TransCanada is suing the United States for $15 billion because we won’t let them build the Keystone XL pipeline. This lawsuit is being brought under NAFTA provisions, and bad trade deals like NAFTA and the TPP will continue to screw American citizens for generations. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript of the above video:
TransCanada, the company that wanted to build the Keystone Exxon Pipeline from Canada down to the Gulf Coast, is now suing the United States for $15 billion in damages, after the Unites States government refused to allow them to build this dangerous pipeline. They’re bringing the lawsuit under NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. This is what a lot of people don’t seem to understand about things like NAFTA, and what could possibly happen under President Obama’s TPP. Is that foreign corporations are given more privileges and more rights than the citizens of the host country? This is not the first NAFTA environmental lawsuit challenge that’s come up in recent years. A few years ago, Exxon actually sued the Canadian government because they refused to allow them a permit for offshore drilling, and Exxon won, and was allowed to go against the laws of the Canadian government and build an off-shore oil rig in areas that were protected.
This is what happens under these trade agreements. When we give corporations too much power, like President Obama wants to do with TPP, we’re saying that we value your profits, your company’s motives, more than we value the lives and livelihoods of citizens of the United States. We have to stand up against this, because this Keystone Exxon lawsuit, probably not going to go very well for the United States government. Again, because we signed NAFTA. We gave them the right to do this. We said, “You are more important than American citizens.” As usual, it’s come back to bite us in the ass.
