EXCLUSIVE: Jane Kelsey responds to Catherine Beard’s pro TPPA column

23
15

malcolm-x-newspapers-hating-oppressed

On 22 October 2015 the NZ Herald published an extraordinary piece of contorted logic by Catherine Beard, who claimed the right of foreign investors to sue nation states through investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement ‘protects New Zealand’s sovereignty’.

There are many puzzling things about this article. The Herald omitted to tell readers that Catherine Beard is the chief executive of Export NZ, which is among the cheerleaders of the TPPA and an offshoot of Business NZ. Ironically, Business NZ told an OECD consultation in 2011 that it saw no need for ISDS in agreements with countries that have sound legal systems. Evidently, that reasoned position is now an embarrassment and Business NZ has abandoned it in its quest to boost the TPPA.

Equally puzzling, an identical piece was published in the Dom Post on 22 September. It is almost unheard of for the same op ed to be repeated in the two competing papers.

In yet another quirk, it was impossible to see the comments on the Herald website, at least on my computer. As of yesterday, Beard’s article does not even come up on a search when the author’s name and the entire title is put into the search box. However, the original url still working

(http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11532902) and now shows 53 comments, 50 of which are critical.

Maybe these are just coincidences, and I am not suggesting some grand conspiracy by the Herald. What does worry me is that these cumulative quirks involve an article that is clearly pro-TPPA propaganda and is deeply flawed.

Beard depicts ISDS as the epitomy of the rule of law, protecting foreign investors against rogue decisions by corrupt and unpredictable governments to expropriate their assets, and says the vast majority of countries with good rule of law and strong institutions are not victims of these cases. That assertion is either breathtakingly ignorant or wilfully deceptive. Among the most celebrated abuses of ISDS at present involve domestic health and environmental regulation in Germany, Canada, and Australia.

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ISDS faces a potentially crippling crisis of legitimacy internationally. There has been a massive surge in disputes brought by foreign investors using these offshore private tribunals to challenge domestic laws that undermine their profits. ISDS allows them to bypass and even challenge domestic judicial processes in a travesty of the ‘rule of law’.

Governments face massive costs in defending these disputes from a growing number of multi-million, and even billion, dollar awards for doing what governments are elected to do. The chilling effect on decisions by public bodies is now widely recognised, most recently by the dissenting arbitrator in the Bilcon decision where an ISDS tribunal ruled against a Canadian local environment panel’s decision to deny a US investor a permit for a quarry.

Some countries are withdrawing from these investment agreements and international arbitration facilities. Others have declared a moratorium on new agreements while they work out what to do with existing ones. Even its champions acknowledge there are flaws that need to be addressed.

None of that is mentioned by Beard in her Pollyanna world of rogue governments, victimised foreign investors, and anti-free trade extremists.

This context makes it even more worrying that Beard’s piece was based on a report commissioned from the NZ Institute for Economic Research published in September 2015 and entitled ISDS and Sovereignty. The NZIER’s six-page report is an embarrassment. Indeed, this once-respected think tank is in danger of becoming the government’s ‘independent’ apologist for the TPPA. (A previous NZIER analysis cautiously supported the hyperbolic projections of the likely economic impacts of the TPPA made in a report for the Peterson Institute and subsequently debunked by Geoff Bertram and Simon Terry in a report for the NZ Sustainability Council. Minister Groser has so far refused to release other economic analyses the NZIER prepared for the government that I requested under the Official Information Act in January 2015.) It would be totally unacceptable for MFAT to use NZIER as ‘independent consultants’ in the official evaluation of the TPPA, as Groser recently suggested (NBR, 10 October 2015).

The NZIER dismisses concerns of ‘strident opponents [who] raise spectres of evil multinational companies wanting to take New Zealand taxpayers for all that they can’, without referring to any of the leaked TPPA texts. Nor does it mention the more detailed commentaries from such conservative economic bodies, such as the Australian Productivity Commission and the Cato Institute in the US, that say the costs of ISDS outweigh any potential gains.

Instead, the NZIER repackaged a series of common myths and misrepresentations. Here are just a few.

 

Claim: ISDS will help NZ attract foreign direct investment is nonsense.

