bilateral investment treaty

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pages: 606 words: 87,358

The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization by Richard Baldwin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, air freight, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, buy low sell high, call centre, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, commodity super cycle, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, domestication of the camel, Edward Glaeser, endogenous growth, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, financial intermediation, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Henri Poincaré, imperial preference, industrial cluster, industrial robot, intangible asset, invention of agriculture, invention of the telegraph, investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, James Dyson, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lao Tzu, low skilled workers, market fragmentation, mass immigration, Metcalfe’s law, New Economic Geography, out of africa, paper trading, Paul Samuelson, Pax Mongolica, profit motive, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, Second Machine Age, Simon Kuznets, Skype, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telerobotics, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus

These new-style agreements are not deep in the “profound” sense of the word. They are deep in the sense that they affect matters deep inside national borders; they go way beyond tariff cutting. FIGURE 31: The explosion in Bilateral Investment Treaties from 1990. At about the time that developing nations started lowering their tariffs unilaterally, they also started signing “bilateral investment treaties.” These might be thought of as lopsided since they are basically a way of ensuring the property rights of foreign investors. Developing nations, however, came to see them as win-win. The investment-receiving nations—mostly developing nations—wanted to attract the jobs and factories that were being offshored as part of globalization’s second unbundling.

Mexico, for example, had a whole raft of regulations aimed at thwarting efforts of U.S. companies to buy Mexican companies or set up companies in Mexico that would compete with native firms. This attitude changed radically in the late 1980s. The evidence comes in the form of international agreements known as bilateral investment treaties (BITs). These are, in essence, concessions to rich-nation firms seeking to invest in the developing nation that signs the BIT. The concessions come in the form of disciplines that govern interactions between private foreign investors and host governments. For the most part, the provisions in these agreements constrain the developing nation’s sovereignty.

With these points in mind, it is easy to understand the radical change in the attitudes of developing nations toward trade liberalization and pro-investment, pro-services, pro-intellectual property rights (IPR) reforms. It is also easy to understand why the policy changes were synchronous with the changes in manufacturing and trade. The second unbundling drove all of them. More specifically, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and deep bilateral regional trade agreements (RTAs) were signed with advanced-technology nations to provide the assurances. Interestingly, many developing nations embraced these disciplines but few saw a takeoff in their global value chain participation. This is a classic outcome of misthinking globalization—in particular it is misthinking the role of distance when it comes to face-to-face costs (that is, today’s binding constraint).


pages: 823 words: 206,070

The Making of Global Capitalism by Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin

accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, book value, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, continuous integration, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, dark matter, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, guest worker program, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, inflation targeting, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, military-industrial complex, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, Northern Rock, oil shock, precariat, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, scientific management, seigniorage, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, union organizing, vertical integration, very high income, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Works Progress Administration, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Global Investment, American Rules “Although trade and investment issues converged in the WTO, the complexities of international rule-making in relation to property rights limited the possibility of reaching investment agreements through multilateral trade negotiations, even though it was clear to all involved that foreign investor rights to securing “market presence—a firm foothold within states—is a constituent element of real freedom of trade.”32 The development of the rule of law in relation to investor rights instead proceeded through Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). Although these were more limited, they did cumulatively establish a new international legal framework. Especially important in this respect was the initiation by the US in 1977 of a bilateral investment treaty program, the central goal of which was firmly to establish in international law “the principle that the expropriation of foreign investment was unlawful unless accompanied by prompt, adequate and effective compensation.”33 This program was carefully designed to establish codified state commitments to specific standards of investment protection, and binding “depoliticized” quasi-juridical dispute-resolution procedures.

See Kapur and Webb, Governance-Related Conditionalities, p. 11. 84 Quoted in James, “From Grandmotherliness to Governance,” p. 46. 85 UNCTAD, Bilateral Investment Treaties 1959–1999, Geneva: United Nations, 2000, Figure 1; and UNCTAD Press Release, “Foreign Direct Investment on the Rise,” February 9, 1998. A complete BIT database is available at icsid.worldbank.org. See also the useful overview by Mary Hallward-Driemeier, “Do Bilateral Investment Treaties Attract FDI?” World Bank, Working Paper 3121, August 2003; and Simone Ptillo and Muao F. Guillen, “Globalization Pressures and the State: The Worldwide Spread of Central Bank Independence,” American Journal of Sociology 110: 6 (May 2005), pp. 1,770–1. 86 Lawrence Summers, “Go with the Flow,” Financial Times, March 11, 1998. 10.

