Unpacking CETA
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- Published on Tuesday, 04 October 2016 21:30
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1311 .... October 5, 2016
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Unpacking CETA
Peter Rossman
"The Parties hereby establish a free trade area..."
-- CETA Article 1.4
"Trade, like Religion, is what every Body talks of, but few understand: the very Term is dubious, and in its ordinary Acceptation, not sufficiently explain’d."
-- Daniel Defoe, A Plan of the English Commerce (1728)
The Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), like other looming mega-treaties, is a comprehensive vehicle for expanding the scope of transnational investment by rolling back the capacity of governments to regulate in the public interest. The attack on democratic governance is not restricted to the notorious Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism, which privileges transnational capital by creating a parallel legal system exclusive to transnational investors. The invasive claims of transnational... investors permeate the entire treaty.
Canada and the EU are already among the world's most open economies. Tariffs are at a historic all-time low. CETA's primary mission is to eliminate "non-tariff barriers" -- namely the laws and regulations constructed over decades of struggle to limit corporate power and support the services and policies needed to defend workers, citizens and the environment. CETA is an investment treaty embedded in a comprehensive deregulatory project.