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Mexico owed over $50 billion, 90% to foreign private creditors - primarily US, Japanese and British banks. These banks had gone on a lending binge during the 1970s using the profits oil exporting countries had deposited with them from the oil spike. American overspending, notably on the Vietnam War, was recycled as debt to the rest of the world and, to help this, controls on international movements of money were dismantled.

Four of the fifteen largest lenders to Latin America by 1982 were British banks: Lloyds, Midland, Barclays, and Natwest. American lenders included Citicorp, Bank of America, and Chase Manhattan.

At the end of the 1970s the US Federal Reserve sprung the trap, massively hiking interest rates in order to save their banks from inflation. The costs for this move were pushed onto Third World countries like Mexico. Two years later, the inevitable happened.

The massive text largely reflects the interests of the 500 official U.S. trade advisors representing corporate interests that had privileged access while the public, Congress and the press were shut out the secretive process: investor privileges that make it easier to offshore American jobs to low wage countries and retrograde terms that expose U.S. food safety, environmental, Internet freedom, health and other safeguards to attack and rollback.

Except the WTO just sideswiped Obama's TPP claims. Will he stand by his claim that 'no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws? If so, Obama's Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, did not get the memo. "Congress has got to fix this problem. They either have to repeal or modify and amend it," Vilsack said in May when the WTO issued a previous ruling on the case.

After previous WTO rulings, the United States has rolled back U.S. Clean Air Act regulations on gasoline cleanliness rules successfully challenged by Venezuela and Mexico and Endangered Species Act rules relating to shrimping techniques that kill sea turtles after a successful challenge by Malaysia and other nations. The U.S. also altered auto fuel efficiency (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards that were successfully challenged by the European Union.