The Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was an international treaty being negotiated by the 29 rich countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The MAI would further cripple our respective Parliaments' ability to implement laws in the public interest, by permitting foreign-based corporations to directly sue our governments for huge settlements through an unaccountable MAI tribunal. The MAI was developed to enable investors in multinational corporations to discourage any legislation issued by national or even subnational governments that foreign investors perceive as against their profit objectives. Thus, any national laws regarding human rights, or the environment could be considered 'a barrier to trade'.
The MAI contains no provision to make investors accountable to national governments. If the MAI were signed and implemented, it would establish corporations as our final legal arbiter, with elected governments as their compliant puppets.
The MAI was in effect never signed by the international bodies involved in the summit, however the MAI has reemerged in NAFTA as Chapter 11 and threatens to be encorporated into the FTAA.