Abstract
The author illustrates the role of NAFTA in the undermining of government attempts to regulate environmental conditions and public health. Two case studies under NAFTA Chapter 11 are examined: (a) Ethyl Corporation v. Canada and (b) Methanex Corporation v. United States. It is argued that multilateral trade agreements have resulted in limiting the power of governmental bodies to regulate their own environmental conditions and that this has been a consequence of two historical processes: (a) the expansion of trade liberalization under free market systems—part of what Schnaiberg calls the “treadmill of production”—and (b) a shift in sovereignty from the nation-state and multinational corporations to consortia of the former two and newly created “supranational organisms”—what Hardt and Negri call “Empire.”
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