Marx on Free Trade

[Lisa & Ian Murray]

I recently heard a Canadian international trade lawyer state that NAFTA
[specifically, chapter 11] and the GATS 2000 project of the WTO spells the
death of their health care system via litigation ad nauseum.

As for the claim that National courts don't enforce Nafta, what are all
those lawsuits [chapters 6, 7, 11 below] doing in US and Canadian courts?

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Bulletins/nafta.html

These treaties are litigatory boondoggles for trade lawyers; nothing like
expanding market opportunities in rent seeking, what with zero-sum games in
oligopolistic markets becoming increasingly likely and the possibility of
stagflation always around the corner.

The core problem isn't sovereignty; it's the transcendence of democratic
accountability and representation and the balance of interests tests that
have sustained federalist approaches to economic governance that is at issue
with these new regional and global economic "constitutions".

BTW it's state and local governments that really get the shaft with these
agreements.

See volume 31 number 3 Cornell International Law Journal: "Sovereignty by
Subtraction: The Multilateral Agreement on Investment" by Robert Stumberg.

Ian