Using a euphemism decried as misleading by public interest groups, Secretary of State John Kerry said this week that American diplomats routinely urge Middle Eastern governments to alter laws to placate multinational corporations and investors.
At a “Middle East Commercial Center Leadership Dinner” at The US Chamber of Commerce, Kerry said Monday that the “elimination of non-tariff trade barriers” is one of many issues “that US officials raise constantly in conversations with our regional counterparts.”
The term has featured heavily in the protracted negotiations over the Trans Pacific Partnership–the first possible multilateral free trade agreement to focus primarily on laws other than those governing tariffs during talks.
When discussing the TPP with Voice of America, Public Citizen trade expert Lori Wallach said American negotiators “label the fundamental environmental, health, safety standards on which our families rely as ‘non-tariff trade barriers.’”
In a report about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership–another US-backed multilateral trade deal currently being hashed out–the Sierra Club said that environmental regulations like “energy efficiency standards or labeling, could be considered non-tariff barriers to trade.”
The Chamber of Commerce has been accused of pushing multilateral trade deals as a way of quietly subverting laws to benefit big businesses. A coalition of progressive groups that called for emergency government action on climate change last May leveled criticism at the corporate lobbying group, charging it with “trying to ram through the Trans-Pacific Partnership” as a means to”give multinational corporate tribunals the power to overrule our democracy.”
