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Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce legislation to protect the health regulations of the United States, and thereby the health of Americans, from the pernicious use of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanism that exists in free trade agreements like NAFTA and the TPP.
Abuses of the ISDS provision have already had harmful effects on the health of our Canadian neighbors, as an ISDS lawsuit essentially forced the Canadian government to abandon its ban of the gasoline additive MMT, a known human neurotoxin.
My legislation, which amends the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountable Act of 2015, known as the TPA, makes it explicitly clear that protecting the health of Americans is a paramount trade negotiating objective of the United States. As it stands today, the TPA falls short of this goal.
During negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership, several nations demanded the ability to dismiss ISDS claims made against their tobacco control measures. This insistence was a tacit acknowledgment that companies use ISDS lawsuits to challenge reasonable state health regulations.
But why only single out tobacco control measures? What about safeguards for other public health measures like lower drug prices under Medicare, food safety regulations, clean air and water regulations, or the Toxic Substances Control Act recently passed by Congress? The fact that a last minute ``tobacco carve-out'' was inserted into the TPP is proof that the trade negotiating objectives currently in TPA are not explicit enough to protect the health of Americans.
The purpose of my legislation is to ensure that all health regulations in the United States are protected from unscrupulous abuses of trade arbitration mechanisms that fall outside of the United States justice system. My legislation instructs the United States Trade Representative to explicitly ensure that no trade agreement gives an investor group the power to hold the health of Americans hostage for monetary gain.
Trade is important to our society, but it should not come at the expense of the health of Americans. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
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