T.I.S.A. Secret Trade in Services Agreement

[Magda Hassan]

Press Release - Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex

2014-06-19

Today, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) Financial Services Annex, which covers 50 countries and 68.2%[SUP]1[/SUP] of world trade in services. The US and the EU are the main proponents of the agreement, and the authors of most joint changes, which also covers cross-border data flow. In a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre by the parties, the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force.
Despite the failures in financial regulation evident during the 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis and calls for improvement of relevant regulatory structures[SUP]2[/SUP], proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets. The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers. The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data.
TISA negotiations are currently taking place outside of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework. However, the Agreement is being crafted to be compatible with GATS so that a critical mass of participants will be able to pressure remaining WTO members to sign on in the future. Conspicuously absent from the 50 countries covered by the negotiations are the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The exclusive nature of TISA will weaken their position in future services negotiations.
The draft text comes from the April 2014 negotiation round - the sixth round since the first held in April 2013. The next round of negotiations will take place on 23-27 June in Geneva, Switzerland.
Current WTO parties negotiating TISA are: Australia, Canada, Chile, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, and the European Union, which includes its 28 member states Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
China and Uruguay have expressed interest in joining the negotiations but so far are not included.
[1] Swiss National Center for Competence in Research: A Plurilateral Agenda for Services?: Assessing the Case for a Trade in Services Agreement, Working Paper No. 2013/29, May 2013, p. 10.
[2] For example, in June 2012 Ecuador tabled a discussion on re-thinking regulation and GATS rules; in September 2009 the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, convened by the President of the United Nations and chaired by Joseph Stiglitz, released its final report, stating that "All trade agreements need to be reviewed to ensure that they are consistent with the need for an inclusive and comprehensive international regulatory framework which is conducive to crisis prevention and management, counter-cyclical and prudential safeguards, development, and inclusive finance."
Read the Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex
Read the Analysis Article - Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex

Recommended reading

• On the Wrong Side of Globalization, by Joseph E. Stiglitz, March 15, 2014.
  
• U.S. Foreign Trade in Services: Trends and Policy Challenges, by the Congressional Research Service, May 15, 2014.
  
• TISA versus Public Services, a Public Services International study by Scott Sinclair and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, April 28, 2014.
  
• Public Citizen's Finance Regulation Factsheet
  
• Our World is Not for Sale Factsheet on TISA
  

For Comment

AFL-CIO
Media Outreach Department, 202-637-5018
Josh Goldstein JGoldstein@aflcio.org
Jeff Hauser jhauser@aflcio.org
Gonzalo Salvador gsalvador@aflcio.org
Celeste Drake, Trade and Globalisation Policy Specialist cdrake@aflcio.org

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
https://www.policyalternatives.ca
National Office: tel: 613-563-1341 fax: 613-233-1458
ccpa@policyalternatives.ca

Our World is Not for Sale
http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org/

Public Services International
http://www.world-psi.org/en/
Tel: +33 (0)4 50 40 64 64Fax: +33 (0)4 50 40 73 20
E-mail:psi@world-psi.org
Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer daniel.bertossa@world-psi.org

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch division
https://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=1223
gtwinfo@citizen.org

Joseph E. Stiglitz
Chair of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, Nobel Prize winner, and professor at Columbia University
http://www.josephstiglitz.com/
Phone: (212) 854-0671
Fax: (212) 662-8474
jes322@columbia.edu

Public Submissions

The only avenue TISA negotiators offer for public input is via public submissions. Each country has their own method for handling submissions. Below are the public submissions from the biggest proponents of TISA.

• Australia: All submissions will be made publicly available on the DFAT website unless the author specifies otherwise. Submissions may be lodged electronically to: services.negotiations@dfat.gov.au website
  
• United States Request for comments submissions from September to October 2013.
  
• European Union Public consultation Results of the public survey on TISA
  
• Canada: Submissions may be sent by e-mail to: TMSconsultation@international.gc.ca Consultations on a Plurilateral Services Agreement
  

Read the Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex
Read the Analysis Article - Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex

https://wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/press.html

[Magda Hassan]

A Plan Only Banksters Will Love: WikiLeaks Reveals Trade Deal Pushing Global Financial Deregulation

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Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and author of The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority.

