A seabed mining company is using NAFTA to prevent Mexico from
protecting seabed ecosystems in the Gulf of California.
NAFTA is a business-supremacy treaty
and it contains an ISDS clause.
Businesses can use those against any government. I call them “I Sue
Democratic States” clauses because democratic states sometimes heed
popular demand to make regulations to stop business operations from
doing massive damage. This damage can be enormous — it can include
global heating disaster, which may result in the collapse of
civilization — so preventing it justifies war.
One of the few good things that the wrecker did as president, one of
the few cases in which he did what he said he would do, was replacing
NAFTA with a new version, which ISTR eliminated the ISDS clause.
I wonder, didn’t that treaty eliminate this case? If not, why not?
Could a further revision of NAFTA succeed in abolishing all the
existing cases under that one treaty?
Codice Sconto: E463456
