After months of denial by trade ministers that a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) would be on the agenda at the WTO Ministerial, the MAI has just popped up in the WTO discussions on the General Agreement on Trade and Services.

MAI is just a fancy way of saying "corporate takings". The idea is that if you deny a foreign multi-national corporation the opportunity to milk a profit by imposing health, safety and environmental regulations, the corporation can file a "takings" claim directly with the government.

Don’t believe it? It has already been done. In 1997, Ethyl Corporation, a US based company filed a $251 takings claim under NAFTA against the Canadians for banning one of their products, a toxic gasoline additive called MMT. In June 1998, Canada settled the case by paying out $13 million and dropping the ban.

Corporate efforts to expand the NAFTA provisions through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development were thwarted in December 1998 when the OECD dropped the idea after global citizen protest.

Citizens in Seattle and King County have already seen enough of the proposed MAI. Last year, the King County Council passed a resolution in opposition to the MAI. In April, the Seattle City Council voted unanimously to oppose the MAI. Also ganging up on the MAI were Snohomish County, the Washington Association of Cities, and the cities of Olympia and Tumwater.

Local anti-MAI citizen activists had hoped to make the city an MAI-free zone. But MAI issues have been mostly forgotten, not even meriting their own workshop on the WTO calendar.