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Wikileaks: Secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services Annex

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The pro-transparency group WikiLeaks has released the secret draft text for the Trade in Services Agreement, TISA, a trade agreement covering 50 countries and more than 68 percent of world trade in service. Until now, the draft has been classified to keep it clandestine, not only during the negotiations, but also for five years post-enactment. According to the leaked text, TISA aims to cement the extreme deregulatory model of the 1990s by forbidding countries from improving financial regulation. The draft Financial Services Annex would also establish rules favorable to the expansion of financial multinationals into other nations by preventing regulatory obstacles. The draft text comes from the April 2014 negotiation round. We discuss the leaked text with Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and author of "The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority."
Photo Credit: WikiLeaks

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Thursday, WikiLeaks released the secret draft text for a trade deal called the Trade in Services Agreement. The deal covers 50 countries and over 68 percent of world trade in services. Until now, the draft has been classified to keep it secret, not only during the negotiations, but also for five years post-enactment. According to the leaked text, the trade deal aims to cement the deregulatory model of the 1990s by forbidding countries from improving financial regulation.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Denver, Colorado, where we're joined by Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and the author of The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority.
Lori Wallach, welcome back to Democracy Now! Talk about the significance of this WikiLeaks leak around this trade agreement.
LORI WALLACH: Well, we've known these negotiations have been ongoing, but no one knew exactly what they were up to until this leaked. And effectively, the text, if it were enacted, would roll back a lot of the re-regulation that followed the global financial crisis and basically handcuff us into the 1990s extreme deregulation model that we all recognize was the cause of the crisis. And the perverse nature of it is, of course, because of the extreme secrecy, you have the Obama administration in public working to "re-regulate" the Dodd-Frank bill and its regulations, but then, behind closed doors in these negotiations in Geneva, sort of on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization, the U.S. and the European Unionthe leaked text shows, because there are brackets that say who has what proposalare pushing amongst the most retrograde anti-regulation provisions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Lori, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said, quote, "the payoff from TISA [could] be huge" for domestic service industry firms and presents, quote, "a once-in-a-generation opportunity to tear down barriers to international trade." The Chamber has also recommended that TISA "eliminate regulatory inconsistencies" and ensure that private companies are not put at a disadvantage when they compete with "state-owned enterprises." Your response?
LORI WALLACH: What they want to tear down is the regulatory structure that was strengthened after the global financial crisis. So there's a history to this agreement. At the World Trade Organizationeveryone will remember the Doha round of negotiations. This is basically what happened after the big Seattle protest. There was going to be no WTO expansion, and then after 9/11, in Qatar, in Doha, there was a launch of something very similar to what all the countries rejected in Seattle. And that negotiation included major financial deregulation. And a lot of countries said no, and they said no to other parts of that Doha round. And as a result, and with a lot of citizen campaigning and protest around the world for over 10 years, the WTO expansion, the Doha round, never happened.
Well, there was a "coalition of the willing" countries. They were the neoliberals. And they decided, "Well, if we can't get everyone to do it, why don't we just see if we can go over here on the side and start this financial deregulation agreement, and then maybe later we'll drag everyone else into it?" So this is a subset, this TISA. And basically, this is the Chamber's agenda. This is tearing down all of these regulations. And they think, of course, it's going to be very profitable for them to operate, basically ripping off all of us consumers.
But what this text shows is this is a proposal that only banksters can love. This is a proposal that's going to mean grandma loses her house, you basically have huge debt, and Wall Street makes out like bandits again. It cannot go into effect. And now that we see it, actually, it's going to have to be something everyone's fighting against. And it also gives us the indication, probably, of what the U.S. is up to in the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and also in the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, TAFTA. So this agreement, if you will, is just the latest example of why there should never be fast track trade authority, because we now see what they do with it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what are some of the specifics that you find most objectionable?
LORI WALLACH: Well, the single most glaring and easy-to-understand piece of it, if you want toif viewers want to take a look at it, is a provision that's literally called "standstill." And what it means is you have to have your regulations stand still as to where they were. And practically, it meanslet's say you want to ban a certain kind of derivative that gets created, and it's a disasterit causes speculation and instability. You're forbidden from having new financial regulations. But the tricky part about this is, if you look at the way the different versions of that provision are written, it may require countries to stand still relative to where they were when the WTO services agreement was established in the 1990s, and that would mean all of these new regulations that were put into effect after the global financial crisis would automatically be violations. So the way the language is written, maybe it's standstill from 1994. And if that's the case, it would automatically reversewould make trade violations out ofwouldn't automatically reverse, would make trade violations out of all of these new re-regulations. Certainly it would not allow you to do anything new, going forward. But the way the different versions of the text are written, I think it refers back to the old commitments from the '90s, and that's where you're frozen. That's perhaps the most pernicious.
The second most dangerous thing is language that basically guarantees that there is freedom of movement in financial data. And the problem there is, of course, there are lots of consumer privacy protections where you're not supposed to be able to have your confidential information. For instance, banks can't send in one package your Social Security number, your name, your address and information about your bank account. And these rules about the movement of data, for countries, for instance, in Europe, where there are really strong consumer privacy rules, would be a rollback of those basic rights and a real risk for consumers.
AMY GOODMAN: And what about these issues of secrecy, Lori Wallach, that this trade agreement, TISA, the Trade in Services Agreement, was not supposed to be known about for five years after enactment?
LORI WALLACH: So, the headnote on the front page, which is what you're referring to, what they're saying there is, the actual agreement, once it was adopted, would become public, because, for instance, in the United States, it would become federal law. All of our domestic policies would have to be conformed to meet it. So, we would see the actual final agreement. What that headnote, the confidentiality agreement on the front page, is saying is we wouldn't be able to see any of the documents for five years that went into the making of the agreementso, anything about what positions different countries brought to the table, anything about what different countries thought different provisions meant as far as the interpretation of the agreement. I call that, really, the anti-accountability clause, because suddenly, full done, sprung upon us would be this deregulatory agreement, and then all the fingerprints would basically be covered up for five years, as well as, theoretically, what it means. And then the interpretation of what it means would be left to a WTO tribunal to tell us to gut our laws.
AMY GOODMAN: Lori Wallach, a final comment on the relationship between TISA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, where theywhere TPP stands today?
LORI WALLACH: So, basically, it gives you a hint of what's going to be in those agreements and why we have to be against fast track.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we're going to leave it there, Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, author of The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/20/a_..._will_love