As Chapter 9 shows, the practice of neoliberalism reinforced the material and ideological conditions for international legal rules guaranteeing free trade and for the national treatment for foreign capital in each social formation. This was exemplified by NAFTA, European Economic and Monetary Union, and the WTO, as well as by the bilateral investment treaties promoted by the US Trade Representative. In addition to the G7’s role in forging a consensus first among finance ministries and then among heads of state, the Bank for International Settlements re-emerged as the major coordinating agency for central bankers, while the IMF became the vehicle for imposing neoliberal “structural adjustments” on Third World economies.


pages: 316 words: 117,228

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor

Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, digital rights, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, global reserve currency, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, initial coin offering, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, means of production, money market fund, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, power law, price mechanism, price stability, profit maximization, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Satoshi Nakamoto, secular stagnation, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Wolfgang Streeck

In plain English, the rights that arbitral tribunals fashion from the thin language of bilateral investment treaties supersede domestic law, including a country’s constitution. Again, it seems puzzling that sovereign states would sign up for this, but until the introduction of ISDS in bilateral investment treaties, international law was enforced by international courts or by arbitration between two sovereign states; disputes at this level are rare, as most conflicts are resolved through diplomacy, but private parties have proven much less constrained. Fast forward 40 years, with more than three thousand bilateral investment treaties in place and more than eight hundred stateinvestor disputes brought, and we can see how the puzzle comes together into a powerful picture.

States have harmonized some aspects of intellectual property rights in international treaty law, TRIPS for example, but many details still remain in the hands of individual sovereign states. Despite their resistance to divest control over property rights, states ended up giving away more than they may have intended. They have done so not through legal harmonization of substantive law or even of conflict-of-law rules, but by signing on to regional or bilateral investment treaties. These treaties rarely talk about property rights and instead focus on the investments made by foreign investors and their protection in the host state. Investments can take any form, from entering into contracts, licenses, concessions, all the way to ownership of shares or real property.

Unlike victims of human rights violations, 140 c h a P te r 6 investors do not have to seek remedies in a domestic court first; they can go straight to a tribunal outside the territory of the host state they are suing.21 Similar enforcement mechanisms by private parties against host states have been built into more than three thousand bilateral investment treaties (BITs). More than eight hundred cases alleging infringements of investments have been filed over the past three decades, with a total of $522 million in damages paid out, or about 40 percent of the sums demanded.22 Investors don’t always win; states do so in at least one-third of the cases, with the remaining cases being either settled (typically without disclosure about the terms of the settlements) or decided in favor of the investor.


Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism by Quinn Slobodian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Greenspan put, Gunnar Myrdal, Hernando de Soto, invisible hand, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, Mahbub ul Haq, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, Mercator projection, Mont Pelerin Society, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Pearl River Delta, Philip Mirowski, power law, price mechanism, public intellectual, quantitative easing, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, special economic zone, statistical model, Suez crisis 1956, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Chicago School, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, urban renewal, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck, zero-sum game

The Bretton Woods system devised in 1944 offered scarce hope to neoliberals that it would function as a guardian of the world economy. The United Nations’ solution to the end of empire—­granting votes to the proliferating nations of the non-­European world—­t hreatened the balance between dominium and imperium. Working again with the ICC, neoliberals helped craft a universal investment code and bilateral investment treaties that they hoped would safeguard capital in “a world of rights” (Chapter 4). The need to defend the world economy led some neoliberals to seemingly illiberal bedfellows. The case of Augusto Pinochet’s Chile is notorious; the neoliberal relationship to apartheid South Africa is less well studied. ­

He suggested that bilateral treaties might be used instead.114 From the beginning the ICC had indicated that a universal code was preferable, but their document would also work as the basis for bilateral relationships.115 In fact, the Montreux Congress had also produced a Model Bilateral Agreement drawing on interwar templates.116 Heilperin himself announced the failure of the “ ‘universalist approach’ to the prob­ lems of restoring the world economy to its former health.”117 When a second edition of his 1947 book The Trade of Nations came out in 1952, he stated that his opinion had moved in the intervening years to the quality of the bilateral treaty. State-­to-­state treaties ­were indeed much more the norm, including the Freedom of Commerce and Navigation treaties that the U.S. used up u ­ ntil the 1980s.118 The Bilateral Investment Treaty ended up offering the path that investor rights took from utopia to real­ity. ­Here, too, t­ here was an MPS story. In 1959 the New York Times reported that Pakistan had “embarked upon a radical program of economic rehabilitation charted by the men ­behind West Germany’s remarkable postwar recovery.”

