I had not thought about about opposition based on trade agreements, or maybe opposition that uses trade agreements as an excuse. But I shouldn’t be surprised if such opposition surfaces, or maybe even already has.

The California example hopefully will lead to other nations adopting similar measures and in time

the ban would not only be on imports and sales within California but also on

sales and exports to other states or nations

This looks like a great and significant first step

No doubt that the law will be challenged under various trade agreements such as NAFTA and WTO, since those agreements consider such laws to be non-tariff measures in restraint of trade. They make it mandatory that states rescind duly adopted laws that, regardless of their scientific basis, can be deemed by the NAFTA court (mostly consisting of business interest appointees) to leave a firm in a signatory country at a competitive disadvantage.

See for instance Moyers’ show “Trading Democracy”:

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_tdfull.html

to get an idea of how this all works.

If Obama is elected, and there is a Democratic majority in both houses, perhaps there will be a chance that the US can begin to renegotiate such agreements to return us to soveriegnty of the people over that of corporations. If so, the new California law and others will withstand these challenges.