The US favored bilateral investment treaties over UN multilateral corporate regulation

Evidence

When a full draft of the Code was finally completed in May 1990, a vote on it was scheduled for November of that year. However, the prospects for its adoption did not appear bright. In congressional hearings, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Jane Becker testified that the United States would oppose the Code when it was brought to a vote at the United Nations. Characterizing the instrument as “obsolete,” she noted that it would provide “only marginal benefit to the United States and American investors,” and that it did not provide any protections that could not be secured through the more desirable options of bilateral investment treaties and GATT (BNA 1990, 1584–1585). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1797

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader shift from multilateral NIEO governance to bilateral investment treaties — a signature mechanism of the neoliberal turn. — connects to: The investor-rights code envisioned an international arbitration court bypassing national courts — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 464; The UN abandoned MNC regulation in favor of corporate partnership within two decades — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1731
• SEED: Article angle: how ‘obsolete’ framing by US officials legitimized replacing UN multilateralism with a bilateral treaty regime — tracing the rhetorical and institutional mechanics of that pivot.