From the Citizens Trade Campaign (http://www.citizenstrade.org):
The first round of renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) closes today in Washington, DC. Additional closed-door rounds are scheduled in Mexico and Canada in the weeks ahead.
Are U.S. negotiators insisting upon the fair trade policies needed to create jobs, raise wages and support a healthy environment at home and abroad?
Or are negotiators doubling-down on harmful NAFTA provisions that make it easier for corporations to offshore jobs and to attack environmental and consumer safety laws on which we all rely?
TAKE ACTION: Please sign the petition demanding the elimination of one of NAFTA’s most damaging provisions: Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) at http://org.salsalabs.com/o/1034/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=22261.
While many changes are needed to make a NAFTA replacement deal work for working families and the planet, if trade negotiators maintain ISDS, we’ll know the renegotiation has been hijacked by special interests intent on preserving corporate power.
The ISDS chapter in NAFTA makes it safer for big corporations to move jobs abroad — enabling them to circumvent a country’s judicial system and sue foreign governments over environmental, health and other public interest protections that affect their investments before a tribunal of three corporate lawyers.
At the same time, ISDS gives multinational corporations the power to sue the U.S. government over our own public interest laws. The lawyers on these tribunals can order U.S. taxpayers to pay the corporations unlimited sums of money, including for the loss of expected future profits.
The multinational corporations need only to convince the lawyers that a law protecting public health, worker rights or the environment violates their special NAFTA rights. The corporate lawyers’ decisions are not subject to appeal.
ISDS must be removed from NAFTA and must not be included in any future trade agreement.
TAKE ACTION: Please sign the petition now asking Congress to commit to opposing any trade deal that includes ISDS.
In the last few days, thousands of you have already written to trade negotiators about rigged trade negotiations and sounded the alarm about trade secrecy over social media. It’s time for Congress to paint a clear red line. Please sign the petition now.
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