Kevin P. Gallagher and Jayati Ghosh
Part of a Triple Crisis series leading up to the Nov. 11-12 G-20 meetings.
With US President Barack Obama in India on his way to next week’s G-20 meeting in South Korea, Triple Crisis Blog co-chairs Gallagher and Ghosh published the following opinion article in “Mint” (daily newspaper of the Wall Street Journal in India) on the dangers to both countries of leaders’ announced intentions to negotiate a bi-lateral investment treaty. Read more in the Triple Crisis series on the G-20 and on investment treaty reform.
Dangers of Unrestrained Commerce
The visit of US President Barack Obama to India this week is heightening expectations about a host of new bilateral initiatives, such as a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) between India and the US. Even if it is not formally signed during this visit, negotiations for such a treaty are already on. But the benefits of such a treaty are highly questionable and the dangers are many.
BITs are extensions of the attempt in the late 1990s by rich nations to impose a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) that would have significantly reduced regulation of the activities of multinational companies by governments in host countries. That effort failed, but the US and the European Union (EU) pushed to include it in trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) forum in 2003. India played a key role in blocking that particular effort, along with other developing countries.