The advice was to halt the country’s industrialization campaign and to focus on agriculture to start an “all out export drive” on food crops.119 In 1959 Egon Sohmen, another MPS member, referred in the leading American economics journal to Pakistan’s “thoroughgoing reappraisal of its development planning along neoliberal lines.”120 The strategy was consistent with the development discourse in the MPS, which criticized a potential “overindustrialization” of the periphery and encouraged the Global South to keep its place in the international division of l­abor through agricultural production.121 Part of Pakistan’s reform was the signing of what became the template for all f­uture bilateral investment treaties. Signed by the West German and Pakistani governments in November 1959, Erhard submitted the “Treaty for the Promotion and Protection of Investments” to the Bundestag in 1961.122 The treaty took language straight from the ICC Code and the Abs-­Shawcross Draft, including the provision on compensation in the alien’s home currency and the expanded definition of “nationals” to include “any other com­pany or association, with or without ­legal personality.”123 Where the universal approach had failed, the par­tic­u­lar approach succeeded, bringing the seemingly radical conditions of international investor protection into binding law. ) ) ) Hayek began one of his books by comparing the law to a knife.


pages: 443 words: 98,113

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay by Guy Standing

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-fragile, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, cashless society, central bank independence, centre right, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, debt deflation, declining real wages, deindustrialization, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, ending welfare as we know it, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Firefox, first-past-the-post, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Greenspan put, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, information retrieval, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, investor state dispute settlement, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, labour market flexibility, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, Martin Wolf, means of production, megaproject, mini-job, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Kinnock, non-tariff barriers, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, openstreetmap, patent troll, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Phillips curve, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, remote working, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Kuznets, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, structural adjustment programs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Y Combinator, zero-sum game, Zipcar

These accords came into force in 1995 alongside the creation of the WTO. Although there has been no comprehensive multilateral agreement since then – the Doha Round launched in 2001 having run into the sand – there have been more than ten regional deals a year, on average, over that time.35 But trade deals are far outnumbered by bilateral investment treaties (BITs), part of a murky legalistic system creating a straitjacket favouring commercial interests. Some countries have hundreds of BITs. By the end of 2015, the USA had concluded twenty bilateral free trade agreements, nearly fifty BITs and sixty-five other investment accords with individual countries or groups of countries, and was hoping to conclude BITs with India and China.

When the economy crashed, the governments that followed (there were five presidents in ten days) introduced emergency measures, again under advice from the international financial agencies. These measures led to a spate of demands by foreign companies for compensation, based on the numerous bilateral investment treaties Argentina had been induced to sign in the 1990s. Between 2001 and 2012, fifty cases were brought for claims totalling $80 billion, 13 per cent of Argentina’s GDP.49 Of the twenty-seven cases stemming from the emergency measures, 30 per cent were settled out of court, 44 per cent resulted in a condemnatory award in favour of the corporation, and just 15 per cent ended up in complete favour of Argentina.

INDEX A Mechanical Age 1 Abbott, Arnold 1 AET (Academy Enterprise Trust) 1 agnotology 1 Airbnb 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Alaska Permanent Fund 1 Allergan 1 allotments 1 Alperovitz, Gar 1 Altman, Sam 1 Amazon 1, 2, 3, 4 American Medical Association 1, 2 Amey 1 AMT (Amazon Mechanical Turk) 1, 2 Apple 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Arab Spring 1, 2 ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) 1 ASMS (Association of Salaried Medical Specialists) 1 Astor, Lord 1 Atkinson, Tony 1, 2, 3 Atlas Network 1 Auboin, Roger 1 austerity 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 automation 1, 2 Axelrod, David 1 Bahramipour, Bob 1 ‘bailouts’ 1, 2 Baker, Howard 1 Baker, Philip 1 Ballmer, Steve 1 Banco Espírito Santo 1 Bank of America 1, 2 Bank of England 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Bank of Japan 1 banking systems and austerity 1 ‘bailouts’ 1, 2 and British Disease 1 and debt 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and democracy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and ‘helicopter money’ 1 independence of central banks 1, 2 quantitative easing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and rise of rentiers 1 trade and investment treaties 1 Barclay, David 1 Barclay, Frederick 1 basic income systems 1 Bayh–Dole Act (1980) 1 BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 1, 2 Benyon, Richard 1 BEPS (base erosion and profit shifting) 1 Bernanke, Ben 1 Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886) 1, 2 Berners-Lee, Tim 1, 2 Bernstein, Michael 1 Beveridge, William 1 BIEN (Basic Income European (later ‘Earth’) Network) 1 Bieńkowska, Elżbieta 1 Biewald, Lukas 1 Big Bang (1986) 1 Bilderberg Group 1 Billionaires Report (2015) 1 BIS (Bank for International Settlements) 1 BITs (bilateral investment treaties) 1 BlaBlaCar 1 BlackRock 1 Blair, Cherie 1 Blair, Tony 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 BNP Paribas 1 Born This Way foundation 1 Boston Tea Party 1 Bourdieu, Pierre 1 branding 1 Bretton Woods system 1, 2, 3 ‘Brexit’ debate/campaign 1, 2 Bridgepoint Capital 1, 2 British Disease 1, 2 British Rail 1 Broadbent, Ben 1 Brown, Gordon 1, 2, 3, 4 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 1 Buffett, Warren 1, 2 ‘build-to-rent’ projects 1 Burke, Edmund 1 Burns, Arthur 1 bus services 1 Bush, George H.


