Another Stopped Clock Moment from Trump

It appears that the Trump administration wants to effectively gut the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), which would be a very good thing:

U.S. ISDS PROPOSAL WOULD CUT TWO KEY PROTECTIONS: Expect USTR to put at least one of those “poison pills” forward at talks this week. The final U.S. proposal on investor-state dispute settlement comes not only with an “opt-in” provisions that effectively makes the whole process voluntary, but also rolls back two key investor protections private companies have been able to use under the mechanism in past U.S. agreements. U.S. business and agriculture groups have already signaled that a radical departure from the current U.S. approach to investor protections would be forcefully opposed by them.

I don't expect this to actually happen.

Even if Trump wants to do this, and I think that it is likely posturing, I would expect resistance from Congressional Republicans and the non "Alt-Right" personnel in his administration to make this outcome highly unlikely.

OK, This Explains a the Furor………

As a part of the Brexit, the UK is renegotiating export deals with the US.

One of the sticking point is chlorine washed chicken.

In the EU and the UK, cleanliness is required at every step of the process, while in the US, the carcasses are washed with a solution of water and chlorine because the chickens are raised in in extreme conditions, and the chlorine washing is required to make ensure that the chickens are safe to eat:

The disturbing prospect of chlorine-washed chickens from the US going on sale in British shops in a post-Brexit trade deal last week sparked an explosive row at the heart of Government.

But beyond the politics lies the story of why American poultry needs such drastic chemical treatment – and of the horrendous conditions at the farms where they are bred and reared.

Now whistleblower farmers have revealed the full horror of the suffering to The Mail on Sunday, including how:

• Tens of thousands of super-sized 'Frankenstein' birds are crammed in vast warehouses.
• The chickens, which weigh up to 9lb, often buckle under their weight and must live without natural sunlight.
• Chickens frequently die before they reach maturity and many are left covered in their own faeces, turning warehouses into vile breeding grounds for disease.

Unlike in the UK and Europe, there are no minimum space requirements for breeding chickens in the US. America also does not have any rules governing lighting levels in the sheds and, crucially, its farms have no maximum allowed level of ammonia, which indicates how much urine and faecal matter is present. This means there is no limit on how much can fester inside the sheds.

There is no legal requirement to wash US chickens in chlorine or other disinfectants, but 97 per cent of its birds are cleaned in this way after slaughter.

………

Another reason poultry in the US is chlorinated is that farmers are not required to vaccinate against diseases such as Salmonella. Britain and the EU have widespread vaccination programmes.

………

Leah Garces, of the Global Animal Partnership, an animal welfare group, added: 'The fact we have to wash our food in chlorine to make it safe indicates that we are not doing farming right in the first place. It indicates how unhealthy we are raising our birds.'

While UK chicken farmers are not wholly free from criticism from animal welfare campaigners, there are strict regulations that must be followed. In the UK and Europe, poultry farmers must not keep more than 17 chickens per square metre in their sheds. There are also rules governing available natural light, temperature and the maximum levels of ammonia.

………

Shraddha Kaul, of the British Poultry Council, said: 'We strongly reject any move to import chlorine-washed chickens as part of a makeweight in trade negotiations with the US.

'Chlorine is used as a catch-all. It is an approach which means it doesn't matter how badly you treat your chicken, you can just clean it away at the end of the process.'

This reflects a very big difference in philosophy, the Europeans bake in sanitation throughout the process, while in the US, you hose the chickens down with disinfectant when they hit the slaughter house.

Of course, lousy chicken and a race to the bottom is the par for the course in free trade deals, so limeys need to eat their mutant steroid and antibiotic fetid chicken, and they need to like it.

This is a Feature, Not a Bug

Over at Bloomberg, we have a bit of history which describes how US Chipmakers dealt with the toxicity of their manufacturing processes by moving overseas, where they could harm brown people and no one would care:

Results in epidemiology often are equivocal, and money can cloud science (see: tobacco companies vs. cancer researchers). Clear-cut cases are rare. Yet just such a case showed up one day in 1984 in the office of Harris Pastides, a recently appointed associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

………

SIA, representing International Business Machines Corp., Intel Corp., and about a dozen other top technology companies, established a task force, and its experts flew to Windsor Locks, Conn., to meet Pastides at a hotel near Bradley International Airport. It was Super Bowl Sunday, January 1987. “That was a day I remember being at a tribunal,” Pastides says. The atmosphere “bordered on hostility. I remember being shellshocked.” Soon after the meeting the panel formally concluded that the study contained “significant deficiencies,” according to internal SIA records. Nevertheless, facing public pressure, SIA’s member companies agreed to fund more research.

