Full text of TPP agreement released

November 5, 2015 iwishart New Zealand Comments Off on Full text of TPP agreement released

It’s been years in the making, but the text of the world’s most controversial trade treaty, the massive Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has finally been released for public scrutiny.

The agreement covers around 40% of world trade.

It sets the framework for global governance under international law, most significantly by convincing  the United States to relinquish part of its sovereignty to allow international law to be used in dispute resolution between parties.

The TPP builds on the NAFTA agreement, and the vision of former CBS News anchor Walter Kronkite and the World Federalist Association which has long argued for world governance based on international treaty agreements.

Some interesting quotes:

(d) ensure that sanitary or phytosanitary measures implemented by a Party do not create unjustified obstacles to trade;
“This Chapter shall apply to all sanitary and phytosanitary measures of a Party that may, directly or indirectly, affect trade between the Parties.
2. Nothing in this Chapter prevents a Party from adopting or maintaining halal requirements for food and food products in accordance with Islamic law”
“The importing Party shall recognise the equivalence of a sanitary or phytosanitary measure if the exporting Party objectively demonstrates to the importing Party that the exporting Party’s measure:
(a) achieves the same level of protection as the importing Party’s measure; or
(b) has the same effect in achieving the objective as the importing Party’s measure.2″
Yet the TPP says parties will not be able to dispute declarations: “2No Party shall have recourse to dispute settlement under Chapter 28 (Dispute Settlement) for this sub paragraph”
On Foreign Investment:
“Each Party shall accord to investors of another Party treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to its own investors with respect to the establishment,
acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments in its territory.
2.Each Party shall accord to covered investments treatment no less favourable than that it accords, in like circumstances, to investments in its territory of its own investors with respect to
the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, and sale or other disposition of investments.
3. For greater certainty, the treatment to be accorded by a Party under paragraphs 1 and 2 means, with respect to a regional level of government, treatment no less favourable than the most
favourable treatment accorded, in like circumstances, by that regional level of government to investors, and to investments of investors, of the Party of which it forms a part”
Each Party shall accord to covered investments treatment in accordance with applicable customary international law principles, including fair and equitable treatment and full protection
and security.
2. For greater certainty, paragraph 1 prescribes the customary international law minimum standard of treatment of aliens as the standard of treatment to be afforded to covered investments. The concepts of “fair and equitable treatment” and “full protection and security” do not require treatment in addition to or beyond that which is required by that standard, and do not create additional substantive rights. The obligations in paragraph 1 to provide:
(a)“fair and equitable treatment” includes the obligation not to deny justice in criminal, civil or administrative adjudicatory proceedings in accordance with the principle of due process embodied in the principal legal systems of the world; and
(b)“full protection and security” requires each Party to provide the level of police protection required under customary international law”
Governments will no longer be able to require that a foreign investment is good for New Zealand:
“No Party shall, in connection with the establishment, acquisition, expansion, management, conduct, operation, or sale or other disposition of an investment of an investor of a Party or of a non-Party
in its territory, impose or enforce any requirement, or enforce any commitment or undertaking:
(a) to export a given level or percentage of goods or services;
(b) to achieve a given level or percentage of domestic content;
(c) to purchase, use or accord a preference to goods produced in its territory, or to purchase goods from persons in its territory;
(d) to relate in any way the volume or value of imports to the volume or value of exports or to the amount of foreign exchange inflows associated with the investment;
(e) to restrict sales of goods or services in its territory that the investment produces or supplies by relating those sales in any way to the volume or value of its exports or
foreign exchange earnings;
(f) to transfer a particular technology, a production process or other proprietary knowledge to a person in its territory;
(g) to supply exclusively from the territory of the Party the goods that the investment produces or the services that it supplies to a specific regional market or to the world market;

etc etc

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