Yes Magazine has an interesting article on the proliferation of so-called “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) provisions in trade agreements, which allow multinational corporations to take legal action against individual governments if they believe that the country’s domestic laws violate a trade agreement and causes them financial harm:
…the number of corporate claims has been on the rise: The UNCTD’s report from 2014 shows that in 2002 there were fewer than 100 known treaty-based ISDS cases. By 2013, that number had reached 568—a five-fold increase over 11 years:
The full text of this article is available to MacroBusiness subscribers
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