………

Pastides felt vindicated. More than that, he considered the entire episode one of the greatest successes in public-health history, as do others. Despite industry skepticism, three scientific studies led to changes that helped generations of women. “That’s almost a fairy tale in public health,” Pastides says.

Two decades later, the ending to the story looks like a different kind of tale. As semiconductor production shifted to less expensive countries, the industry’s promised fixes do not appear to have made the same journey, at least not in full. Confidential data reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek show that thousands of women and their unborn children continued to face potential exposure to the same toxins until at least 2015. Some are probably still being exposed today. Separate evidence shows the same reproductive-health effects also persisted across the decades.

The risks are exacerbated by secrecy—the industry may be using toxins that still haven’t been disclosed. This is the price paid by generations of women making the devices at the heart of the global economy.

………

Yet in virtually every study published since the 1990s, Kim read one form or other of the same phrase: The global semiconductor industry had phased out EGEs in the mid-1990s, signaling the end of reproductive-health concerns. The statements made sense. Not only had IBM and other companies publicly announced that the use of EGEs had been discontinued, but the chemicals also had become classified as Category 1 reproductive toxins under international standards, and European regulators had placed them on a list of the most highly toxic chemicals known to science, designating them Substances of Very High Concern.

Still, something nagged at Kim. In focus groups, young South Korean women working in chip plants told Kim’s colleagues it was not uncommon to go months, or even a year, without menstruating. (Some saw these potentially ominous changes to their reproductive systems as blessings, not warnings. It was just easier not to have periods.) As in the U.S., women dominated production jobs in South Korea’s microelectronics industry, which employs more than 120,000 of them, mostly of childbearing age; they’re often recruited right out of high school. Kim and a colleague decided they needed to conduct a new reproductive-health study. They faced a challenge, however, that Pastides and the other U.S. researchers hadn’t, at least on the front end: a lack of industry cooperation.

In 2013 they persuaded a member of South Korea’s parliament to pry loose national health-insurance data. They got five years of physician-reimbursement records through 2012 for women of childbearing age working at plants owned by the country’s three largest microelectronics companies: Samsung, SK Hynix, and LG. Samsung and SK Hynix accounted for the vast majority of women in the study, as the two have long been among the world’s largest chipmakers. The data covered an average of 38,000 women per year. From that number, the researchers looked at the records of those who had gone to doctors for miscarriages.

The results were both undeniable and shocking to Kim, just as they had been for Pastides almost three decades earlier. She found significantly elevated miscarriage rates and a rate for those in their 30s almost as high as in the U.S. factories. And the findings were conservative, because many women don’t go to the doctor for miscarriages, and because production workers couldn’t be separated in the study from those who worked in offices. “This was not the result I had expected,” Kim says.

As an aside here, this is another argument for single payer in some form, it creates a demographic database that is both available and universal that can be used to find problems like these.

………

After the outcry in the U.S. in the 1990s, chemical companies said they’d changed the formulations for the photoresists and other products they supplied to chipmakers, including those in Asia. But testing data obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek show that changes weren’t made quickly or, in some cases, completely.

………

Kim, the epidemiologist, says the secrecy of these settlements is a reason there was so little discussion for so long of the risks in chipmaking. “It was not published in academic papers,” she says. “Just some hidden settlements between the companies and some victims.”

Even today, the chipmakers themselves sometimes don’t know what they’re bringing into their facilities and exposing their workers to. That’s what SK Hynix discovered in 2015 after hiring a team of university scientists to assess the toxic risks in two of its plants.

Some of their results were made public in Korean, but many of the findings remain confidential. An extract of the research reviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek shows scientists found that the plants used about 430 different chemical products each. These included more than 130 deemed to be dangerous enough that employees exposed to them must undergo special health checks; those chemicals are called CMR agents—shorthand for carcinogens, mutagens, and reproductive toxins. In addition to benzene and EGEs, they’ve historically included arsenic, hydrofluoric acid, and trichloroethylene.

