TTIP The Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a deal that is being negotiated between the United States and the European Union. One of the biggest criticisms of the deal, interestingly, is that the negotiations are being held behind closed doors, with zero transparency, so that it is very difficult for anybody to know what is in the negotiations. Other criticisms are that the deal, while being billed as a free trade deal, is not really that. In theory, WTO membership should account for significant reductions in trade barriers between the U.S. And EU, so the deal itself would build on that, and add to it. In the UK, critics argue that several elements of the deal are not in line with free trade, but rather a redrawing of the balance of power in favor of multinational corporate interests (Stone, 2015). For those who are not involved in the negotiations, one of the major issues is the inclusion of the dispute settlement mechanism that allows corporations to sue a signatory government over any policy that is claimed to reduce profits. Not surprisingly, people with brains understand that this undermines national sovereignty -- the ability of a nation to protect its environment, or the rights of its citizens...

The public health, water and education services that are provided by European nations could become subject to legal action from corporations, which would lead governments either to unwind those public services, or to pay to corporations in order to maintain those services. Corporations could abuse this, suing over policies that will not be changed, effectively using a signatory government as a cash machine. Worse, it will allow corporations to de facto dictate public policy, undercutting democracy itself (Williams, 2014).
The Investment State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process is one of the major sticking points for the agreement, and rightly so. There is no upside to this, so there is considerable fear among the mandarins who are negotiating this awful deal that the U.S. Congress will focus on that aspect of the deal as something that is a threat to their power, as elected lawmakers. Another sticking point is…