, exposing their populations to harm that could have been avoided. Yet the leaked text shows that while TPP countries have agreed to impose binding obligations on themselves to provide foreign investors an array of extraordinary new privileges, the TPP countries have not agreed to health, labor or environmental obligations to be required of investors.”

The Public Citizen report notes that the use of international tribunals to overturn regulations has increased dramatically in the past decade:

“Over $719 million has been paid out under U.S. Free Trade Agreements and Bilateral Investment Treaties alone — 70 percent which are from challenges to natural resource and environmental policies, not traditional expropriations. Tobacco firms are using the regime to challenge tobacco control policies, including a case by Phillip Morris against Australia. Absent substantial changes to the leaked text, TPP would greatly increase the number of investor-state attacks on public interest policies and would expose governments to massive new financial liabilities.”

The use of international tribunals is an aspect of bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade agreements often overlooked. The TPP would require the use of the International Centre for Settlement of Investor Disputes (ICSID) — an arbitration board that is an arm of, and controlled by, the World Bank. Cases that go before one of the Centre’s tribunals are decided by a panel of three judges that are selected from a roster. The judges are appointed by the national governments that have signed on to ICSID, which are most of the world’s countries.

Eight of the judges have been appointed by the United States. Each is a lawyer whose career has been spent in the service of large corporations. Six are currently partners in some of the world’s most formidable corporate law firms, one is an academic who formerly was a corporate lawyer and one is a lobbyist for a business group that seeks to codify pro-corporate trade rules under law. Five of the eight U.S.-named lawyers have been counsel to various Republican Party administrations and several of the eight specialize in representing corporations before international arbitration boards.

These are the U.S. panelists who are among those judging the merits of corporate claims against government regulations:

• Fred Fielding: An attorney who bounces back and forth between Republican administrations and corporate law firms; among his clients has been the mercenary military contractor Blackwater.
• William Park: Currently a law school professor but has practiced with three corporate law firms and has been an arbitrator on many business-arbitration boards.
• Daniel Price: A corporate lawyer who represents companies in international arbitration and a former economic adviser to George W. Bush.
• John M. Townsend: A corporate lawyer who represents pharmaceutical companies and specializes in representing companies in arbitrations against governments; he is also a trustee of a business lobbying group.
• J. Caleb Boggs III: A corporate lawyer who specializes in representing financial institutions and other clients before regulators and helped write a law deregulating banks while a Senate aide.
• William A. Burck: A corporate lawyer who specializes in representing companies and corporate officers in disputes with U.S. and other governments; he is a former legal adviser to George W. Bush.
• Ronald A. Cass: The chair of a lobbying group that seeks to tilt international trade law further in favor of business; he was a trade representative for two Republican administrations.
• Emmet Flood: A corporate lawyer who represents companies in disputes against government regulations and a former counsel to George W. Bush; among his past clients are the Koch brothers.

The rules that panelists will adjudicate would supersede national laws. Article 12.7 of the TPP, for instance, provides a long list of prohibitions against government actions; under it, laws imposing capital controls (even to ameliorate a crisis), rules governing domestic content of products or any protections of any domestic industry would be illegal. It then provides a generic exception allowing environmental or other measures “that are not inconsistent with the Agreement; necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health; or related to the conservation of living or non-living exhaustible natural resources.”

That exception, however, is meaningless. It specifically requires that excepted rules must be “not inconsistent with the Agreement” — and that is the towering thorn sticking out of the minuscule rose. The key sentence opens Article 12.6: “Each Party shall accord to covered investments treatment in accordance with customary international law.” The “Party” here are national governments, and the “customary international law” is that already established by NAFTA and the decisions made by ICSID and similar arbitration bodies concerning disputes under NAFTA and other trade agreements. Those decisions skew heavily toward corporate complainants.

Venezuela recently became the third South American country to withdraw from ICSID; in doing so, the country’s foreign ministry said ICSID “has ruled 232 times in favor of transnational interests out of 234 lawsuits received throughout its history.” A 2007 report issued by the Institute for Policy Studies and Food and Water Watch, “Challenging Corporate Investor Rule,” said multi-national corporations have won 70 percent of the cases (it did not specify how many of the remainder were a loss for the corporation nor how many were not decided or withdrawn). These tribunals are conducted in secret; only two ICSID cases have been conducted with public attendance in its history.

The World Bank is one of the principal bodies imposing austerity on countries around the world; it routinely conditions loans to governments of developing countries on the swift privatization of state-owned enterprises and public utilities, typically conducted at fire-sale prices as salivating corporate executives are aware of the hammer being held over the selling government. When the buying corporation decides it has not made the profits it expected, it can file a claim heard by ICSID, which is controlled by the very same World Bank.

In one notorious case, the World Bank forced the privatization of the water system in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. Bechtel, the company that was handed the water system as the sole bidder in a secret process, charged a sum equal to one-quarter of city residents’ average household income and imposed a contract provision banning the collection of rainwater. After massive local protests backed by a global campaign forced it to leave the city, Bechtel sued Bolivia for US$50 million in damages and lost profits although its investment is believed to have been less than $1 million and Bechtel’s revenues are six times the size of Bolivia’s gross domestic product.

Bechtel settled without receiving a payment only because of massive international pressure and because Bolivians continued to resist in large numbers despite being repeatedly fired upon. That pressure was necessary as, according to Earthjustice, World Bank officials refused to disclose when or where the first hearing in the case would take place.

That is a very rare ending. Although developing countries are most often the targets of ICSID actions, regulations anywhere can be overturned. For instance, Canada was sued under the provisions of NAFTA by a U.S.-based chemical company after it banned the use of a gasoline additive already banned in the U.S. because it is a known toxic agent. Thanks to ICSID, Canada had to reverse its ban, pay millions of dollars to cover the company’s “lost profits” and issue an apology to the chemical company.

Among the features of NAFTA to be replicated in the TPP are that:

• Governments pay attorney costs, win or lose, in addition to paying judgments.
• Taxation and regulation constitute “indirect expropriation” mandating compensation (a reduction in the value of an asset is sufficient to establish expropriation rather than a physical taking of property as required under U.S. law).
• Older decisions become precedents for further expansions of investor “rights” and will be read as the “evolving standard of investor rights” required under the TPP.
• No mention of labor rights, nor any standards for environmental, health or safety that must be met.

A London Court of International Arbitration panel, ruling in July 2005 for a unit of the Occidental Petroleum Corp. in a case heard under the U.S.-Ecuador bi-lateral investment treaty, declared that any change in business conditions constitutes a violation of “investor rights.” If such a ruling is accepted as precedent, any attempt at regulation is potentially illegal.

Among the features of the TPP that go beyond NAFTA are:

• An expansion of who or what constitutes an “investor” — extending those eligible to file a claim to anyone who applies for a permit or license, or who “channels” resources or capital to set up a business, without placing any limits on what qualifies for such a status.
• No language to block frivolous claims.
• The U.S. is seeking to include government bonds as a covered investment; if that stands, speculators would have the right to recover the full value of government bonds bought at discounted prices.
• Requiring new intellectual property laws that would criminalize many acts not currently classified as such.
• Significantly tighten corporate control of the Internet and force service providers to hand over personal data.

A separately leaked section of the TPP, covering pharmaceutical products, contains this interesting item on its cover page: “Declassify on: Four years from entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement enters into force, four years from the close of the negotiations.” What is being hidden? New monopoly rights for pharmaceutical companies and the ability to overturn the policies of countries such as Australia and New Zealand that force much lower prices on drugs, policies that U.S.-based pharmaceutical companies wish to overturn. In addition, Citizens Trade Campaign reports:

“This U.S. intellectual property proposal, which rolls back initial reforms made in a trade pact that the Bush administration signed with Peru only four years ago, would lengthen pharmaceutical monopolies, eliminate safeguards against patent abuse, grant additional exclusive controls over clinical trial data and favor the giant pharmaceutical companies’ monopoly interests at every stage.”

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders similarly reports that:

“The Obama administration is walking away from previous efforts to ensure that developing countries can access affordable medicines, setting a dangerous new standard that will likely be replicated in future trade agreements with developing nations. The administration is touting a so-called ‘access window’ as a mechanism to boost access to medicines. In fact, the administration is confusing access with affordability. The ‘access window’ is all about getting brand-name drugs to market faster, and giving their producers longer monopoly rights that prevent price-lowering competition and keeping medicines out of the hands of the millions of people who need them.”

The White House claims that “The Obama Administration has been working in partnership with Congress and consulting closely with stakeholders around the country to ensure TPP addresses the issues that American businesses and workers are facing today, and may confront in the future.” That clearly is not true, as senators and representatives are demanding disclosure. Nor does any of the agreement’s text appear on the Web page dedicated to the TPP.

Executives and lobbyists from some of the largest corporations on the planet — commanding revenues much larger than the gross domestic products of the smaller TPP countries — are meeting in secret with government officials to give themselves yet more power and control.

Corporate-written rules for self-benefit are intimately connected with financiers manipulating markets and benefiting from the austerity they insist governments impose. Industrialists extract the surplus value from their from their workers that becomes profit and financiers provide the whip that intensifies the process and create the speculative instruments that profits are poured into. We can have corporate dictatorship, or democracy. But not both.