LastWeekTonight
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2015–2021
18:11 · 23M views · Feb 16, 2015
A Last Week Tonight segment on how tobacco companies sustain profits by pushing sales overseas. It covers suits against countries like Australia over plain packaging through trade-deal arbitration.
HN uses it in TPP and trade-deal threads as a clear example of ISDS being used by corporations against governments.
14 comments from Hacker News
A great deal of the Chamber's funding comes from Tobacco companies. In fact there are conference rooms named for them. If you haven't seen Last Week Tonight's take on the international bad behavior of the Tobacco companies I really encourage you to check it out. It's about 18min long, but well worth it: this video They've responded to a shrinking market in the US and other highly developed nations, by doubling down on their efforts to sell to everyone in the rest of the world. And woe to the country with a smaller GDP than Phillip Morris who decides to try to put restrictions on a pack of smokes.
There was a great John Oliver segment on the tobacco industry and how it's evolved to become even more profitable worldwide than it ever was in the US. Highly recommended to watch it. this video
Those pre-TPP cases are nothing compared to the future combined scope of TPP (Pacific), TTIP (Europe) and RCEP (China, Korea, India, and other Asian countries). Never say there is nothing you can do. Tell other people about ISDS. Share the videos [1][2][3][4]. Jon Oliver's video [4] about the Philip Morris tobacco ISDS lawsuit against Australia (for brown paper packaging) caused such an outcry that TPP negotiators were forced to exclude the entire tobacco industry from ISDS. This is the first time such an industry-specific carve-out has appeared in a trade agreement. [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK] [4] this video
Not a fan of Trump but this is a good thing. See this exert from John Oliver on the effect of such trade deals; this video And that's the existing trade deals, TPP would have made it much worse. There is a reason why democratically elected governments need to protect their sovereignty. The scope of the legal provisions along with the requirement to use easily corruptible mediation is superfluous to free trade. In addition, I don't understand those that think boxing out Russia and China from the rest of Europe and Asia is a good thing.
Keep watching - the corporate stuff starts a few minutes in, with the tobacco industry throwing around threats to various countries legislatures to stop those legislatures from passing Australian-style packaging laws and other public-health regulations. edit: if you're in a hurry, try starting at about 5:55 this video