Submitted to AMA House of Delegates

206 Trade Deals Must Not Threaten Health or Environment (B)

Introduced by:  American Association of Public Health Physicians

WHEREAS the legal foundation for Public Health is government’s ability to regulate conduct that threatens health and safety; and

WHEREAS international trade and investment have many important benefits, when correctly regulated; and

WHEREAS international trade agreements customarily provide for dispute-resolution tribunals separate from international courts, and whose decisions supersede the decisions of local, state, and national courts; and

WHEREAS many international trade agreements allow their dispute-resolution tribunals to set aside national health and environmental regulations if these regulations decrease any entity’s expected profits from international trade; and

WHEREAS multinational cigarette corporations have used the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions of previous treaties to sue governments that have instituted new rules to protect their citizens from smoking-related damage; and

WHEREAS multinational resource-extraction corporations have used the Investor-State Dispute Settlement provisions of previous treaties to sue governments that have updated their rules to protect the environment from damage related to mining and resource extraction; and

WHEREAS the current U.S. Administration is negotiating a massive new trade agreement with Pacific Rim nations, representing well over two billion people, to be called the “Trans-Pacific Partnership”; and

WHEREAS negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership have been conducted secretly, with participation by private corporations and by the executive branch – but without meaningful participation by other elected officials, and without any participation by other public-interest groups; and

WHEREAS the provisions of international treaties generally override national, state, and local laws; and

WHEREAS a badly written international treaty can threaten the legal foundation for Public Health; and

WHEREAS Congress is considering “fast track” legislation that, if passed, would not allow enough time to educate Americans on the grave consequences of a badly written agreement; therefore be it

RESOLVED that our AMA opposes any trade agreement that compromises Americans’ ability to institute new health and environmental laws and rules; and be it further

RESOLVED that our AMA advocates that Americans receive sufficient time, after the full text of any proposed international agreement becomes public,  to consider the full implications (including health and environmental implications) of the agreement’s actual provisions.