Truth: There is no convincing evidence that committing to ISDS attracts foreign investment, even in poor countries with lousy judicial systems. For example the Australian Productivity Commission cited a report from the World Trade Organisation’s research division showing it made no difference.

 

Claim: NZ investors find it hard to invest offshore and ‘it just gets harder if one day a foreign government decides to expropriate assets just because they feel like it’.

Truth: Recent claims brought by US investors against Canada including moratorium on fracking, a court’s ruling on medicine patents, and a local environment panel’s rejection of a quarry license. These are nothing to do with expropriation. In any case, if the New Zealand government really wants to help New Zealand companies invest overseas, there are ways to do it that don’t compromise our sovereignty, such as political risk insurance.

 

Claim: ISDS tribunals use the rules of international bodies and FTAs to guide their analyses of law and facts.

Truth: there is no consistency or predictability in how ad hoc tribunals decide cases. They don’t even have to take any notice of what other tribunals have ruled.

 

Claim: Each tribunal is comprised of three international experts, one chosen by each party and an agreed chair.

Truth: A small number of individuals and boutique firms dominate the treaty arbitration business in what some have dubbed a ‘mafia’, with endemic conflicts of interests when arbitrators are also investment lawyers in other disputes.

 

Claim: Launching claims isn’t cheap and investors only win on average 3% of what they ask for.

Truth: The NZIER figure is based on a 2007 report that doesn’t account for the mounting value of recent awards. More importantly, as senior investment lawyer George Kahale points out, such figures ignore the common practice for investors to make hugely inflated claims, excludes settlements whose results are usually confidential, and ignores cases where the dispute is withdrawn after a government backs off. Nor does it recognise the costs to governments that seek to defend themselves – Australia’s costs on the plain packaging tobacco case is reportedly running over $50 million with the substantive legal arguments yet to come.

 

Claim: Investors have limited other options to protect themselves.

Truth: Risk is part of the cost of doing business. NZIER ignored the obvious market mechanism of political risk insurance to address this risk. In New Zealand they have New Zealand’s court system which they can and do use.

 

Claim: Concerns that foreign investors receive privileged treatment could be removed by giving domestic investors the same protections.

Truth: This is a backdoor way of reviving ACT’s Regulatory Responsibility Bill that sought to give private property owners rights to compensation for resource management decisions, re-regulation of minimally regulated industries, new taxes, and other sound public policy measures.

 

Claim: NZ hasn’t been sued yet under an investment treaty.

Truth: That’s true, but Australia could say the same until the plain packaging case and the number of disputes has blown out exponentially in the past five years. As a footnote acknowledged, NZ doesn’t have ISDS with any of the top 12 countries whose investors bring these disputes – and the US tops that list. The TPPA therefore makes us much more vulnerable.

 

Other problems with ISDS are cutely finessed. ‘Interested parties may participate by amicus curiae briefs’ – but only with permission of the tribunal on specific matters, and of course assuming they have the resources to do so.  

There is ‘usually only limited opportunity of appeal’; actually there is usually zero opportunity to appeal, and limited grounds for annulment due to improprieties.

Perhaps the most misleading statement is that ‘ISDS retains governments’ ability to regulate as they please, but with the clear understanding that actions that expropriate investors’ private property in a discriminatory or unjustified way have consequences. This sounds like sensible public policy to us’. Whoever wrote the NZIER’s paper must know the most common basis of claims is not expropriation or discrimination, it is an infinitely malleable concept of ‘fair and equitable treatment’. Investors use the uncertainty, cost, lack of appeals, pro-investor bias of the rules and often the arbitrators to scare governments into backing off regulation that is in the public interest. Private property trumps the public good.

Much, much more could be said about the flaws in the NZIER’s short paper, let alone Catherine Beard’s flossy version of it. It reminds us, if we needed it, that the TPPA’s cheerleaders will continue to peddle their tripe until the text finally becomes public and we can categorically debunk their spin.

It is crucial to stress that it’s not too late for us to stop this happening. The TPPA is far from being signed, sealed and delivered.

The political trade-offs on the TPPA were concluded at the ministerial meeting in Atlanta, but it will be at least 3 more months before the text can be signed. Under US law, the President must give 90 days’ notice before doing so and he hasn’t given that notice yet. The text will be publicly released at least 30 days into that 90 days.

