Why Elizabeth Warren is declaring war on an obscure trade policy [View all]

Populist crusader Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has picked her next big fight, and this one could create real problems for the Obama Administration.

Her beef is with a piece of the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that the Obama Administration is promoting. It's called investor-state dispute settlement, and it gives a foreign corporation the power to fight a government outside of the normal judicial system.

"The name may sound mild, but don't be fooled," Warren wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. "Agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine U.S. sovereignty."

This is a big deal, not least because TPP is huge; its members account for 40 percent of the world's economy. Add in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated with European countries — which also has investor-state dispute settlement provisions — and you have a majority of the global economy. That means the ISDS provisions in these trade agreements could affect a sizable share of the world's corporations.
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http://www.vox.com/2015/2/28/8124057/investor-state-dispute-settlement-elizabeth-warren