The Wallonian mouse that roared
STEVEN HILL
SAN FRANCISCO, 31. OCT, 11:00
On Sunday the European Union and Canada finally signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, following an 11th hour resolution between Wallonia and the European Union.
The pressure on tiny Wallonia and its politicians was immense, as it was being blamed for scuppering a trade agreement that was seven years in the making, and turning the EU into a laughing stock before its Canadian partners and the world.
But that interpretation was overly simplistic and revealed how little has been learned from the ongoing debate over the “winners and losers of globalisation.”
Wallonia’s lonely stand raised important themes about national sovereignty, as well as the personal insecurity that many people feel today amidst the immense tidal wave of the global economy. So many sectors of the public have lost their trust and faith in political leaders, so those leaders need to go the extra kilometre to soothe public anxieties. CETA would have been perfectly fine 10 years ago – but today? Not nearly enough.
In an era in which $20 trillion in corporate profits is stashed in overseas tax havens, robbing the public treasuries of governments around the world, a treaty for “free trade” can easily look like another type of deregulation that is going to allow corporations to get away with even more than they already do. In an era in which the European Commission has charged that Apple owes €14.5 billion in back taxes, it’s understandable why many people feel that the system is rigged.
Given that, I’m puzzled that the designers of CETA and other free trade agreements (like TTIP) don’t seem to comprehend how little credibility they have.
Poison pill
For example, giving multinational corporations the legal ability to sue sovereign governments – the so-called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), and its newer version, the Investment Court System (ICS) – in near-secret tribunals not only raises suspicions but seems hopelessly outdated. It’s a leftover from the free trade agreements of the 1990s, such as the discredited North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In today’s climate, including such provisions is a poison pill for any trade agreement.
ISDS lawsuits are used by corporations, both domestic and foreign, to sue sovereign governments that have passed laws that these businesses claim infringe on their “rights”. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Germany’s government decided to gradually phase out its nuclear power plants and redouble its efforts toward developing renewable energy.
Vattenfall, a Swedish utility company that was operating two nuclear plants in Germany, sued for €3.7 billion in compensation through an ISDS provision. This claim is still in arbitration, just one of a growing number of such cases, according to The Economist. The Canadian government has been sued numerous times by corporations through NAFTA’s ISDS provision, losing seven out of 20 cases which has cost them at least $158 million paid to US companies.
Corporate ISDS attacks feed into a public fear that the biggest corporations are themselves becoming sovereign creatures that are unaccountable.
To their credit, the political leaders of Wallonia stubbornly insisted on more assurance that CETA was not going to be another misstep down the path of unravelling the sovereignty of democratically elected governments.
Sure, one can argue that Wallonia’s fears were overblown, and there’s probably a degree of truth to that. But the point is, it’s hard to know what kind of laws or politicians to trust in the current climate. Witness Donald Trump.
It seems like the experts needs to write a template for a “new free trade agreement”, one that is better geared for today and not 10 years ago.
Such an updated FTA would be able to win popular support because it would include appropriate regulatory safeguards, as well as the right values that project a global vision of what trade in the 21st century ought to look like.
Such a new trade agreement should include rules for how to regulate overseas tax havens, and how to ensure that powerful corporations can’t run rampant across the globe, cherry picking the regulations that enhance their profits and undermine our societies.
Cooler heads prevailed
If the trade negotiators put half as much effort into crafting rules to crack down on overseas tax havens as they put into so-called “free trade”, it would have a beneficial effect on the things that matter. Somehow the negotiators always seem to be keenly focused on lifting barriers on companies, but today that needs to be balanced with a “corporate code of ethics” and crackdowns on various corrupt business practices. How can political leaders expect to do one and not the other, and still retain trust?
I’m glad that cooler heads prevailed and that an agreement was stitched together to move forward. Too much was at stake to leave the whole treaty drowning in a quicksand of transatlantic suspicion and paralysis.
But political leaders have been forewarned (yet again): governments that do not safeguard their national interests against continued overreach by multinational corporations may soon find themselves under siege by their own populations, led by populist demagogues.
The real battle is over what kind of globalisation will prevail, and how to cope with its turbulent centrifugal forces that pull at society’s seams. Wallonia deserves credit for shining a glaring spotlight where it was needed.
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About the author
Steven Hill is a political writer and author of Raw Deal: How the ‘Uber Economy’ and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers.
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