Joseph Stiglitz — The Secret Corporate Takeover

The United States and the world are engaged in a great debate about new trade agreements. Such pacts used to be called “free-trade agreements”; in fact, they were managed trade agreements, tailored to corporate interests, largely in the US and the European Union. Today, such deals are more often referred to as “partnerships,”as in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But they are not partnerships of equals: the US effectively dictates the terms. Fortunately, America’s “partners” are becoming increasingly resistant.

It is not hard to see why. These agreements go well beyond trade, governing investment and intellectual property as well, imposing fundamental changes to countries’ legal, judicial, and regulatory frameworks, without input or accountability through democratic institutions....

President Obama, Remarks by the President on Trade: "We have to make sure America writes the rules of the global economy."

If "America" is writing the rules, then how is it that the process is being kept secret from the American people?

If there ever was a one-sided dispute-resolution mechanism that violates basic principles, this is it. That is why I joined leading US legal experts, including from Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley, in writing a letter to President Barack Obama explaining how damaging to our system of justice these agreements are.

Project Syndicate
The Secret Corporate Takeover

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank