I opened this page up, skipped forward to the first highlighted section (18. Intellectual Property), and skimmed to the first annotation. The original text:
1. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter.
The annotation:
In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development.
That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself.
I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.
No. That's exactly how it's going to work in real life: The weaker parties (countries) will get sucked through legalize gibberish and the local governments will have no power over some corporation. So instead of serving the public good, they will have to serve some corp. This is not the reason they were elected though - I see this happening as we speak and it's not going to stop in my country, unfortunately. The TPP is just a trojan horse, nothing more.
This is going to be exactly like the UN: It will work when the stronger parties want it to work (US, China, Russia, etc.) and will not work when choose to bypass it without excuses.
> That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself.
Isn't this just semantics though? If you can use economic force (damage claims against the governments themselves), its just as effective as using executive/legislative force to "override" local law [1].
> I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts.
Luckily, they can! It's on Github. Its just a matter of finding legal experts willing to mark it up.
No, it's not just semantics. The plain wording of the annotation, by one of the site's sponsors, is that the TPP "overrides local laws". It does not.
The equivalence between allowing a trade treaty to literally rewrite our laws and allowing a trade treaty to settle economic claims is not at all clear to me.
There are lots of trade agreements that allow for economic settlements in the same fashion, so, if this argument is valid, it should be easy for you to find an example of a ruinous economic judgement against a country owing to laws it drafted that contravene such a treaty.
> Between 1995 and 1997 the Canadian government banned the export of toxic PCB waste, in order to comply with its obligations under the Basel Convention, of which the United States is not a party. Waste treatment company S.D. Myers then sued the Canadian government under NAFTA Chapter 11 for $20 millions in damages. The claim was upheld by a NAFTA Tribunal in 2000
> Canada has been the target of over 70% of all NAFTA claims since 2005. Currently, Canada faces nine active claims challenging a wide range of government measures that allegedly interfere with the expected profitability of foreign investments. Foreign investors are seeking over $6 billion in damages from the Canadian government. These include challenges to a ban on fracking by the Quebec provincial government and a decision by a Canadian federal court to invalidate a pharmaceutical patent on the basis that it was not sufficiently innovative or useful.
So I wonder: did you actually have a look yourself and came up empty, or do these examples somehow not fit the bill? I'm not claiming to be up to speed on this stuff, maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here.
I'm suprised that no one has mentioned the John Oliver bit that dwells specifically on just that. An attempt by an enormous multinational to "ruin" a tiny country who's local laws would've cut significantly into their profits. This isn't an isolated case either.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st...
Again, all you have to do is find an example of a trade treaty exacting ruinous settlements over local laws. It should be easy for you to cite a source.
It was, I'm sorry. I just get really frustrated reading your responses to comments in threads where you are really active and appear to just ignore any comments that counter you with evidence.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone that always has to be right? Whenever they realize they are wrong, they don't even admit it and they just change the subject. It's tiresome and disrespectful to the other party and that's what selective responses come across as.
(a) There is a difference between simply not agreeing with people and "ignoring any comments that counter you with evidence".
(b) The argument I had on this thread was much narrower than the one people seemed to want to have. I had something negative to say about FFTF. People on the thread want to argue about how bad TPP is. I'm not going to respond to "evidence" against arguments I didn't make.
(c) The biggest reason I didn't respond to comments on this thread was that I wasn't home for most of yesterday. Sorry, I don't feel obligated to cancel plans to address comments on threads.
This comment, sadly buried lower in the thread, does a much better job of making my argument than I did:
I don't even know what all of those words mean exactly (they are your words, not mine). 'Ruinous' in particular would seem to be a difficult one to precisely define. Where one sees ruin, another may see and proclaim justice.
If it is so easy to find sources of these ruinous settlements, as you claim, why don't you list some too?
Try searching for "Argentina IMF", "Zapatistas NAFTA".
I'm would guess that some would consider something to be ruin, and that it being ruin is its justice? I am not sure how to word that better.
I mean, In the same way that one might see an execution as justice being done, one might see a ruining as justice being done, and consider it to be ruining in the same way?
I think "ruining" might be more like "killing" than it is like "murdering". But I am not sure.
Country X wants concession A from Y, who in turn wants concession B from X. They agree to trade concessions and encode it in a treaty.
For several years, X and Y enjoy the economic benefits of those concessions.
Then X passes a law that vitiates, say, 50% of the economic benefit of concession B. It is now free-riding off Y; Y is giving it concession A, but X is only giving 50% of concession B owing to the law that contravenes the treaty.
Y is entitled to make a claim for damages. Not to change the law (treaties don't work that way), but rather to make and resolve the argument of the form "I am giving you (A) and you're only giving me 0.5(B); make up the difference in cash."
So we're establishing a property-like right to a profit in perpetuity, and if the product in question is found to be harmful the seller is entitled to compensation?
That's how the "concession" will pay out in practice.
Y is entitled to make a claim for damages
Your example is slightly off. In the TPP, it's not the countries that are parties to the treaty that are suing, but individual businesses.
(There are plenty of treaties that oblige the passing of laws directly, as a means of implementing the treaty; everything from the Montreal convention on air passenger compensation to NAFTA)
Too bad they don't have anchors for significant sections/items, I'd direct link the definition of "Party" given in the treaty. But the text I quoted is on that page there.
Uh, it's a corporation that sues the host government. For lost profits.
This is presumably supposed to be a strong incentive to prevent host governments from changing their laws in such a way that they might damage guest company profits. Much like a fine for breaking the law.
Why would you consider that a controversial point of view?
>provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter
Specifically, if there is a local law that requires measures that are not consistent with the provisions of the mentioned chapter, it can easily be argued that this agreement overrides that local law.
Also, why even include this language, if it does nothing special, as you seem to be claiming?
In Message Board Law, anything "can be argued", but it remains not the case that the TPP overrides local laws.
How do you think it would even work, for a trade treaty to override a law in New Zealand? Is the idea that the US would invade New Zealand to revoke the law at the RIAA's behest?
Not "override" in the sense of changing local law at the conclusion of the case, but "override" in the sense of a trade tribunal deciding against a given state's laws (on the basis of a prior trade agreement), and the state having to pay damages etc. so that it does not breach the previous trade agreement: https://www.ag.gov.au/tobaccoplainpackaging (ongoing, at least with WTO it seems, but not the original investor-state case. The latter was/is Australia vs. Phillip Morris Asia.)
That is most probably evidence for a rather weaker point, cf. the one you argued against.
Kim Dotcom didn't even step foot in US jurisdiction, and the US copyright cartel is using the US Federal Attorney's office to attempt to extradite him from New Zealand.
There are international courts to handle treaty disputes and breaches. It would doubtless run on for years but eventually result in the NZ government having to pay compensation.
Economic force has always been part of the informal toolkit of imperial states and their corporate allies (just ask Iran or Cuba). Now the TPP is formalizing that practice. It remains to be seen whether or not this formal arrangement is sufficient to dissuade the informal ones or if actors such as the US decide to do an end-run-around the agreement any time it disfavours their interests.
The page is compressing the three-step process[0] for overriding local prerogative into one step. Perhaps this is disingenuous but your implication that step 1 doesn't imply steps 2 and 3 are likewise disingenuous.
At any rate, I'd urge everyone to take a look at Brad Delong's critique of the TPP[2], which focuses heavily on the dispute resolution process. Surely we can all agree that he knows a little more about international economics than the average HN poster?
[0]:
Step 1) Pass an international treaty with a corporate/government dispute resolution process.
Step 2) Get sued for having non-mandated local laws, lose, and receive expensive economic sanctions.
Step 3) "Regrettably" change local laws to conform to the agreement.
This is analogous to Sir Humphey's three-step process for dealing with international crisis: 1) Nothing's going to happen. 2) Something may happen but there's nothing we can do. 3) Perhaps there was something we could have done but it's too late now.
Second, the site you're pointing to alludes to concerns about the newness and untested nature of the settlement process in TPP, but contains none of the sovereignty arguments that thread is concerned with.
