TPP has inherent financing flaws

Economists at Peterson Institute for International Economics and Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated how cross-border financial flows generate problems because investors and borrowers do not know (or ignore) the effects their financial decisions have on the financial stability of a given country.

In particular, foreign investors may well push a country into financial difficulties - and even a crisis. Given that constant source of risk, regulating cross-border finance can correct this market failure and also make markets function more efficiently.

This is a key reason why the IMF changed its position on the crucial issue of capital flows; it now recognizes that capital flows create risks - particularly waves of capital inflows followed by sudden stops -which can cause devastating financial instability. To avoid such instability, the IMF now recommends the use of cross-border financial regulations.

I observed this entire process up close when I led a Boston University task force that examined the risks of capital flows between developed and developing countries. Our main focus was on the extent to which the regulation of cross-border finance was compatible with many of the trade and investment treaties across the globe.

The task force consisted of former and current central bank officials, IMF and World Trade Organization functionaries, members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, scholars, and representatives of civil society. We found that US trade and investment treaties were the ones least compatible with new thinking and policy on regulating global finance. The report was published earlier this year.

US treaties still mandate that all forms of finance move across borders freely and without delay, even though that was a key component in triggering the global financial crisis. Deals like the TPP will only make it worse, because they would allow private investors to directly file claims against governments that regulate them. This would be a significant departure from a WTO-like system where nation-states (that is, the regulators) decide whether claims can be filed.

Therefore, under the so-called investor-state dispute settlement procedure, a few financial companies would have the power to sue others for the cost of financial instability to the public that the companies themselves were instrumental in creating.

Can there be a more pernicious way to deal with these issues? It seems like a repeat of the classic trope, "heads, I win; tails, you lose".

Such provisions also fly in the face of recommendations on investment by a group of 250-odd US and globally renowned economists in 2011. The IMF decided to embrace this new thinking in 2012, saying: "These agreements in many cases do not provide appropriate safeguards or proper sequencing of liberalization, and could thus benefit from reform to include these protections."

If even a traditionally conservative institution like the IMF can get its head around these new realities, why can't the US government?

Until Washington sees more clearly the connection between the problems carelessly created by financial companies, which are often headquartered in the US, and what their actions mean for the economic and social fate of hundreds of millions of people, there can be only one logical consequence. Emerging market economies should refrain from taking on new trade and investment commitments unless they have in place proper cross-border financial regulations.

Leaked text from a TPP document reveals that Chile and other countries have given suggestions that could provide such safeguards. If the US really intends to establish a trans-Pacific partnership, then it should work with Chile and Malaysia to devise an approach that gives all of the potential TPP member countries the tools they need to prevent and mitigate financial crises.

The author is an associate professor of international relations at Boston University and part of the Ford Foundation's project, Reforming Global Financial Governance.