The ability to directly or indirectly poison unsuspecting employees is one of the goals of globalization.  It's all about labor and regulatory arbitrage, which is why promises of labor, safety, and environmental protections that we hear about whenever they want to push through a trade deal are empty.

Allowing the 1% to f%$# the rest of us is the goal of modern trade deals, so it's no surprise that this is their actual effect.

The Germans are Getting Nervous

The Germans don't want a Brexit, but if it happens, they want to be sure that it is painful for the British, and they also want to be sure that it won't upset the existing political consensus.

I think that the disaster for Theresa May, particularly in context of the German dogma for austerity, has shaken the German establishment, which is why Wolfgang Schäuble is now talking about how all will be forgiven if Britain decides to forgo leaving the EU:

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that the U.K. would be welcomed back to the European Union if the British decided they no longer wanted to quit the bloc.

French President Emmanuel Macron also said the “door is open” for a return, but warned that it would be much harder to achieve once negotiations have started.

In his first public comments on the matter since the U.K. election, Schaeuble said that “it’s up to the British government to take their own decisions” on Brexit. He said he had discussed the surprise election outcome with Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond the day after the vote, and concluded that “we have to leave them some days” to decide on the way forward.

Asked if the government might reverse its decision to quit the EU, he said it “would not be helpful” to speculate whether that will happen or not. “The British government has said we will stay with the Brexit,” Schaeuble said in the interview during Bloomberg’s G-20 Germany Day. “We take the decision as a matter of respect. But if they wanted to change their decision, of course, they would find open doors.”

I think that they are afraid that if Brexit happens, and Labour ends up in charge, it won't be a complete clusterf%$#, and could lead to other countries to pulling back from the EU.

Preach It, Brother!

In the Guardian, Thomas Frank makes a very good point, that "The Democrats' Davos ideology won't win back the midwest."

The current neoliberal consensus is that globalization benefits the deserving, and that if you lose, it's because you're stupid, and never studied in school:

The tragedy of the 2016 election is connected closely, at least for me, to the larger tragedy of the industrial midwest. It was in the ruined industrial city of Cleveland that the Republican Party came together in convention last July, and it was the deindustrialized, addiction-harrowed precincts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin that switched sides in November and delivered Donald Trump to the Oval Office.

………

And what I am here to say is that the midwest is not an exotic place. It isn’t a benighted region of unknowable people and mysterious urges. It isn’t backward or hopelessly superstitious or hostile to learning. It is solid, familiar, ordinary America, and Democrats can have no excuse for not seeing the wave of heartland rage that swamped them last November.

Another thing that is inexcusable from Democrats: surprise at the economic disasters that have befallen the midwestern cities and states that they used to represent.

The wreckage that you see every day as you tour this part of the country is the utterly predictable fruit of the Democratic party’s neoliberal turn. Every time our liberal leaders signed off on some lousy trade deal, figuring that working-class people had “nowhere else to go,” they were making what happened last November a little more likely.

Every time our liberal leaders deregulated banks and then turned around and told working-class people that their misfortunes were all attributable to their poor education, that the only answer for them was a lot of student loans and the right sort of college degree ... every time they did this they made the disaster a little more inevitable.

………

Of course it isn’t working out that way. So far, liberal organs seem far less interested in courting such voters than they do in scolding them, insulting them for their coarse taste and the hate for humanity they supposedly cherish in their ignorant hearts.

Ignorance is not the issue, however. Many midwesterners I met share an outlook that is profoundly bleak. They believe that the life has gone out of this region; indeed, they fear that a civilization based on making things is no longer sustainable.

………

I have no doubt that people in this part of America would respond enthusiastically to a populist message that addressed their unhappy situation – just look, for example, at the soaring popularity of Bernie Sanders.

As things have unfolded thus far, however, our system seems designed to keep such an alternative off the table. The choice we are offered instead is between Trumpian fake populism and a high-minded politics of personal virtue. Between a nomenklatura of New Economy winners and a party of traditional business types, willing to say anything to get elected and (once that is done) to use the state to reward people like themselves. The public’s frustration with this state of affairs, at least as I heard it on my midwestern trip, is well-nigh overwhelming.