[Magda Hassan]

There are some very interesting and rather horrifying comments at the source worth checking out too.

Wikileaks Exposes Super Secret, Regulation-Gutting Financial Services Pact

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Yves Smith Wikileaks published an April draft of a critical section of pending "trade" deal called the Trade in Services Agreement, which is being negotiated among 50 countries, including the US, the member nations of the EU, Australia, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, South Korea, and Switzerland. TISA would liberalize, as in reduce the ability of nations to regulate, a large range of services.
The document that Wikileaks exposed on Thursday is a portion of the financial services section. It is clearly designed to serve the pet interests of big international players. This agreement is designed to institutionalize the current level of deregulation as a baseline and facilitate the introduction of new products, further ease the movement of funds, data, and key personnel, and facilitate cross-border acquisitions and other forms of market entry.
It is distressing to see how the media is pointedly ignoring this damning Wikileaks revelation. As of this hour, my Google News search does not show a single mainstream media outlet reporting on this story. The usual left-leaning stalwarts like Huffington Post, TruthOut, Firedoglake, and CommonDreams have articles up, along with Business Insider and RT. The only country where major news organizations have taken the story up are in Australia, and that appears to be due to the fact that approval of this deal would end Australia's restrictions on foreign ownership of banks.
Our World is Not for Sale describes the scope:

In February of 2014, negotiations began on six priority topics: financial services, telecommunications and e-commerce, domestic regulation and transparency, professional services, maritime transport, and the so-called "Mode 4" of the GATS, which refers to natural movement of persons. In addition, participants had extensive discussions on road transport, delivery services and air transport. But there are many more sectors and proposals that have been submitted: is also known that the EU has submitted a proposal on Government Procurement in Services, and on Postal Services, just as examples.