Third, the site you've linked to only alludes to those concerns, which he must have written about elsewhere. It does not "focus heavily on the dispute resolution process".
Brad DeLong has a lot of negative stuff to say about TPP (he's a longtime opponent of rent extraction through intellectual property; it's one of the "beats" on his blog at NBER, and if unifying Asia and the Pacific Rim in a trade agreement against China is the #1 goal of TPP, harmonizing global IP laws with those of the US is the #2 goal), and I find a lot of what he says persuasive.
But I'm not commenting here in defense of TPP. I am happy to substitute DeLong's opinions on the economic impact of TPP for my own.
But the annotation FFTF wrote on TPP is misleading and wrong, like much of what FFTF writes.
1) My interest, and I think the interest of most people here is to understand the economic and political consequences of the TPP, not to obscure them with legal sophistry.
2) Delong's point is that the members are binding themselves to an international framework that will be difficult or impossible to back out of. He connects this with the problems of the EU. This is absolutely about sovereignty.
3) Unfortunately the main article appears to be a Monk debate which isn't available online.
4) Delong is a voracious advocate of free trade and also a political ally of the president who's trying to ram this one through. The fact that he's increasingly become hostile to this particular agreement is an indictment of the agreement, not of him as a critic.
I wasn't indicting DeLong as a critic. Like I said, I probably agree with most of what he's written about TPP. I just don't think he's making the specific claim you say he is.
By analogy, the US 4th amendment protects against "unreasonable search and seizure", yet in reality non-criminals are having billions of dollars' worth of money and property seized by the government. Why, because of a literal and technical interpretation of the letter of the law: ( "The rights of the people" vs "we're not prosecuting the people, we're prosecuting the assets, see, no law violated ! " ).
So what's going to happen is, laws that protect people from leaded drinking water are going to be annulled because they aren't "consistent with the provisions of the Chapter".
TPP is really simple: it protects corporations at all costs. Dont make this into some complex legal production.
>That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves
Yet the net effect will be exactly that. The distinction is barely worth making.
> Yet the net effect will be exactly that. The distinction is barely worth making.
Assuming the foreign government in question actually decides to pursue action, more than one country has a history of ignoring WTO rulings not in their favor, despite their obligation to obey them.
Why would the TPP be different?
I think the TPP is not a great thing, but talking about foreign governments overriding local law is somewhat of a exaggeration.
Right. So, kind of like Ecuador letting Occidental back in after kicking them out for breach of contract. It might have had something to do with the lawsuit Occidental launched against them that cost them their entire health budget for the year but then again, perhaps it was just an extraordinary coincidence.
>Since governments settle economic claims against each other all the time //
I don't recall this sort of thing except in fines by the EU on member states - can you give examples to demonstrate to us all how commonplace it is?
Of course the claims will be by corporations - like the issues states have had with the tobacco corps suing when attempts to improve the health of the populous have cut in to profits.
ISDS (investor-state dispute settlement) provisions attempt to make up for the fact that the judicial system in some countries might not be available to work out disagreements between a corporation and a government. The corporation might not have standing, or the courts might not be independent enough to provide a fair hearing.
Companies won't invest unless they have a way to work out disagreements. Nations want foreign investment, so they are willing to provide an alternate way to work out disagreements--and that alternate way is ISDS.
My apologies Thomas; my EDIT was not directed at you (just in general). I've seen you write long enough on HN that I know that's not your style (downvote for disagreement).
Sovereign immunity is waived in case of monetary damages, so I believe they already can. Nor is there any reason why in principle they shouldn't, if the inverse is permitted.
>Nor is there any reason why in principle they shouldn't //
Philip Morris moved to Switzerland. Switzerland had a trade agreement with Uruguay. Uruguay take public health actions (increase size of warnings on cigarette packets). Now PM tobacco can sue Uruguay for enacting laws that harm a Swiss company. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-feat...)
That seems a reason not to allow this sort of thing.
Or at very least to ensure that certain types of actions of states are allowed regardless of impact on extra-national corporations profits - anything that improves the health of citizens for example.
A limitation of recompense up to the total tax paid by that corporation in the relevant country would be a good clause too.
