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Investment

Promoting job-creating investment and strengthening the rule of law across the Asia-Pacific.
 
With trade following investment, we are working to ensure that American investors abroad are provided the same kind of opportunities in other markets that we provide at home to both Americans and foreigners alike doing business in the United States. That is why we are working to include in TPP many of the investment obligations that have historically proven to support jobs and economic growth, as well as new provisions to take on emerging investment issues.
 
OBJECTIVES
  • Protect the right of governments to regulate in the public interest.
     
  • Ensure that investment disputes are handled in a transparent and rulesbased manner.
     
  • Establish rules that provide for basic protection against discrimination. This includes:
    • National treatment (treatment no less favorable than a TPP country provides, in like circumstances, to its own investors or investments).
    • Most-favored-nation treatment (treatment no less favorable than a TPP country provides, in like circumstances, to another country’s foreign investors or investments).
       
  • Provide basic protections against uncompensated expropriation of property so that property may not be seized by government without the payment of just compensation, consistent with United States Supreme Court jurisprudence.
     
  • Prevent denial of justice, by which Americans could be denied basic due process in criminal, civil, or administrative proceedings abroad.
     
  • Allow for the transfer of funds related to an investment covered under the Agreement, with exceptions to ensure that governments retain the flexibility to manage volatile capital flows.
     
  • Prohibit specified “performance requirements,” including local content requirements, export requirements, and technology transfer or technology localization requirements.
     
  • Ensure that investors have the ability to appoint senior managers without regard to nationality, and that nationality-based restrictions on the appointment of board members does not impair an investor’s control over its investment.
     
  • Put in place strong safeguards to raise the standards around investor-state dispute settlement, such as by:
    • Discouraging and dismissing frivolous suits.
    • Allowing governments to direct the outcome of arbitral tribunals and to issue interpretations that are binding on tribunals.
    • Making proceedings more transparent by:
      • ͘͘Conducting hearings open to the public.
      • ͘͘Making public notices of arbitration, pleadings, submissions, and awards.
    • Providing for the participation of civil society organizations and other outside parties through the submission of amicus curiae briefs by:
      • ͘͘Labor unions.
      • ͘͘Environmental groups.
      • ͘͘Public health advocates.
      • ͘͘Other stakeholders.
 
RESOURCES
For more information on investment, visit WWW.USTR.GOV/ISSUE-AREAS/SERVICES-INVESTMENT/INVESTMENT