The Wikileaks release today makes clear why interested parties are uncertain about these negotiations. They impose even greater secrecy requirements than the toxic trade deals know as the TransPacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The TISA text is classified for five years after it becomes effective or negotiations are terminated, which exceeds the four-year blackout imposed by the TTP and the TTIP.
The financial services annex that Wikileaks published is only a portion of the entire deal, but even so, what we can discern is alarming. The agreement defines financial services as broadly as possible, and includes insurance, payments systems (as in credit and debit cards), asset management, brokerage, trustee and custodial services, and ancillary services, like brokerage, consultancy, and data services. It also allows executives and "specialists" to enter countries freely on a temporary basis.
As I read the text, it bars reregulation. From Article X.15 Non-discriminatory measures (emphasis ours):

2. With respect to the non-discriminatory measures referred to in [subparagraphs [x(a) and (b) (immediately above)]] a Party shall endeavor not to limit or restrict the present degree of market opportunities, nor the benefits already enjoyed by financial service suppliers of another Party as a class in the territory of the Party, provided that this commitment does not result in unfair discrimination against financial service suppliers of the Party applying such measures.

And this section (Article X.17: Prudential Measures) gives you a good idea of what the priorities are:

1. Notwithstanding any other provision of the Agreement, a Party shall not be prevented from [PA, EU: taking] [US: adopting or maintaining] measures for prudential reasons, including for:

(a) the protection of investors, depositors, [PA, US financial market users], policy-holders or persons to whom a fiduciary duty is owed by a financial service supplier; or
(b) to ensure the integrity and stability of a Party's financial system.

2. Where such measures do not conform with the provisions of this Agreement, they shall not be used as a means of avoiding the Party's commitments or obligations under the Agreement.
That reads like a Catch-22: "You can protect the safety of your financial system, provided they don't interfere with all the other provisions that allow furrniners to operate freely in your market, introduce new products, and move funds cross border readily or just look like you are being mean to banks."
And it includes cute provisions like this:

Each Party shall list in its Schedule pertaining to financial services existing monopoly rights and shall endeavor to eliminate them or reduce their scope.

Fannie and Freddie are arguably monopoly providers. So does this mean that Barclays can demand to be allowed to become a GSE too? Or does this simply require that Fannie and Freddie be wound down?
Wikileaks also provided an extensive analysis by Professor Jane Kelsey of the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland. She stresses that it's not possible to reach hard conclusions, given that this draft is now stale and that it represents only a portion of the entire pact. But she sees it as deeply troubling. I urge you to read her comments in full. Representative extracts:

The rules apply to measures that affect' the supply of financial services through foreign direct investment (commercial establishment) or offshore provision by remote delivery or services purchased in another country (cross-border). They also aim to discipline' governments in favour of a light handed and self-regulatory model of financial regulation. The substantive rules target what the financial services industry sees as obstacles to its seamless global operations, including:

1. limits on the size of financial institutions (too big to fail);
2. restrictions on activities (eg deposit taking banks that also trade on their own account);
3. requiring foreign investment through subsidiaries (regulated by the host) rather than branches (regulated from their parent state);
4. requiring that financial data is held onshore;
5. limits on funds transfers for cross-border transactions (e-finance);
6. authorisation of cross-border providers;
7. state monopolies on pension funds or disaster insurance;
8. disclosure requirements on offshore operations in tax havens;
9. certain transactions must be conducted through public exchanges, rather than invisible . over-the counter operations;
10. approval for sale of innovative' (potentially toxic) financial products;
11. regulation of credit rating agencies or financial advisers;
12. controls on hot money inflows and outflows of capital;
13. requirements that a majority of directors are locally domiciled;
14. authorisation and regulation of hedge funds; etc….

The governments that were pushing these talks moved outside the formal WTO boundaries to pursue TISA. They call themselves the Really Good Friends of Services'. Their goal is to make TISA the new platform for financial services. The US has said it wants to establish new negotiating rules in TISA, get enough countries to sign on that will enable it to be incorporated into the WTO, and then have the same rules adopted for negotiations at the WTO.11 The European Commission has said TISA will use the same concepts as the GATS so that it can be easily brought into the remits of the GATS.'12
It is not clear how that might happen. Either two thirds or three quarters of the Members would need to agree to TISA coming under the WTO's umbrella, even as a plurilateral agreement.13 Countries like Brazil and India have been very critical of TISA, and the US has not allowed China to join. But the pressure on WTO Members will be immense. If the plan did succeed, many South governments that resisted the worst demands of the GATS and the services aspects of the Doha round will find they end up with something more severe.
If TISA remains outside the WTO its coverage will be limited to the signatories. That is dangerous itself. The countries that were at the centre of global finance and were responsible for the GFC will be bound to maintain the rules that allowed that to happen. The minimal reforms they have adopted post-GFC will become the maximum permitted regulation. Several recent IMF papers have referred to the state of denial' among affluent economies about the potential for further devastating crises if they maintain the current policy and regulatory regime.14 They also point out that many developing countries that took prudent steps after their experience with the Asian Financial Crisis and similar traumas are much less exposed.15 Yet the architects of TISA aim to force those countries to adopt the flawed rules they had no role in negotiating, either as the new best practice' for FTAs or through the WTO.