There is a lot of work to be done to counteract the pro-TPPA spin machine, especially around ISDS. Expert analyses will be published as the text is available. But New Zealanders also need to send the government and Labour a resounding message that they don’t want the TPPA.

Bring your whanau, workmates, and local community to protests planned in Auckland, Wellington, and a growing number of towns around the country, on Saturday 14 November. For details see www.itsourfuture.org.nz and

 

23 COMMENTS

  1. +100

    TPP is an agreement that is not about trade but about protecting the status quo of corporates to keep polluting, profiting and ultimately gain ability to force government to fund them further by eroding the right of governments to run councils, schools, prisons, courts, social welfare, law enforcement, security, protect the environment, citizens health and so forth. The essential services of this country that we pay our taxes for now opened to the whims of foreign lawyers and the might of very unscrupulous people.

    Apparently 85 individuals now own the same amount as half of the rest of the world’s population. How did they get there? By these types of agreements. The rich are getting richer and more powerful and more greedy.

    If it is a ‘free’ trade agreement why is there so much about copywrite and patents? These conditions are all designed to make governments pay more. It is a transfer of wealth from taxpaying individuals to government to corporations to a handful of wealthy individuals who already own everything.

    The government does not understand the agreement. In typical fashion they just read the heading ‘free trade’ and dig no further. Even though they know there is negligible free trade in it for NZ and just going to increase the governments spend. But they want to sign it anyway!!!

    • “Catherine Beard is the chief executive of Export NZ, which is among the cheerleaders of the TPPA and an offshoot of Business NZ.”

      “Ironically, Business NZ told an OECD consultation in 2011 that it saw no need for ISDS in agreements with countries that have sound legal systems. Evidently, that reasoned position is now an embarrassment and Business NZ has abandoned it in its quest to boost the TPPA.”

      To me it seems that these hired guns are just falling over each other to sell NatZ policies whatever they are before engaging their brains firstly.

      Probably because they are being paid for early performance results to their campaign ass spin doctors.

      They all have absolutely no morals as Jane Kelsey has very much of.

      Good work again Jane bless you our angel.

      • The reason they are falling all over themselves trying to sell TPP is because we ain’t buying, they are just hoping against hope that somewhere, somehow, sometime a whole flood of support will just suddenly materialize like up till now, they’ve been sunning themselves somewhere on the Riviera

  2. Great work @ Prof’ Jane Kelsey .
    Thank Christ national and its muppet master jonky don’t have someone as formidable as you on their side .

  3. When the Beard column went up there was no indication it was by a lobbyist. I had to look up Catherine Beard to find out who she was. I wrote a comment to that effect that there should have been a disclosure on it. Now there are showing 175 comments but not my one. I suspect others made the same point. I can see now that there is a credit of sorts at the top and a caption “Modern trade is a two-way street, writes ExportNZ executive director Catherine Beard” – that was not there when the column was published. Beard is welcome to her spin but readers should be told up front.

  4. America is an oligarchy it has been for since the 60s, join bernie sanders on Twitter, he spells out things in simple terms.
    the tppa is a american corporate global take over attempt – put simply.
    there are many examples in the news even msm of americans right to grow their own food, sell non monsanto food, collect water, etc etc has become illegal with serious consequences. standard citizens and small businesses find themselves on the terror list or some such.
    is this simple enough for standard citizens to put together?

    we want your soul
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C09lJQ4Blks

  5. im not sure what labours stategy is anymore, are they trying to get middle nzer cant be bothered thinking votes? key has that cornered, there is a whole demographic that labour could gain quite easily, the global trend is more sanity, the popularity of bernie sanders, the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn, the recent canadian election, all of them speak out against elite control – maybe abour could be dramitic and say – we do not agree with ttpa due to the obvious reasons, are they being blackmailed, paid, have a bad strategy or plain stupid? Id like to know so i can vote elsewhere

    • Don’t forget the elections in Greece and Portugal that returned left wing majorities that were overruled or ignored. People are sick of austerity.

  6. Goose, Andrew??? Must be hung over.

    It is said TPPA closes specific loopholes so coporations can’t sue over everything.