Imagine is coffee is found to cause bowel cancer and instead of using funds to help your citizens your country pays Starbucks for their lost profits because you issued a notice to your citizens warning them of the detrimental effect; meanwhile Starbucks through clever IPR moves have offshored most of their profits and avoided paying tax in your country ...
The first half of the sentence is essentially "granting" the country the ability to make its own laws. It can't grant that, those powers pre-exist the agreement, and therefore it's an empty statement. The only purpose of it is to make the second half of the sentence - the one that removes powers - more palatable.
The semantically equivalent sentence without that rhetorical dance is: "A party may only make laws that are consistent with this agreement".
That's my point, though. That sentence was convoluted in such a way as to be persuasive.
They said "you can do X, but not Y", instead of saying "You can't do Y". Given that X is emotionally positive, but has no inherent meaning (the treaty is not capable of giving countries the ability to govern themselves, because they already posess it), its only purpose in the sentence is rhetorical (in the actual definition of the word).
It's the argument in this thread that doesn't make sense. In technical language, there are reasons other than persuasiveness and eloquence for the selection of specific words; in fact, those other reasons usually control.
It's the difference between the (rhetorical) Declaration of Independence and its "unalienable rights" and the (technical) Constitution.
This argument in this thread is trying to extrapolate an emotional argument from the selection of words in a technical document.
Sure. What do you believe is the purpose of saying what that clause says rather than badsock's shorter and clearer "A party may only make laws that are consistent with this agreement"?
You seem to be suggesting that somehow the lengthier version is more precise. I don't see how. Am I missing something?
All laws and treaties are forms of persuasion. They exist only to regulate people's behaviour. They are prescriptive, not descriptive. That qualifies them as rhetoric.
Trade agreements and specifically the investor-state dispute settlements they allow can effectively "override" local laws.
Arguably worse, trade agreements can have a chilling effect preventing local laws from being proposed or adopted if they are deemed inconsistent with existing trade agreements.
> Wednesday’s 300-131 vote repealing the country-of-origin labels for meat follows a series of rulings by the World Trade Organization finding the labeling discriminates against animals imported from Canada and Mexico. [0]
> Canada repealed its ban on MMT and agreed to pay Ethyl $13 million in order to avoid the $250 million damages Ethyl claimed in its NAFTA suit. [1]
> EU moves to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals linked to cancer and male infertility were shelved following pressure from US trade officials over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) free trade deal, newly released documents show. [2]
> Countries around the globe are implementing tobacco control policies from graphic warning labels to plain packaging and the tobacco industry has responded, using investor-state dispute settlement provisions in trade and investment treaties to both challenge countries’ policies and threaten others. The industry actions have had a significant chilling effect intimidating other countries from moving forward with policies to prevent or reduce tobacco consumption. The tobacco industry’s behavior is a real and direct threat to public health. [3]
That's how it will work (it's clearly the intention). There are historic precedents already, when local laws were changed to "conform to international obligations" even though it was pretty clear those changes were crooked and should never have been introduced. The most infamous example is DMCA. More on this kind of corrupted policy laundering see https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/ustr-secret-copyright-...
TL;DR: such kind of agreements are a powerful lawmaking tool which bypasses democratic process and creates laws through backdoors.
> The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws
Others have commented on this, but I'm curious where you get foreign governments from - is it part of the sections/comment you quote - but just accidentally left out of your quote?
Because as I understand it, one of the many serious grievances people have with the TPP is that it grants international corporations a legal framework in which they can bully states into changing/not passing laws that "limit" trade, even in the name of public interest.
See sibling comments for examples of how corporations have worked against nation states wrt eg nationalising oil, or limiting marketing of cigarettes.
Do citizens get to file damage claims against the government when a corporation harms public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development?
No. The TPP is an agreement to guarantees foreign corporate interests are served at least as high priority as local civilian interests, and there is no reverse law that give governments the right to fine corporations that harm their citizen (e.g., as in Bhopal)
You seem hung up on the point the governments are choosing to agree to pay off multinational corporations, and choosing not to defend their citizens' interests, as though that's somehow OK because the governments made that decision voluntarily.
