This is from Janyce McGregor of the CBC:
The preliminary trade agreement the U.S. recently reached with Mexico may offer a glimpse of what could happen with NAFTA's Chapter 11.
A U.S. official said the two countries wanted ISDS to be "limited" to cases of expropriation, bias against foreign companies or failure to treat all trading partners equally.
However, for "companies that have contracts with the government," the official continued, "old-fashioned ISDS" would remain in play for certain sectors: oil and gas, infrastructure, energy generation and telecommunications.
I've heard a couple different descriptions of what the new NAFTA ISDS provisions will look like, but this is the most common one, so let's assume it is what's on the table right now. (And let's also assume that the "opt-out" is no longer being considered, as I haven't heard anything about that recently. However, it's hard to say what its actual status is.)
Here's my question: If ISDS is scaled back in the manner described above, will any ISDS critics -- e.g., Elizabeth Warren, Lori Wallach -- be willing to support the new NAFTA? I'm not sure this modest change will have any impact on Congressional voting.
It's worth noting that some interpretations of the non-discrimination provisions are broad enough to allow claims for actions that most people would not consider to be nationality-based discrimination.
