ISDS Case Map
corporate interests
In a show of the importance the Canadian government places on relations with Brazil and Mercosur the delegation includes four cabinet ministers and a cadre of business leaders. Canada has reiterated its interest in reaching a trade agreement with Brazil and Mercosur, which will be one of the main points of the recently created Brazil-Canada CEO forum.
Philip Morris asserts that fair and equitable treatment includes a right to a “stable and predictable regulatory framework” as well as rights under treaties in addition to customary international law.
As Congress draws nearer to considering three new free trade agreements, union members are putting pressure on their congressional representatives to oppose them, arguing that they’d cost the state more manufacturing jobs, even as corporate supporters see new hope for quick passage.
The new strategy is to treat people in Egypt, Paraguay, Turkmenistan or China — middle-income countries, all — as if they or their governments could pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year each for AIDS drugs.
With so much attention being paid to the debt-ceiling hijinks, the major lobbying effort for the three trade bills -- to ratify the US FTAs with Panama, Colombia and Korea -- has been taking place almost entirely outside public view. But many of the biggest American companies have been engaged in a massive, months-long effort to get the bills passed.
The US garment industry is supporting a "yarn forward" rule of origin proposed by the US Trade Representative (USTR) during the latest round of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations. However, Vietnam presents a "special case".
The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) issued its support this week of the passage of pending free-trade agreements (FTA) with South Korea, Panama and Colombia by two Congressional committees. SOCMA is the US-based trade association representing custom and batch manufacturers, including contract manufacturers of fine chemicals, pharmaceutical intermediates, and active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Tobacco giants are invoking investor-state dispute mechanisms in bilateral investment agreements to challenge moves of governments which are aimed at controlling the widespread use of tobacco products. This scary development highlights the dangers of signing trade or investment treaties which could give corporations the right to sue governments over legitimate health or other public interest regulations.
Tobacco giant Philip Morris suing the Australian government for introducing plain packaging laws for tobacco should send shockwaves through this country as it seeks a free trade deal involving the US, says an academic critic of the deal.
The visit -- by a team including Johnson & Johnson, GE Healthcare, Rockwell Automation, Monsanto, and Bell Helicopter -- demonstrates renewed US interest in Nepal’s economy building on the recently-signed US-Nepal Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).