I think it's pretty accurate. There are already examples of how this works.
Philip Morris has sued Australia for forcing warning-signs on tobacco packages. They've used a few methods, one avenue has been to sue through trade agreements.
> The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself.
Distinction without a difference? Unless you're saying it's the companies that "override" the laws, not foreign govs. Then I agree. But the more important point is that the "overriding" happens anyway.
The companies still comply with the laws. The laws have not been overridden. The companies get compensated for a change in the laws, but compensation for changing something doesn't mean the change is overridden.
The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws...
Isn't that exactly what treaties are for? In this case people are complaining that the treaty allows foreign corporations to claim damages in a court not subject to local laws. This has been argued many times before on HN (I'm on a phone or I'd look up some examples myself by searching for "tpp dispute resolution").
Sorry I'm not credible enough for you tptacek. FYI the site is still a work in progress and most of the experts in our coalition are still working on their annotations. That said, you're welcome to add your own annotations if you think my interpretation didn't give fascism a fair shake.
The problem with your annotations is not that they "didn't give fascism a fair shake". The problem is that you tend to do a poor job of reading the TPP text, and also often seem to have not done the necessary background research in the area a given TPP section covers to understand the meaning.
Some examples. Your annotation to Article 20.2 section 3: "TPP prohibits environmental laws that create a “restriction on trade.”
What TPP actually says in that section is "disguised restriction on trade". Either you missed the word "disguised", or did not recognize that the phrase "disguised restriction on trade" is almost a term of art in international trade agreements and so should be taken in TPP with the same interpretation and effect it has been given in the numerous other treaties in which it appears.
Article 18.2, which says:
A Party may provide limited exceptions to the rights
conferred by a trademark, such as fair use of
descriptive terms, provided that those exceptions
take account of the legitimate interest of the owner
of the trademark and of third parties.
Your annotation is:
For example, if someone posts a YouTube video
criticizing McDonald's® for making terrible food
and destroying the environment, this would
ordinarily be protected under the U.S. Constitution.
But, under the TPP, any public use of the
McDonald's® brand would only be allowable if it is
in the legitimate interest of McDonald's®, the
trademark holder. Since a video criticizing them
would never be in their “legitimate interest,”
McDonald's® could be able to bring an ISDS
complaint against the U.S. government and force the
video to be taken down.
You somehow managed to read "take into account of the legitimate interests of" as meaning "in the legitimate interest of", which is quite different.
Article 18.37 section 2 says:
Subject to paragraphs 3 and 4 and consistent with
paragraph 1, each Party confirms that patents are
available for inventions claimed as at least one of
the following: new uses of a known product, new
methods of using a known product, or new processes
of using a known product. A Party may limit those
new processes to those that do not claim the use of
the product as such.
Your annotation is: "Being able to patent “new uses of a known product” will allow patent-holders to make very minor tweaks to existing products to effectively extend their patents forever. Pharmaceutical companies love it!"
18.37 section 2 is just requiring that being just a new use of a known product does not automatically exclude something from patentability. It does not get rid of each country's general requirements for patentability, such as the US requirement for novelty, non-obviousness, and usefulness.
"... the TPP elevates investor rights over human rights and democracy, threatening an even broader array of public policy decisions than described above. This, unfortunately, is the all-too-predictable result of a secretive negotiating process in which hundreds of corporate advisors had privileged access to negotiating texts, while the public was barred from even reviewing what was being proposed in its name.
The TPP does not deserve your support. Had Fast Track not become law, Congress could work to remove the misguided and detrimental provisions of the TPP, strengthen weak ones and add new provisions designed to ensure that our most vulnerable families and communities do not bear the brunt of the TPP’s many risks. Now that Fast Track authority is in place for it, Congress is left with no means of adequately amending the agreement without rejecting it entirely. We respectfully ask that you do just that."
This is great and all and is something that should absolutely be shared, however, if the intent behind this project is to share it with 'the average' person it's completely useless.
No one's going to read through that entire thing, I'd expect them to at least put up a summarized version.
