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TTIP represents financial imperialism: Analyst

Wednesday, 04 May 2016 5:09 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 04 May 2016 5:08 AM ]

People read classified papers from the ongoing US-EU trade talks, presented to the public by Greenpeace in a glass container near the Brandenburger Gate, in Berlin, May 2, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Paul Craig Roberts, a former US assistant secretary of Treasury, and Sean O’Grady, a finance editor at The Independent, to discuss the proposed US-EU free trade deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

Roberts says the TTIP represents the worst form of “financial economic imperialism” in the history of the world.

He says deal has nothing to do with trade and that it only makes corporations immune to the sovereign law of countries.

“These agreements, both the Transatlantic and Transpacific so-called partnerships, they are not trade agreements. What they do is [that] they make global corporations independent of the sovereignty of nations. So any global corporation cooperating in any country that agrees to this pact can sue [the government] on the grounds that any policy that the government has... in any way impacts the profits,” he says.

The analyst goes on to say that these trade agreements are “special privileges” for global corporations, giving them the power to rule independent sovereign governments.

Roberts further argues that the TTIP is the most “anti-democratic, fascistic” deal, and agreeing to it is considered “treason” because the countries will be sacrificing their sovereignty to global corporations.

O’Grady, for his part, believes people are right to be worried about the sovereignty of nations and democratic accountability but sooner or later they will have to make short-term “sacrifices” to make these deals work for longer-term “gain, prosperity and advantage.”

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