It will give near-total freedom to foreign investors, effectively reducing the rights of host nations. It will also allow investors to challenge safety and other regulations that might inconvenience the unrestricted flow of capital. Critics see as particularly serious the likelihood that even more money will flow out of poorer countries, whereas, at present, they may restrict the amount investors can withdraw. For this and other reasons, the national debts of our world's poorest countries are sure to rise under the agreement. Today, one in every five persons in the world is considered extremely poor by the United Nations.
Women are the majority in that class.
Children, the elderly, the disabled, migrants, refugees and indigenous peoples, as well as those long out of work, are other categories of the poorest. Their profits on sales of cheap goods or resource result in huge rewards of wealth, first to top management and then to stockholders. The nations supplying the labor, resource or goods gain little financially and consistently suffer social, economic and environmental damage. Cash incomes of transnational employees in less developed nations may seem good at first, but costs of food, shelter, transportation and other needs soon begin to outstrip wages. Workers who flock to the cities are often entering the cash economy for the first time.