………

But when “the resistance” comes into power in Washington, it will face this question: this time around, will Democrats serve the 80% of us that this modern economy has left behind? Will they stand up to the money power? Or will we be invited once again to feast on inspiring speeches while the tasteful gentlemen from JP Morgan foreclose on the world?

The argument of the privileged (center) left is that this is inevitable, and people who are harmed by this are to blame for this harm.

It is a pernicious attitude, one that stems from their inability to recognize their own unearned privilege.

This destructive sanctimony needs to be purged from the Democratic Party.  Let the Republicans have them.

Quote of the Day

The politics of compensation is always subject to a problem that economists call “time inconsistency.” Before a new policy – say, a trade agreement – is adopted, beneficiaries have an incentive to promise compensation. Once the policy is in place, they have little interest in following through, either because reversal is costly all around or because the underlying balance of power shifts toward them.

—Dani Rodrik

It is a point that I have made many times: Promises to help people hurt by free trade deals are never fulfilled, because along with a loss of jobs and money, there is a loss of political power, and political losers almost never get the spoils.

Quote of the Day

And so, contrary to Hayek’s expectations, financial globalisation has proved that it is market fundamentalism, and not the regulatory state that is leading the world into an era of authoritarianism and totalitarianism – in the US, Eastern Europe, India and China.

—Ann Pettifor

This is not surprising the relentless concentration of power by monopolists has always had this effect. 

As an aside, Hayek in fact loved authoritarianism and totalitarianism, as shown by his full-throated support of the brutal Pinochet regime in Chile, and his only slightly more muted defense of the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

Tweet of the Day

Trump is seeking small changes to NAFTA to make it more like the proposed TPP. Now that's how you break a promise! https://t.co/QkSeU7VU4E

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 30, 2017

H/t Ian Welsh.

Snark of the Day

New record sees woman make it to 9.05am before hearing word ‘Brexit’

—The Daily Mash

Opening 'graph:

Mary Fisher forgot to turn the radio on after getting up at 7.30am and opted to listen to music on her commute, thus avoiding the B-word for a euphoric 95 minutes.

Look at the bright side:  On our side of the pond, we have Trump, which is much worse than Brexit.

Headline of the Day

Nicola Sturgeon Announces Plans to Rebuild Hadrian's Wall, and England Is Going to Pay for It

It's from News Hump, a parody site, but it is a wonderful mocking of the Brexit, the Scottish independence movement, and Donald Trump.

Well done.

Headline of the Day

iPhones and sex toys may cost more if there's a US-China trade war

—BBC News

Trust the Beeb to get to the ……… heart ……… of the matter.

Tweet of the Day

"NO TPP" was probably the #1 most popular sign at the Dem convention. The election of Trump caused the goal to be realized. Worth pondering. pic.twitter.com/S5MjIBuOep

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) January 24, 2017

H/t naked capitalism.

I'm Worried about His Other Promises

Donald Trump just officially pulled the US out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP):

President Trump formally abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on Monday, pulling away from Asia and scrapping his predecessor’s most significant trade deal on his first full weekday in office, administration officials said.

Mr. Trump sharply criticized the partnership agreement during last year’s campaign, calling it a bad deal for American workers. Although the deal had not been approved by Congress, the decision to withdraw the American signature at the start of Mr. Trump’s administration is a signal that he plans to follow through on promises to take a more aggressive stance against foreign competitors.

In other action on a busy opening day, Mr. Trump ordered a hiring freeze in the federal work force, exempting the military. And he reinstituted limits on nongovernmental organizations that operate overseas and receive American taxpayer money from performing abortions. Republican presidents typically impose those restrictions soon after taking office, and Democratic presidents typically lift them when they take over.

The president’s withdrawal from the Asian-Pacific trade pact amounted to a drastic reversal of decades of economic policy in which presidents of both parties have lowered trade barriers and expanded ties around the world. Although candidates have often criticized trade deals on the campaign trail, those who made it to the White House, including President Barack Obama, ended up extending their reach.

He made the promise, and he kept it.

Bill Clinton promised side agreements, and never tried to get them, and Barack Obama moved heaven and earth in an attempt to pass the TPP and passed CAFTA and similar deals, with their pro big pharma, pro big Ag, pro Wall Street provisions.

