Chris Hedges
The Most Brazen Corporate Power Grab in American History
The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries
comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its
most apocalyptic critics feared.
“The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North
American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab
in American history,” Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone
in Washington, D.C. “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches
of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals.
These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental
protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for
noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of
enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”
A 2014 protest in Tokyo against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. (Shizuo Kambayashi / AP)
