TABLE OF FOREIGN INVESTOR-STATE CASES AND CLAIMS UNDER NAFTA AND OTHER U.S. TRADE DEALS
[ http://www.citizen.org/documents/invest ... chart1.pdf ]
January 2012
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) included an array of new corporate investment rights and protections that were unprecedented in scope and power. NAFTA’s extreme rules have been replicated in various U.S. "free trade agreements" (FTAs), including CAFTA, the Peru and Oman FTAs, and the recently passed deals with Korea, Panama and Colombia.
These special privileges provide foreign investors new rights to own and control other countries’ natural resources and land, establish or acquire local firms, and to operate them under privileged terms relative to domestic enterprises. The scope of the "investments" covered by these rules is vast, including derivatives and other financial instruments, intellectual property rights, government licenses and permits, as well as more traditional forms of investment.
The pacts provide foreign firms with a way to attack domestic public interest, land use, regulatory and other laws if they feel that a domestic policy or government decision has undermined the firms’ new trade pact privileges, such as threatening their "expected future profits." These firms have access under the trade deals to an investor-state enforcement system, which allows them to skirt national court systems and privately enforce their extraordinary new investor privileges by directly suing national governments. These "investor-state" cases are litigated outside the U.S. court system in special international arbitration bodies of the World Bank and the United Nations. A three-person panel composed of professional arbitrators listens to arguments in the case, with powers to award an unlimited amount of taxpayer dollars to corporations. Because the mechanism elevates private firms and investors to the same status as sovereign governments, it amounts to a privatization of the justice system.
If a corporation wins its private enforcement case, the taxpayers of the "losing" country must foot the bill. Over $350 million in compensation has already been paid out to corporations in a series of investor-state cases under NAFTA-style deals. This includes attacks on natural resource policies, environmental protection and health and safety measures, and more. In fact, of the over $12.5 billion in the 17 pending claims under NAFTA-style deals, all relate to environmental, public health and transportation policy – not traditional trade issues.
The investor-state system has numerous worrying implications. Many worry that it promotes the offshoring of jobs by providing special protections and rights for firms that relocate, removing the risk of foreign investors having to use local court systems. And the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures (the national association of U.S. state parliamentary bodies) has strongly opposed this system for its negative impact on federalism. States whose laws are challenged have no standing in the cases and must rely on the federal government to defend state policies which the federal government may or may not support.
TABLE:
[ http://www.citizen.org/documents/invest ... chart1.pdf ]