Unfortunately, while putting a stake through the heart of the TPP is a good thing, Donald Trump promised a lot of stuff that is simply batsh%$ insane, and it looks like he's going to keep those promises too.

He's already at work on NAFTA:

Aides signaled that Mr. Trump may also move quickly on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement. He is scheduling meetings with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, the two main partners in that pact, first negotiated by the elder President George Bush and pushed through Congress by President Bill Clinton. Nafta has been a major driver of American trade for nearly two decades, but it has long been divisive, with critics blaming it for lost jobs and lower wages.

Do not be heartened that the spray tan orange stopped clock is right once today.

We are, as the Chinese are wont to say, living in interesting times.

Not Enough Bullets

Amazingly enough, the story shows the subjects of the story even more self-absorbed and clueless than the headline dows:

Davos Elite Fret About Inequality Over Vintage Wine and Canapés

You morons broke the world.

You were born on 3^rd base and though that you hit a triple.

You are not deserving, you are lucky.

• You won the parent lottery.
• You won the nationality lottery.
• You won the social class lottery.

Now try and do something to make the world a better place for the rest of us.

Quote of the Day

A joke I’ve told 1,000 people in the months since leaving Davos is that the conventional wisdom of Davos is always wrong,

—Kenneth Rogoff, who noted that he started to worry about a Trump win when, "Fellow attendees at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting last January said it could never happen."

While intended as a joke, it is true.

When bad really things happen it almost always happens because the conventional wisdom has failed, and the species known as "Davos Man" is incapable of looking beyond the conventional wisdom.

Here Is an Interesting Historical Tidbit That I Was Unaware Of

It appears that the contemporaneous record shows that the deindustrialization of the United States was a deliberate policy. It's goal was to create prosperity in China, so as to create a more friendly relationship and move the "Middle Kingdom" to a more democratic and pluralistic society.

One of the things left unsaid here, because it makes the promulgators of such a policy look like blithering idiots, is that many of the foreign policy and defense "experts" favored this because they had not, and still have not, adjusted their thinking about a need for China to counterweight the USSR.

he argues that te destruction of US manufacturing to aid China was a deliberate policy.

I have been puzzling over this from Paul Krugman:

Donald Trump won the electoral college at least in part by promising to bring coal jobs back to Appalachia and manufacturing jobs back to the Rust Belt. Neither promise can be honored – for the most part we’re talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to technological change. But a funny thing happens when people like me try to point that out: we get enraged responses from economists who feel an affinity for the working people of the afflicted regions – responses that assume that trying to do the numbers must reflect contempt for regional cultures, or something.

Is this the right narrative? I am no longer comfortable with this line:

…for the most part we’re talking about jobs lost, not to unfair foreign competition, but to technological change.

Try to place that line in context with this from Noah Smith:

Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the U.S opened its markets to Chinese goods, first with Most Favored Nation trading status, and then by supporting China's accession to the WTO. The resulting competition from cheap Chinese goods contributed to vast inequality in the United States, reversing many of the employment gains of the 1990s and holding down U.S. wages. But this sacrifice on the part of 90% of the American populace enabled China to lift its enormous population out of abject poverty and become a middle-income country.

Was this “fair” trade? I think not. Let me suggest this narrative: Sometime during the Clinton Administration, it was decided that an economically strong China was good for both the globe and the U.S. Fair enough. To enable that outcome, U.S. policy deliberately sacrificed manufacturing workers on the theory that a.) the marginal global benefit from the job gain to a Chinese worker exceeded the marginal global cost from a lost US manufacturing job, b.) the U.S. was shifting toward a service sector economy anyway and needed to reposition its workforce accordingly and c.) the transition costs of shifting workers across sectors in the U.S. were minimal.

As a consequence – and through a succession of administrations – the US tolerated implicit subsidies of Chinese industries, including national industrial policy designed to strip production from the US.

It's a straight path from these policies to Donald Trump, particularly as Mr. Duy observes, the transition costs were not minimal, they were huge.

Thanks, Bill.

A Bright Side to Brexit

While there is a lot of talk about wealth being lost, for the overwhelming majority of the British public, there is very little wealth to be lost, and Theresa May's plans to deal with the fallout involving the end of the stupid and self destructive austerity program:

When the initiative to take the United Kingdom out of the European Union was being debated, many people, including many economists, predicted the country would be hit with a severe recession. It didn't happen. The economy seems to be moving along fine, with no recession in sight, although the London real estate market is not looking very good. Of course the UK has not left the European Union yet, or even developed a plan to do so, but it is unlikely that many would want to place much money on that recession bet today.