pages: 356 words: 103,944

The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy by Dani Rodrik

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, classic study, collective bargaining, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, financial deregulation, financial innovation, floating exchange rates, frictionless, frictionless market, full employment, George Akerlof, guest worker program, Hernando de Soto, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, joint-stock company, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, liberal capitalism, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, microcredit, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Multi Fibre Arrangement, night-watchman state, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, open economy, Paul Samuelson, precautionary principle, price stability, profit maximization, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tobin tax, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, tulip mania, Washington Consensus, World Values Survey

The trouble occurs when international tribunals contradict domestic proceedings on substantive matters (in the beef case, how to trade off economic benefits against uncertain health risks). In this instance, trade rules clearly trumped democratic decision making within the European Union. “Regulatory takings.” There are thousands of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and hundreds of bilateral or regional trade agreements (RTAs) currently in force. Governments use them to promote trade and investment links in ways that go beyond what the WTO and other multilateral arrangements permit. A key objective is to provide a higher level of security to foreign investors by undertaking stronger external commitments.

The same year, a U.S. chemical company challenged a Canadian ban on a gasoline additive and received $13 million in a settlement.13 Perhaps the most worrying case to date involves a suit brought against the South African government in 2007 by three Italian mining companies. The companies charge that South Africa’s affirmative action program, called Black Economic Empowerment, violates the rights provided to them under existing bilateral investment treaties. The program aims to reverse South Africa’s long history of racial discrimination and is an integral element in the country’s democratic transition. It requires that mining companies alter their employment practices and sell a minority share to black partners. The Italian companies have asked for $350 million in return for what they assert is an expropriation of their South African operations.14 If they win, they will have achieved an outcome beyond the reach of any domestic investor.


pages: 501 words: 134,867

A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice by Tony Weis, Joshua Kahn Russell

addicted to oil, Bakken shale, bilateral investment treaty, call centre, carbon footprint, clean water, colonial exploitation, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, decarbonisation, Deep Water Horizon, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Exxon Valdez, failed state, gentrification, global village, green new deal, guest worker program, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, immigration reform, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, liberal capitalism, LNG terminal, market fundamentalism, means of production, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, profit maximization, public intellectual, race to the bottom, smart grid, special economic zone, WikiLeaks, working poor

The links between modern free trade agreements, North American fossil fuel export pipelines, and the history of colonization must be made visible. Some of this analysis can be found in a publication entitled Colonization Redux: New Agreements, Old Games, which argues that “while some may see the bewildering proliferation of bilateral FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) and BITs (Bilateral Investment Treaties) throughout the world as a relatively new phenomenon,” in fact this mania “has deep roots,” which “lie in a long history of colonial exploitation, capitalism and imperialism. The classic colonial state was structured for the exploitation and extraction of resources.”11 An Alternative Approach Considering the limitations of previous campaigns against the FIPA with China can help us to achieve more effective analysis and resistance in the future.

See Enbridge Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, 116 Alberta Enterprise Group, 40 Alberta Federation of Labour, 14, 86 “Alberta is Energy” campaign, 37–38 Alberta Synthetic Crude Oil (SCO), 46–47 Alberta Taciuk Process (ATP), 108 Albright, Adam, 53 Alfred, Taiaiake, 259 Algeria, oil imports from, 31 Aliceville (Alabama), 182 alienation, 255, 299 Altvater, Elmar, 24, 25, 35 Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), 220 American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), 218–21; Center for Green Jobs, 219; Energy Task Force, 218 American Petroleum Institute, 60, 221 Americans for Prosperity, 282 ammonia, 182 Amos, Chief Henry (Gupsalupus), 155–56 Anishinaabe people, 17, 231, 253; worldview of, 237–38 Anonymous Collective, 164 anti-apartheid campaign, 290–91 anti-Asian attitudes, 92–93, 98 anti-capitalism, 69, 75, 263, 273, 311 anti-Chinese racism, 96, 98 anti-colonialism, 75, 244, 246, 259, 260–63, 265, 269, 275, 352n9 Anticosti Island, 82 anti-environmental lobbying, 282, 351n8 anti–fossil fuel campaigns, 309 anti-globalization, 96, 169 anti-nuclear movement, 81, 169, 319 anti-oppression, 244, 246, 263, 343n6 anti-pollution rules, 318 anti-racism, 244, 246, 261, 265 anti-sexism, 261 anti–shale gas movement, 82 anti-systemic escalation, 294–95 anti–wind turbine campaigns, 69 Apollo Alliance, 243, 245 Arctic, exploration and drilling in, 29, 31, 308, 315 Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 242 Asian Pacific Environmental Network, 280 Assembly of First Nations, 69 asthma, 116 asymmetry, grappling with, 287–89 Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), 12, 18, 208–9, 211, 254, 271, 275 Athabasca River Basin, 5, 8–10, 15, 17, 32, 230; First Nations of, 12, 13, 16, 237 Attawapiskat, diamond mining in, 125 Australia, oil shale exploration and experimentation in, 100 Avatar, 249–50, 323n14 Baird, John, 62 Baker Estates (Michigan), 198, 200–201 Barlow, Maude, 94, 170, 323n14 Bass, Rick, 283 Bateman, Kenneth, 149 Bay of Fundy, toxic threats to, 78 Bayou Corner (Louisiana), sinkhole in, 182 Beaver Lake Cree, 18, 119–24, 271, 274 Bentley, Robert, 183 benzene, 10, 135, 182, 197, 202 Bernard, Elaine, 97 Berry, Thomas, 239 Berry, Wendell, 170 Bhutan: Gross National Happiness Index, 238 Big Greens, 168 Big Oil, 49, 53, 70, 72, 119, 123, 126, 240, 242–47 Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), 97 bioaccumulation, 9 Bishop, Mike, 192 bitumen, 4–7, 9, 15–17, 20, 46, 77, 117, 119, 152, 162, 167, 179, 206, 247, 253–54, 269–70, 281, 287, 291–93, 305, 310, 312, 314; in Chemical Valley, 135–37, 139–40; cleanup of, 198; diluted (“dilbit”), 137, 146, 183, 195–99, 202, 205, 232, 236, 254, 302; environmental and health risks of mining, transporting, and refining of, 10–12; extraction of, 8–9, 51–52, 95, 100–103, 120, 129, 142; and Gulf Coast, 182–83; in Kalamazoo, 195–206; in Madagascar, 104–5; as nationalized resource in Venezuela, 102; and Northern Gateway project, 146–47, 149–50, 152; refining of, 8, 79; toxic, 78; in Trinidad and Tobago, 103; as “ultra-heavy” oil, 101 Bitumen—Adding Value conference, 134–35, 143 Bitumen: Canada’s National Disaster demonstration, 135 Blackheath Camp for Climate Action, 208 Blaney, Ta’Kaiya, 164 Bloch, Ernst: The Principle of Hope, 320 blockades, 80, 114, 143–44, 157–58, 189, 288, 293; as direct action, 343n2 (ch.17).


pages: 233 words: 64,702

China's Disruptors: How Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent, and Other Companies Are Changing the Rules of Business by Edward Tse

3D printing, Airbnb, Airbus A320, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, bilateral investment treaty, business process, capital controls, commoditize, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Graeber, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, experimental economics, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, high-speed rail, household responsibility system, industrial robot, Joseph Schumpeter, Lyft, Masayoshi Son, middle-income trap, money market fund, offshore financial centre, Pearl River Delta, reshoring, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, trade route, wealth creators, working-age population

