On the recordFebruary 26, 2015
the United States is in the final stages of negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free-trade agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore, and seven other countries. I come to the floor today to ask a fundamental question: Who will benefit from the TPP? American workers, consumers, small businesses, taxpayers, or the biggest national corporations in the world? One strong hint is buried down in the fine print of the closely guarded draft. The provision, an increasingly common feature of international trade agreements, is called investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS. The name may sound mild, but this provision fundamentally tilts the playing field further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse yet, it undermines U.S. sovereignty. ISDS allows foreign companies to challenge American laws and potentially pick up huge payouts from taxpayers without ever stepping foot in an American court. Here is how it works. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline. We ban it because we believe it is dangerous for people's health or harmful to the environment. If a foreign company that makes this toxic chemical wants to sell it in the United States, it would normally have to challenge that in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. court and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company wins, the ruling cannot be challenged in U.S.…
