TruePublica Editor. I always said that TTIP was never dead. It was
merely taking a rest from the scale of mass public protest that reached
fever pitch on both sides of the pond two years ago. Make no mistake
though, TTIP is back. It is making its way through the back door and
some are finally onto Liam Fox and his next desperate plan. The
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was a series of trade
negotiations carried out in secret between the EU (UK included) and US,
which seemingly died a death because what it sought was regulatory
barriers to trade for big business – things like food safety law,
environmental legislation, banking regulations and the sovereign powers
of individual nations to be reduced. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is
the same deal, just a different region.
And let’s not forget why TTIP really failed. It was an unprecedented
protest movement of a scope not seen since the Iraq war all over Europe
and America that pushed negotiations over the TTIP trans-Atlantic free
trade agreement to collapse.
Surely, if Brexit has any legs to stand on at all it was about
‘taking back control’. TTIP does exactly the opposite. Any nation-state
that signs a TTIP style deal loses control – that is fundamentally its
raison d’être in the first place.
So what would TTP end up doing? Just for a start, its biggest threat
to society is its inherent assault on democracy. One of the main aims of
TTIP is the introduction of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS),
which allow companies to sue governments if those governments’ policies
cause a loss of profits. In effect, it means unelected transnational
corporations can dictate the policies of democratically elected
governments.