To avoid any serious backlash, greater policy cooperation will be needed between China and the United States, and possibly, though to a lesser extent, Europe. For China, the big question will be whether to open its investment doors further. Currently, China and the United States are in the early stages of negotiating a bilateral investment treaty that could have as great an impact on investment as China’s World Trade Organization entry. Making this transition will be a challenge. China has long resisted attempts by outside companies or countries to control fully the way they operate within its markets. For example, the Chinese government still wants to retain its “negative” investment list, a list of sectors and industries from which it bars or strictly restricts overseas investment such as finance, Internet, and telecom services.


pages: 241 words: 75,417

The Last President of Europe: Emmanuel Macron's Race to Revive France and Save the World by William Drozdiak

Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, carbon tax, centre right, cloud computing, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, reserve currency, Silicon Valley, Socratic dialogue, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, UNCLOS, working poor

The European Commission paper reserved its toughest criticism for China’s attitude toward Europe on trade and investment. The Commission demanded that China “deliver” on its past commitments to curtail industrial subsidies as prescribed by the World Trade Organization and to complete a bilateral investment treaty with the European Union by 2020. The negotiations had dragged on for seven years, and the EU was concerned that China was trying to delay any deal as long as possible. Finally, the Commission urged member governments to follow a ten-point plan that would coordinate policies within the European Union “in order to exert more leverage in pursuit of its objectives.”


Culture Shock! Costa Rica 30th Anniversary Edition by Claire Wallerstein

anti-communist, bilateral investment treaty, call centre, card file, Day of the Dead, Easter island, fixed income, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, out of africa, Silicon Valley, sustainable-tourism, trade route, urban sprawl

It is a signatory to many regional and international trade agreements, such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and the Association of Caribbean States. It has been granted preferential conditions in the USA and Europe, and has signed bilateral trade agreements with several countries in the region. It also has bilateral investment treaties with many countries (mostly European). The ratification of CAFTA (the Central American Free Trade Association) in 2007 has prompted the liberalisation of Costa Rica’s agriculture and other export sectors, services, intellectual property, labour laws and areas involving natural resources.


pages: 334 words: 82,041

How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature by George Monbiot

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, bank run, bilateral investment treaty, Branko Milanovic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, creative destruction, credit crunch, David Attenborough, dematerialisation, demographic transition, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, first-past-the-post, full employment, Gini coefficient, hedonic treadmill, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, land bank, land reform, land value tax, Leo Hollis, market fundamentalism, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, oil shale / tar sands, old-boy network, peak oil, place-making, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, profit motive, rent-seeking, rewilding, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, urban sprawl, We are all Keynesians now, wealth creators, World Values Survey

A Global Ban on Leftwing Politics 1David Cameron, 23 January 2013, ‘EU speech at Bloomberg’, gov.uk. 2George Monbiot, 14 October 2013, ‘From Obamacare to Trade, Superversion Not Subversion Is the New and Very Real Threat to the State’, theguardian.com. 3McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer, ‘Philip Morris Asia Challenge under Australia–Hong Kong Bilateral Investment Treaty’, mccabecentre.org. 4Corporate Europe Observatory, 3 June 2013, ‘A Transatlantic Corporate Bill of Rights’, corporateeurope.org. 5Thomas McDonagh, 2013, Unfair, Unsustainable, and Under the Radar, The Democracy Center, democracyctr.org. 6Glyn Moody, 23 July 2013, ‘Eli Lilly Raises Stakes: Says Canada Now Owes It $500 Million for Not Granting a Patent It Wanted’, techidirt.com. 7McDonagh, Unfair, Unsustainable, and Under the Radar; Public Citizen, March 2013, ‘U.S.


pages: 354 words: 92,470

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, moral hazard, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, paradox of thrift, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Skype, South China Sea, special drawing rights, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Attempts to attract global capital can result in national tax authorities indulging in a corporation tax ‘race to the bottom’: indeed, corporate tax rates have plunged since the early 1980s.6 Accepting the strictures of the World Trade Organization may only preserve a decidedly skewed playing field, preventing today’s poor countries from using techniques employed by others in the past to foster economic progress. Without the use of protectionist measures to nurture infant industries, for example, it is unlikely that the nineteenth-century US economy or the East Asian economies of the late twentieth century would have made significant gains. Signing up to bilateral investment treaties might seem like a good way of attracting much-needed foreign investment into a country; but in the event that something goes wrong, whom does the treaty protect and who is left to pay the bill? UNSTABLE BORDERS All these are common criticisms of globalization in a world of nation states.


