Should trade be freed from more fetters?

In the last 30 years, international trade in currency, stocks, bonds, and industrial investment have increased at an incredible rate. And for the last two years, the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has convened 29 of the world's wealthiest countries to negotiate--largely in secret--the Multilateral Agreement on International Investment (MAI). More than 600 nongovernmental organizations oppose the treaty, which may not require legislative approval in the U.S, and seek to educate the public on its provisions.

In the name of more free global-trade investment, the treaty seeks to extend deregulation of international trade to investments. It proposes to give investors the right to challenge in unprecedented ways government policies that threaten their profit-making.

Critics see multiple reasons for alarm in the provisions of the treaty, which were leaked to the press in 1997. In the words of watchdog group Public Citizen, the MAI "would accelerate economic globalization while at the same time greatly restricting the power of governments to control investment policy."

Policies threatened by the MAI include laws governing community reinvestment, environment, and labor. For example, a tobacco company could sue to curtail a country's public-health laws. Restrictions on foreign ownership and human-rights treaties, boycotts, and sanctions tied to economic practices could also be challenged.

The MAI would establish a new legal standing for corporations and investors to sue governments--national, state, and local--and seek compensation for violations of the treaty. By extending the "most favored nation" trade principle to investment rules, governments would have to treat foreign investors the same way they do domestic ones. As of this writing, differences over key elements have delayed the treaty's completion. For more information, visit Public Citizen's MAI Web site,www.citizen.org/ pctrade/MAI/maihome.html