We should hire someone to do the summaries for us. And since they'll already understand it, we should have them vote for or against it based on our best interest.... wait...
except that we don't have that. we have representatives that have piles of money from corporations and special interests. these piles of money on the two sides of the scale are what drive any decision around voting.
I did write to them, multiple times (and even got a response from one of them that they oppose it, which interestingly changed form the past). I'll give a call as well.
It doesn't matter what the TPP actually says, or how that relates to the status quo. All that matters is that you are outraged about it, and you're angry and you're not going to take it for one more second. Whatever it is.
I am legitimately pissed that the entire treaty was negotiated behind closed doors and we the people won't get any say about something that will have a big impact on the joined economies.
There's no other sane way to negotiate large international treaties. The moment you open it to the public tens of thousands of political advocacy groups, lobbying groups, interest groups, protesters, etc from each country start yelling about all the things they want changed. You can't negotiate if your needs keep changing or are conflicting.
Whether we like it or not the TPP really is the "gold standard" of international treaties. Unfortunately it turns out no treaty at all is probably better anyway.
Cloudflare's captchas are nearly impossible to solve, which means that Tor users are effectively blocked from seeing the site. Would you consider using something other than Cloudflare to host the site?
When that happens I always just click “New Tor Circuit for this Site” repeatedly, until I get one of the other two forms of CAPTCHA, both of which are solveable.
Yeah, it can take quite a while sometimes, but eventually I always get one. For this site I got an easy one on the second try.
I used to try to solve the hard ones, but I found I could not do it; it’s most often impossible to guess what all the letters are in the garbled mess with inverted blobs on top. From your example, I think it’s supposed to be “Thtllyt nthrwhyy”, but I’m usually wrong.
I think the positive benefit of this effort will likely be undermined (and it’s already underway) by reactionary comments from uninformed people. They'll play well to people that already know the TPP sucks, but not from those on the fence or really wanting to learn about it.
So, there isn't anything worth spending time understanding it for the outside viewer? Only for those who live inside this "TPP club" and care about local laws?
I'm by no means an expert, but this is an international treaty, so I suppose I would find out if your host country is currently in talks to implement it.
Regardless, for better or worse, things that negatively effect the US of A tend to negatively effect the rest of the West.
It is ridiculous that after months of Obama telling people to "just read it", he dumped the agreement as ~268 separate PDFs.
No body has time for that. It's nice that they have pared this down to 31 different sections, but my guess is that they are not showing the full agreement here.
It would be much nicer if someone just dumped it all into a single PDF and HTML file.
Edit: Care to leave a comment rationalizing your downmods?
"He" didn't dump the agreement as separate PDFs; that's how these things are almost always handled because most people involved are focused on specific areas (be they negotiators, interest groups, or concerned citizens). Other governments published the text in exactly the same way [1].
The USTR also published the full text on Medium [2] for anyone who doesn't want to download a PDF.
There are plenty of issues worth discussing when it comes to the text itself and the way the original negotiations were conducted, but arguing that the final agreement hasn't been made accessible is really not a legitimate complaint.
The US Constitution only grants treaty making powers to the President. Any treaty that claims to come from someone other than the current US President is not and cannot be a valid treaty.
Edit:
"That’s why I am posting the text of this agreement here for you to read and explore." (Authorship Claim: Barack Obama) [4]
Check out the source on Github. We actually went through the entire TPP and turned the chapters into Markdown text files. It's a bit easier to parse that way than the dozens of PDFs or Medium posts.
1. A Party may, in formulating or amending its laws and regulations, adopt measures necessary to protect public health and nutrition, and to promote the public interest in sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development, provided that such measures are consistent with the provisions of this Chapter.
The annotation:
In other words, the TPP overrides any domestic laws protecting public health and nutrition, or socio-economic development.
That's not at all how the TPP works. The treaty doesn't allow foreign governments to "override" local laws, but rather allows for damage claims against the governments themselves if they enact and enforce laws contrary to the agreements in the TPP itself.
I'd really like the TPP annotated by legal experts. Instead, it's annotated by the CTO of Fight For The Future. I'm not sure that's a win.