pages: 334 words: 98,950

Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

Through the World Trade Organisation, they have introduced the TRIMS (Trade-related Investment Measures) Agreement, which bans things like local content requirements, export requirements or foreign exchange balancing requirements. They have been pushing for further liberalization through the current GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) negotiations and a proposed investment agreement at the World Trade Organisation. Bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between rich and poor countries also restrict the ability of developing countries to regulate FDI.53 Forget history, say the Bad Samaritans in defending such actions. Even if it did have some merits in the past, they argue, regulation of foreign investment has become unnecessary and futile, thanks to globalization, which has created a new ‘borderless world’.


pages: 347 words: 99,317

Bad Samaritans: The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations and the Threat to Global Prosperity by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Brownian motion, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, en.wikipedia.org, export processing zone, falling living standards, Fellow of the Royal Society, financial deregulation, financial engineering, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, liberal world order, liberation theology, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, mega-rich, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, price stability, principal–agent problem, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, structural adjustment programs, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transfer pricing, urban sprawl, World Values Survey

Through the World Trade Organisation, they have introduced the TRIMS (Trade-related Investment Measures) Agreement, which bans things like local content requirements, export requirements or foreign exchange balancing requirements. They have been pushing for further liberalization through the current GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) negotiations and a proposed investment agreement at the World Trade Organisation. Bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs) between rich and poor countries also restrict the ability of developing countries to regulate FDI.53 Forget history, say the Bad Samaritans in defending such actions. Even if it did have some merits in the past, they argue, regulation of foreign investment has become unnecessary and futile, thanks to globalization, which has created a new ‘borderless world’.


pages: 385 words: 111,807

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide by Ha-Joon Chang

"there is no alternative" (TINA), Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, antiwork, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, discovery of the americas, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, George Akerlof, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, greed is good, Gunnar Myrdal, Haber-Bosch Process, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, income per capita, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, interest rate swap, inventory management, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, land bank, land reform, liberation theology, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open borders, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, post-industrial society, precariat, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, profit motive, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, search costs, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, structural adjustment programs, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey

Countries have also demanded that TNC subsidiaries buy certain proportions of inputs locally (known as the local contents requirement).19 Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China have been particularly successful with these regulatory measures – they allowed, or even welcomed in some sectors, FDI but put in all those measures to ensure that the benefits were maximized while the costs were minimized. However, using the WTO agreement (known as the TRIMS agreement, or the Trade-related Investment Measures agreement), bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs), the rich countries (including Japan, which used to regulate FDI most severely in the world) have made a number of these regulations, such as the local contents requirement, ‘illegal’.20 The success with all those regulations in countries such as Japan and China does not mean that ‘stick’ is the only way to manage FDI.


pages: 408 words: 108,985

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, deindustrialization, discovery of DNA, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, hiring and firing, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, labor-force participation, liberal capitalism, low interest rates, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, mini-job, moral hazard, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, open economy, Paris climate accords, patent troll, pension reform, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, selection bias, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, zero-sum game

. ** As we noted in Chapter 6, though we often think of these as “offshore financial centers,” some jurisdictions in the United States (Nevada, Delaware) and the City of London have also profited from these nefarious activities. †† According to a 2015 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, around 60 percent of completed ISDS cases favored investors while only 40 percent favored governments. ‡‡ While similar provisions existed in some 1,400 bilateral investment treaties, the new agreements mark the first time these provisions fall under an EU-level trade deal with application to all economic sectors. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada, which was signed in 2017, embraces ISDS, but with judges chosen from a permanent 15-member tribunal.


Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World by Branko Milanovic

affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, assortative mating, barriers to entry, basic income, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Black Swan, Branko Milanovic, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, colonial rule, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, ghettoisation, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, household responsibility system, income inequality, income per capita, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, liberal capitalism, low skilled workers, Lyft, means of production, new economy, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, post-materialism, purchasing power parity, remote working, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Solow, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, special economic zone, Tax Reform Act of 1986, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, working-age population, Xiaogang Anhui farmers

Capital-exporting nations either conquered other countries or made sure that they controlled the economic policy of quasi-colonies so that places like China, Egypt, Tunisia, and Venezuela had no choice but to protect the property rights of foreigners.11 The same role that colonialism played then, more brutally, is played today by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, hundreds of bilateral investment treaties, and other global governance bodies: they are the guardians against nationalization and the abuse of foreign property. In that respect, globalization has created its own governance structure. Global value chains have redefined economic development. It was argued in the past that the participation of developing countries in the international division of labor was inimical to their development in at least three ways and would lead to the “development of underdevelopment,” as André Gunder Frank termed it in an influential article published in 1966.