    The legal system should be something anyone can approach for redress

    The only issue is that this access needs to be properly moderated (no overwhelming resources by one party), frivolous suits need to be punished (with fees and fines), and the legal system must have sufficient capacity. Otherwise, the courts should be open to anyone — everyone should be able to have their day in court.

    ISD tribunals side step these democratic processes.

    These TPPA designers really know how to make up a good snake oil sales pitch.

    In some ways I admire there genius

  7. We need another NZ wide march called for here similar to the land march of Bastion Point as NatZ only respond to public pressure and embarrassment so we need to play them at their own rotten game .

    URGENT ADVISE NEEDED PLEASE;

    Can someone please send me some Union contact numbers of those we need to picket to join a TPPA march please to give to a group wanting to hold a anti-TPPA march next month please?

  8. I’ve read other BS from Catherine Beard. She is a mouthpiece for the 1% and has sold her soul to Satan (the US version, not the mythological deity) to promote the new right agenda.

  9. Quote: >> Claim: NZ hasn’t been sued yet under an investment treaty.

    Truth: That’s true, but Australia could say the same until the plain packaging case and the number of disputes has blown out exponentially in the past five years. As a footnote acknowledged, NZ doesn’t have ISDS with any of the top 12 countries whose investors bring these disputes – and the US tops that list. The TPPA therefore makes us much more vulnerable. <<

    Question is, do we have to wait to be sued?

    How short sighted of Beard to use that as a justification to broaden the rights of corporates to sue.

  10. Reading some of the comment after Ms Beard’s op-ed, I ca see that people are not taken in by her rubbish.

    In fact, the comments make more sense than she does.

  11. Nope, that link you gave, Jane, just took me to Herald home page. I am constantly on the lookout for articles such as this but failed to see it, I would have added another anti comment

  12. Corporate Sovereignty; the TPP & Global Corporate Treaties/’Arrangements’. Should the Members of Parliament & Members of Congress Have to Sully Their ‘Beliefs’ & Sales Pitches with ‘Sordid’ Facts that Come from Actually Reading & Understanding Global Treaties/’Arrangements’?

    At the risk of repeating the position, the crux of the flurry of Global Treaties is to shift the costs of corporations suing each other to suing the signatory governments; meaning, to suing the harmless Non Shareholders in order to inflate ‘profits & dividends’ of the corporations for their corporate leaders & Shareholders.

    And, because the ‘disputes’ are to be resolved in secret (‘Death-Star’-Chamber) Tribunals there is no way to check & manage how much that the alleged ‘adversarial’ corporations are colluding to split any proceeds of the decisions; ie. any penalties, &/or, ‘damages’, particularly if the companies in the suits are owned jointly 49% – 51% (or, by any other split).

    Other Tribunal abuses are;

    1) Burden of proof; as the Tribunals are secret the litigants are not bound to government regulations & are not accountable to any governments, ie. the harmless, individual taxpayers who will pay the costs of:
    a) developing, operating & maintaining the Tribunals
    and
    b) all of the decisions regardless of which corporations wins, or, loses the disputes, ie. The harmless, individual taxpayer is guilty in every decision at the outset of the resolution,

    2) Appeals; there are no circumstances whereby the harmless taxpayers can take evidence that one, or, both of the corporations in a ‘dispute’ have acted ‘illegally’. For instance; the Tribunals do not have to accept proof that either, or, both of the litigants have inflated costs of the damages because neither ‘litigant’ is paying any of the costs. Consequently, the challenge of malfeasance will not be raised by the litigants. The proof of inflated costs will not be heard, or, have merit with The Tribunals. Will it be up to the harmless individual taxpayer to raise the legal funds in order to try to sue the corporations in the lesser courts including The Supreme Court of Canada, et al?
    (see; Investment Litigation; Putin, Buffett, &/or, the ‘coveted’ Hong Kong investor)

    3) Bribery/Lobbying; as the harmless taxpayers pays for all of the Global (non BRICS) Corporate Tribunals decisions, there will be no need for the corporate litigants to try & bribe the Tribunals as the ‘guilty’ party, the harmless taxpayers, have already been ascertained at the point that the Treaties/’Arrangements’ have been signed & ratified. It may not be a coincidence that as of May 20, 2015, 2 Republican Senators (US) have admitted that they Have read the TPP. How many Senators who have Not read it are Supporting the TPP? And, how many Canadian Senators, et al, Have read it, &/or, the other Global Corporate Treaties/’Agreements’ & as a consequence support the TPP, et al? (see; ; ‘IGNORAMUS et IGNORABIMUS’ (I do not know & I will Not Know),

    4) Insider Trading, see; ‘SECRET TPPartnership, C-CITreaty, CETA TRIBUNALS are INSIDER TRADING’,
    (davidehsmith.wordpress.com)

    &

    5) et al.

