The latest trend in trade secrets: Serve corporations

Mining companies are already taking full advantage of these pacts. Foreign companies can challenge national rules restricting arsenic, cyanide, and other forms of pollution in global trade panels, and governments have been forced to pay up for enforcing their own laws. As El Salvador has learned through its attempt to outlaw gold-mining over the objections of Canada’s Pacific Rim Mining Corp., the litigation process is long, convoluted, and expensive.

The new trade deals Obama is championing would make it even easier for global corporations to override national laws that get in their way. For one thing, they may override our Dodd-Frank Law on financial regulation. That would allow international banks to “streamline” regulations and once again create reckless new securities. PhRMA, too, is looking for friendlier international regulations, even though it already uses NAFTA and other accords to challenge patent laws it finds inconvenient.
http://www.bristolpress.com/articles/2013/09/29/opinion/doc52478d226d0d9572637873.txt