The leaked text provides stark warnings about the dangers of “trade” negotiations occurring without
press, public or policymaker oversight. It reveals that negotiators already have agreed to many radical
terms granting expansive new rights and privileges for foreign investors and their private corporate
enforcement through extra-judicial “investor-state” tribunals.
Although TPP has been branded as a “trade” agreement, the leaked text shows that TPP would limit
how signatory countries may regulate foreign firms operating within their boundaries, with
requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms. The leaked text reveals a two-track
legal system, with foreign firms empowered to skirt domestic courts and laws to directly sue TPP
governments in foreign tribunals. There they can demand compensation for domestic financial, health,
environmental, land use laws and other laws they claim undermine their new TPP privileges.