    Therefore, one of the many areas of ‘collateral damage’ caused by the Global Corporate Treaties/’Arrangements’ is tort law. As the corporations behind the treaties will no longer have to pay compensations because they are off-loading their liabilities to the signatory governments’ harmless taxpayers , the corporate ‘desire’ for tort ‘reform’ is moot. The Treaties are willfully causing the de facto ‘abolishment’ of significant areas of tort law.
    By way of closing, what do you, the reader, think are some of the various other areas of ‘collateral damage’ that are probably the real target reasons for developing the treaties in the first place? Trade & employment are continuing to have nothing (or, very little) to do with why the corporations based in various countries have come together to protect &promote themselves at the costs of the harmless taxpayers via the flurry of Global Corporate Treaties/’Arrangements’. *** For More Information, see,
    ‘TPP & Global Treaties & Anti AIIB’. (davidehsmith.wordpress.com)
    Also see;
    ‘The Submission’ to The SUPREME COURT of CANADA:
    “The SHAREHOLDERS & Corporations of AMERICA, Australia, Canada, the EU, et al
    vs
    the harmless Canadian NON shareholders, both; Native & non Native, et al”
    including
    ‘The MERKEL (Chancellor of Germany) Letter; To Sue, or, Be Sued?’
    at davidehsmith.wordpress.com
    *** Also see; ‘WELL, YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN’; U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Reneging on FTAgreement at davidehsmith.wordpress.com

  13. Corporate Sovereignty; the TPP & Global Corporate Treaties/’Arrangements’. Should the Members of Parliament & Members of Congress Have to Sully Their ‘Beliefs’ & Sales Pitches with ‘Sordid’ Facts that Come from Actually Reading & Understanding Global Treaties/’Arrangements’?

    At the risk of repeating the position, the crux of the flurry of Global Treaties is to shift the costs of corporations suing each other to suing the signatory governments; meaning, to suing the harmless Non Shareholders in order to inflate ‘profits & dividends’ of the corporations for their corporate leaders & Shareholders.

    And, because the ‘disputes’ are to be resolved in secret (‘Death-Star’-Chamber) Tribunals there is no way to check & manage how much that the alleged ‘adversarial’ corporations are colluding to split any proceeds of the decisions; ie. any penalties, &/or, ‘damages’, particularly if the companies in the suits are owned jointly 49% – 51% (or, by any other split).

    Other Tribunal abuses are;

    1) Burden of proof; as the Tribunals are secret the litigants are not bound to government regulations & are not accountable to any governments, ie. the harmless, individual taxpayers who will pay the costs of:
    a) developing, operating & maintaining the Tribunals
    and
    b) all of the decisions regardless of which corporations wins, or, loses the disputes, ie. The harmless, individual taxpayer is guilty in every decision at the outset of the resolution,

    2) Appeals; there are no circumstances whereby the harmless taxpayers can take evidence that one, or, both of the corporations in a ‘dispute’ have acted ‘illegally’. For instance; the Tribunals do not have to accept proof that either, or, both of the litigants have inflated costs of the damages because neither ‘litigant’ is paying any of the costs. Consequently, the challenge of malfeasance will not be raised by the litigants. The proof of inflated costs will not be heard, or, have merit with The Tribunals. Will it be up to the harmless individual taxpayer to raise the legal funds in order to try to sue the corporations in the lesser courts including The Supreme Court of Canada, et al?
    (see; Investment Litigation; Putin, Buffett, &/or, the ‘coveted’ Hong Kong investor)