Apparently, the conservative government has now abandoned its plans for further austerity and a balanced budget. It is expected to spend an additional $187 billion over the next five years (roughly 1.0 percent of GDP) to boost the economy and create jobs. According to the NYT, this spending is a direct response to concerns over the plight of working class people who voted for Brexit in large numbers.

This outcome is worth noting, because the boost to the economy from additional spending is likely to be larger than any drag on growth as a result of leaving the European Union. This would mean that the net effect of Brexit on growth would be positive. Of course the UK government could have abandoned its austerity path without Brexit, but probably would not have done so. Given the political context, working class voters who wanted to see more jobs and a stronger welfare state likely made the right vote by supporting Brexit. This doesn't excuse the racist sentiments that motivated many Brexit supporters, but it is important to recognize the economic story here.

If this continues, the wealthy may take a hit, but the bottom 99% might do quite a bit better.

Another Silver Lining

The Obama administration has given up on the idea of passing the TPP during the lame duck session of Congress.

This is unsurprising. Trump was uncharacteristically precise on his position on the trade deal during the campaign, and as such, it is highly unlikely that Obama would get the necessary support from Congressional Republicans that he would need to pass the trade agreement:

White House officials conceded on Friday that the president’s hard-fought-for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would not pass Congress, as lawmakers there prepared for the anti-global trade policies of President-elect Donald Trump.

Earlier this week, congressional leaders in both parties said they would not bring the trade deal forward during a lame-duck session of Congress, before the formal transition of power on 20 January.

The Democratic senator Chuck Schumer, who will be minority leader in the next Congress, told union leaders the trade deal would not pass. Senator Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s Republican majority leader, told reporters “no” when asked if Congress would consider the TPP.

So, Barack Obama loses one items that he hoped would cement his legacy as President, and the rest of us win.

My heart bleeds borscht for you, Mr. President.

Damn, Damn!

Wallonia caved, and in response to language that changes nothing about the deal, has authorized the Belgian government to sign off on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, including its irreversible privitization and ISDS provisions:

European Union leaders have expressed hope of signing a trade deal with Canada after Belgian politicians overcame differences that had been blocking the treaty.

The Belgian prime minister, Charles Michel, confirmed that leaders of five regional parliaments had reached an agreement with the federal government shortly after midday on Thursday. He tweeted:

………

The Belgian compromise – a four-page text that sits alongside the 1,600-page treaty – was approved by ambassadors from 28 EU member states on Thursday afternoon. Belgium’s regional parliaments are expected to endorse the text on Friday, paving the way for the deal to come into force on a temporary basis.

Expect to see higher drug prices, the end to the precautionary principle, the gutting of safety, employment, and environmental protections, and a growth in the most parasitic parts of the financial industry as a result.

This is a Very Good Point

The ISDS for the TPP explicitly excludes tobacco from the ISDS.

This raises an interesting point: Why is this OK, but mining companies who poison the surrounding people, or Chiquita spraying its workers with toxic pesticides deserves protection.

Now, people are beginning to notice the moral inconsistency:

One of the last pieces of horse-trading that went on in order to conclude the TPP deal involved corporate sovereignty, aka investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), and tobacco. As we reported a year ago, a "carve-out" for tobacco was agreed, which was designed to assuage fears that tobacco companies would use TPP's ISDS mechanism to challenge health measures like plain packs -- something that Philip Morris attempted against both Australia and Uruguay. Now, it looks like the idea is spreading, as Simon Lester points out on the International Economic Law and Policy Blog: 

………

More generally, the appearance of this carve-out for tobacco raises a question Mike asked a year ago: if corporate sovereignty is such a bad idea for this industry, why not for others that can cause harm -- like the extractive industries, for example? And once people start asking these kinds of questions, it's not long before they realize that putting companies above national laws, and letting them sue governments in supranational tribunals, makes no sense at all for any sector. Calls to drop the entire ISDS system have been growing for a while; the latest move by Australia and Singapore is likely to make them louder.

True dat.