The latent multinational corporate state technocracy has gifted itself a secret tool, little discussed in electoral politics: the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (“ISDS”).
With its wonky, innocuous-sounding name, the ISDS framework for governing trade disputes is designed to garner as little interest, and therefore as little pushback, as possible from the public.
ISDS is defined by Thomson Reuters as:
A procedural mechanism that allows an investor from one country to bring arbitral proceedings directly against the country in which it has invested.
ISDS provisions are contained in many international agreements including free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties, multilateral investment agreements, national investment laws, and investment contracts. If an investor from one country (the “home state”) invests in another country (the “host state”), both of which have agreed to ISDS, and the host state violates the rights granted to the investor under public international law (such as the right not to have property expropriated without prompt, adequate, and effective compensation), then that investor may sue the host state in neutral arbitration rather than in the domestic courts of the host state. (Emphasis our own)
In non-academic, practical language, nation-states such as the US no longer exercise ultimate authority over the economic goings-on within their own borders. In theory, foreign actors, normally well-endowed corporations, can sue the US government if it doesn’t satisfy their economic interests. In reality, the US government is sufficiently captured that it would never likely challenge the multinational corporations that wrote the ISDS into legislation themselves through the politicians they purchased. The ISDS is merely extra assurance of compliance, in case a true nationalist ever seized power.
Globalisation – the disintegration of economic borders – drove the development of ISDS. So-called “free trade” agreements like NAFTA and GATT instantiated the concept into law. As academic Magdalena Bas explains:
The element that differentiates the State from any other subject of International Law or any other actor in international relations is sovereignty and, as a response, States recognise each other as legally equal. Although sovereignty remains “a ticket of general admission to the international arena” ( Fowler and Bunck, 1995 ), its concept has evolved throughout history and has even come into tension with hyper-globalisation ( Rodrik, 2011 ). One of the areas that illustrates this tension is Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).
Read More: ISDS is the Globalists’ secret tool to undermine national sovereignty