But that was not enough for global investors. They feared that once an investment was made, and the country concerned realised what a bad deal had been done, a future government might try to reassert domestic law to ensure national interests were protected.
So they demanded as the price of investment in individual countries a series of bilateral investment treaties, which limited the ability of governments and courts in the host country to restrict the freedom of overseas investors to do what they liked.
But even this did not go far enough. Global corporates persuaded the OECD that these bilateral treaties should be brought together in a wide-ranging international treaty which would rationalise and make uniform all such provisions, and would establish the primacy of global corporate interests over national democracy around the globe.
Negotiations for this Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) began in the OECD in 1995. At first sight, there was a cautious welcome for the idea; national governments saw the opportunity to restrain the freedom enjoyed by international investors to ride roughshod over local democratic interests.
But as the negotiations proceeded, it became increasingly clear that the proposed treaty was really a charter for global investors - a charter that would ensure that their operations could never be challenged by elected governments or properly constituted national courts.
It was proposed, for example, to establish a compliance regime under which "liberalisation" would always move forward, with no power to wind it back - the so-called "ratchet" effect. This would be enforced by "rollback" and "standstill" provisions, requiring nations to eliminate regulations that were contrary to MAI provisions, and to refrain from passing any such laws in the future.
Compensation would have to be paid for any national rules that caused loss of profit to investors. Disputes arising under the agreement would be settled in a specially constituted tribunal instead of by the national courts of the host state.
The intention was that neither governments nor affected communities could challenge the behaviour of investors, who accepted no binding obligations on themselves.
There was little public awareness of these details of these provisions until a draft of the agreement was leaked in March 1997. The leaked material prompted a wave of criticism. Opposition to the MAI began to mount - first in the US and then increasingly among other OECD countries.
Such was the backlash that first France and then other countries successively withdrew from the negotiations. On December 3, 1998, the OECD announced that "negotiations on the MAI are no longer taking place". Does this brief account of the central features of the MAI sound familiar? Of course it does.
Undeterred by the failure of their project in 1998, global corporates have returned to make another attempt. The MAI provisions that were rightly condemned and finally rejected are now central elements of a TPP being peddled as an innocent "free trade" arrangement but being negotiated in secret.
The signs are growing that, like the MAI before it, the TPP is in trouble. As more information is leaked, the chances of a secret deal being agreed are falling quickly. Concern is mounting in participant countries, including the US.
Even our own Government might be forced to think again once we are no longer kept in the dark and realise what is at stake. We still have the chance to make our voices heard.
• Bryan Gould is a former UK Labour MP and former vice-chancellor of Waikato University.
