Until recently, TTIP, CETA and similar trade treaties were alien to us. These are new generation trade agreements that seek to strengthen the interests of private elites and serve the most powerful.

In other words, it is a machine that intensifies the processes of empowerment and disempowerment: for international companies to increasingly own their rights, while people, society, organized society, women, immigrants, workers, the environment are expropriated of rights. These agreements have the capacity to destroy everything that lies ahead of them, in the image of Hurricane Harvey. Within the concept of “accumulation by expropriation” perfectly received by the geographer Harvey, they fall completely.

One of the plots of these new generation agreements is that the Investor-State is the system of private courts that are envisaged to resolve cases. This mechanism allows transnational corporations to act directly against the government of a country. For example, the ability of the government of a given region to promote local employment in its area would be eliminated. These commercial packages are intended to ensure that any foreign company enjoys the same rights as local companies. That is a sufficient argument for transnational corporations to open proceedings against local governments. These cases, in addition to astronomical economic fines, are a very serious attack on democracy. And that is that the sovereignty of local governments is bleeding to death.

The Trans-Pacific Agreement (TPP) brings together twelve countries around the Pacific (Japan, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore...), and although it may seem strange, it was the US negative. United States which suspended the agreement in January 2017. Although some media and economic powers link this break with Donald Trump, there are other explanations. In fact, months before Trump’s arrival in the government, the deal was down in the United States: thanks to the strength of the social and trade union movement, Barack Obama did not get enough support to push the TPP forward.

In Europe, the organised protest has received its results in the fight against TTIP and CETA, to the point of calling into question its acceptance. Without social pressure, the CETA would be considered a full European Union (EU) competition agreement and should only be approved by the Council of Europe and Parliament. But social pressure has led the European Commission to recognise that the agreement affects the competences of the EU Member States and therefore has a mixed character. For this reason, they must be ratified by the 28 Member States and by some regional governments.

The initiators of the agreements, unfortunately, are engaged in a permanent struggle and have launched a new threat from the EU recently. Jean-Luc Demarty, head of the Department of Commerce of the European Commission, has announced that from now on they want to change the way of ratification of trade agreements. With Aldatu, it means speeding up the ratification of the agreements and removing the obstacles that may arise along the way. In short, it is intended to prevent the participation of the EU Member States through the selective breakdown of the agreements. Thus, firstly, the European Commission would agree chapters that affect the exclusive competences of the EU and the issues left out would then be negotiated individually.

After Harvey comes Irma shaking everything on the road. The new generation of trade agreements are designed to change name and form, at all costs, so that they can carry out their task: accumulation by expropriation.