The Trans-Pacific Partnership is an international trade agreement that would allow corporations operating in any country to appeal to a global tribunal to sue governments for financial “damages” wrought by laws that regulate the firms’ activities.

The TPP is a direct threat to what little power citizens in the United States and elsewhere have left to decide their laws. “Democracy Now!” discusses what could happen with Celeste Drake, a trade policy specialist with the AFL-CIO, and Jim Shultz, executive director of the Democracy Center.

The Democracy Center has just released a report on how corporations use trade agreements to capture resources and undermine democracy.

“What is the biggest threat to the ability of corporations to go into a country and suck out the natural resources without any regard for the environment or labor standards? The threat is democracy,” Shultz says. “The threat is that citizens will be annoying and get in the way and demand that their governments take action. So what corporations need is to become more powerful than sovereign states. And the way they become more powerful is by tangling sovereign states in a web of these trade agreements.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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