    3) Bribery/Lobbying; as the harmless taxpayers pays for all of the Global (non BRICS) Corporate Tribunals decisions, there will be no need for the corporate litigants to try & bribe the Tribunals as the ‘guilty’ party, the harmless taxpayers, have already been ascertained at the point that the Treaties/’Arrangements’ have been signed & ratified. It may not be a coincidence that as of May 20, 2015, 2 Republican Senators (US) have admitted that they Have read the TPP. How many Senators who have Not read it are Supporting the TPP? And, how many Canadian Senators, et al, Have read it, &/or, the other Global Corporate Treaties/’Agreements’ & as a consequence support the TPP, et al? (see; ; ‘IGNORAMUS et IGNORABIMUS’ (I do not know & I will Not Know),

    4) Insider Trading, see; ‘SECRET TPPartnership, C-CITreaty, CETA TRIBUNALS are INSIDER TRADING’,
    (davidehsmith.wordpress.com)

    &

    5) et al.

    Therefore, one of the many areas of ‘collateral damage’ caused by the Global Corporate Treaties/’Arrangements’ is tort law. As the corporations behind the treaties will no longer have to pay compensations because they are off-loading their liabilities to the signatory governments’ harmless taxpayers , the corporate ‘desire’ for tort ‘reform’ is moot. The Treaties are willfully causing the de facto ‘abolishment’ of significant areas of tort law.
    By way of closing, what do you, the reader, think are some of the various other areas of ‘collateral damage’ that are probably the real target reasons for developing the treaties in the first place? Trade & employment are continuing to have nothing (or, very little) to do with why the corporations based in various countries have come together to protect &promote themselves at the costs of the harmless taxpayers via the flurry of Global Corporate Treaties/’Arrangements’. *** For More Information, see,
    ‘TPP & Global Treaties & Anti AIIB’. (davidehsmith.wordpress.com)
    Also see;
    ‘The Submission’ to The SUPREME COURT of CANADA:
    “The SHAREHOLDERS & Corporations of AMERICA, Australia, Canada, the EU, et al
    vs
    the harmless Canadian NON shareholders, both; Native & non Native, et al”
    including
    ‘The MERKEL (Chancellor of Germany) Letter; To Sue, or, Be Sued?’
    at davidehsmith.wordpress.com
    *** Also see; ‘WELL, YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN’; U.S. President George H.W. Bush, Reneging on FTAgreement at davidehsmith.wordpress.com

  14. Here are just a couple of cases listed recently…………………

    During its financial crisis, and in response to public anger over rocketing charges, Argentina imposed a freeze on people’s energy and water bills (does this sound familiar?). It was sued by the international utility companies whose vast bills had prompted the government to act. For this and other such crimes, it has been forced to pay out over a billion dollars in compensation. In El Salvador, local communities managed at great cost (three campaigners were murdered) to persuade the government to refuse permission for a vast gold mine which threatened to contaminate their water supplies. A victory for democracy? Not for long, perhaps. The Canadian company which sought to dig the mine is now suing El Salvador for $315m – for the loss of its anticipated future profits.

    In Canada, the courts revoked two patents owned by the American drugs firm Eli Lilly, on the grounds that the company had not produced enough evidence that they had the beneficial effects it claimed. Eli Lilly is now suing the Canadian government for $500m, and demanding that Canada’s patent laws are changed.

  15. Here are several recent cases involving this legislation…..

    During its financial crisis, and in response to public anger over rocketing charges, Argentina imposed a freeze on people’s energy and water bills (does this sound familiar?). It was sued by the international utility companies whose vast bills had prompted the government to act. For this and other such crimes, it has been forced to pay out over a billion dollars in compensation. In El Salvador, local communities managed at great cost (three campaigners were murdered) to persuade the government to refuse permission for a vast gold mine which threatened to contaminate their water supplies. A victory for democracy? Not for long, perhaps. The Canadian company which sought to dig the mine is now suing El Salvador for $315m – for the loss of its anticipated future profits.

    In Canada, the courts revoked two patents owned by the American drugs firm Eli Lilly, on the grounds that the company had not produced enough evidence that they had the beneficial effects it claimed. Eli Lilly is now suing the Canadian government for $500m, and demanding that Canada’s patent laws are changed.

  16. Soon after National was elected, they banned psudoephidrine based cold and flu meds because of the harm being caused by those tuning them into P. Is this an example of something a big Pharma could sue us for using ISDS? Would Nats have gone ahead with the regulation if that was the case?

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