pages: 474 words: 120,801

The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moises Naim

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, business cycle, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, crony capitalism, deskilling, disinformation, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, intangible asset, intermodal, invisible hand, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megacity, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, new economy, Northern Rock, Occupy movement, open borders, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, price mechanism, price stability, private military company, profit maximization, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, radical decentralization, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

It was a state-led, socialist dream, and the kind of investment now flourishing is quite different from what it imagined. Nevertheless, South-South investment is today one of the shaping trends of global business.52 United Nations data show that outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from developing and transition economies began to outpace OFDI from rich countries in 2003. Twenty of the fifty-four bilateral investment treaties signed in 2010 were between developing countries, and they increased further in importance, both as recipients of FDI and as outward investors. Foreign direct investment outflows from developing countries reached an unprecedented 29 percent of total direct investment flows in 2010, and this strong growth continued in 2011 and 2012 despite global economic woes.53 The number of developing-country firms in the league tables of the world’s largest companies is continually growing.


pages: 692 words: 167,950

The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century by Alex Prud'Homme

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, commoditize, company town, corporate raider, Deep Water Horizon, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, Garrett Hardin, hydraulic fracturing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Joan Didion, John Snow's cholera map, Louis Pasteur, mass immigration, megacity, oil shale / tar sands, oil-for-food scandal, peak oil, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, William Langewiesche

Banzer used this as a pretext to declare that the company had “abandoned” its lease and revoke its $200 million contract. Bechtel responded by filing a $25 million lawsuit with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, an appellate arm of the World Bank, for “lost profits under a bilateral investment treaty.” In 2003, Banzer and other politicians who had brokered the deal resigned or were thrown out of office. In 2006, a settlement was reached between the new government of President Evo Morales (who as a congressman had supported the protesters) and Aguas del Tunari: both sides agreed to drop claims against the other.


The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union by Serhii Plokhy

affirmative action, Anton Chekhov, Berlin Wall, bilateral investment treaty, Boeing 747, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, land reform, language acquisition, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Potemkin village, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Sinatra Doctrine, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Transnistria

Thus, unless you can take these positive steps very soon, I will freeze many elements of our economic relationship including Export-Import credit guarantees; Commodity Credit Corporation credit guarantees; support for “Special Associate Status” for the Soviet Union in the International Monetary Fund and World Bank; and most of our technical assistance programs. Further, I would not submit the Bilateral Investment Treaty or Tax Treaty to the United States Senate for consent to ratification when and if they are completed. One paragraph of the letter presented the history of US economic assistance to the Soviet Union through the prism of Soviet treatment of the Baltics. “I honored your personal request and signed the Trade Agreement in spite of the economic blockade that the Soviet Union had imposed on Lithuania,” wrote Bush.


pages: 829 words: 229,566

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, big-box store, bilateral investment treaty, Blockadia, Boeing 747, British Empire, business climate, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, clean water, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, colonial rule, Community Supported Agriculture, complexity theory, crony capitalism, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, different worldview, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, equal pay for equal work, extractivism, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, financial deregulation, food miles, Food sovereignty, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, green transition, high-speed rail, hydraulic fracturing, ice-free Arctic, immigration reform, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jones Act, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, land bank, light touch regulation, man camp, managed futures, market fundamentalism, Medieval Warm Period, Michael Shellenberger, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, new economy, Nixon shock, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, patent troll, Pearl River Delta, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-oil, precautionary principle, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rana Plaza, remunicipalization, renewable energy transition, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, scientific management, smart grid, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, structural adjustment programs, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wages for housework, walkable city, Washington Consensus, Wayback Machine, We are all Keynesians now, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

More investment disputes are being filed than ever before, with a great many initiated by fossil fuel companies—as of 2013, a full sixty out of 169 pending cases at the World Bank’s dispute settlement tribunal had to do with the oil and gas or mining sectors, compared to a mere seven extraction cases throughout the entire 1980s and 1990s. According to Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, of the more than $3 billion in compensation already awarded under U.S. free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties, more than 85 percent “pertains to challenges against natural resource, energy, and environmental policies.”49 None of this should be surprising. Of course the richest and most powerful companies in the world will exploit the law to try to stamp out real and perceived threats and to lock in their ability to dig and drill wherever they wish in the world.