Yves here. As you can see, this pact is wildly misguided. It's tantamount to giving a pyromaniac a can of gasoline and a blowtorch. As Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England pointed out, financial services firms find it profitable to create risk:

Tail risk within financial systems is not determined by God but by man; it is not exogenous but endogenous. This has important implications for regulatory control. Finance theory tells us that risk brings return. So there are natural incentives within the financial system to generate tail risk and to avoid regulatory control. In the run-up to this crisis, examples of such risk-hunting and regulatory arbitrage were legion. They included escalating leverage, increased trading portfolios and the design of tail-heavy financial instruments.

Similarly, Carmen Reinhardt and Ken Rogoff, how analyzed 800 years of information on financial crises, found that their frequency and severity was highly correlated with the level of cross border capital flows. We already have money washing around the world that has nothing to do with facilitating commerce; for instance, Claudio Borio and Piti Disyatat wrote in an important 2011 BIS paper that for the US, cross border capital flows were 60 times the value of the US current account deficit.
If readers had any doubt, this Wikileaks release should settle conclusively that Obama's finance-friendly policies were not the product of his letting Geithner manage that store, but one of his major initiatives. A deal that cedes national sovereignity and puts in place the conditions for an even more spectacular financial train wreck is treasonous. But loyalty to communities or countries is so 20th century, and Obama has always styled himself as someone who looks forward, not back.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/w...-pact.html

[Peter Lemkin]

the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force.

The level of evil and stealth of the would-be overlords of the sheeple these days is without precedent in recent history!!

[Magda Hassan]

PSI Special Report: TISA versus Public Services

Publication Date:
28 April, 2014


Source:
PSI




Download report here





A new report by Public Services International (PSI) warns that governments are planning to take the world on a liberalisation spree on a scale never seen before. According to the report, this massive trade deal will put public healthcare, broadcasting, water, transport and other services at risk. The proposed deal could make it impossible for future governments to restore public services to public control, even in cases where private service delivery has failed. It would also restrict a government's ability to regulate key sectors including financial, energy, telecommunications and cross-border data flows.
Treating public services as commodities for trade creates a fundamental misconception of public services. The Trades in Services Agreement (TISA), currently being negotiated in secret and outside of World Trade Organization rules, is a deliberate attempt to privilege the profits of the richest corporations and countries in the world over those who have the greatest needs.

Public services are designed to provide vital social and economic necessities such as health care and education affordably, universally and on the basis of need. Public services exist because markets will not produce these outcomes. Further, public services are fundamental to ensure fair competition for business, and effective regulation to avoid environmental, social and economic disasters such as the global financial crisis and global warming. Trade agreements consciously promote commercialisation and define goods and services in terms of their ability to be exploited for profit by global corporations. Even the most ardent supporters of trade agreements admit that there are winners and losers in this rigged game.
The winners are usually powerful countries who are able to assert their power, multinational corporations who are best placed to exploit new access to markets, and wealthy consumers who can afford expensive foreign imports. The losers tend to be workers who face job losses and downward pressure on wages, users of public services and local small businesses which cannot compete with multinational corporations.
The report on TISA was prepared for Public Services International, written by Scott Sinclair, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University.




http://www.world-psi.org/en/psi-special-...c-services

[Magda Hassan]

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[TD="class: contentheading"]Uruguay Shows the Way by Leaving Secret Trade Deal
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[TD] Written by Viviana Barreto, Sam Cossar-Gilbert [/TD]
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[TD="class: createdate"] Friday, 18 September 2015 12:53 [/TD]
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[TD] Source: Common Dreams
A strong coalition of trade unions, environmentalists and farmers working together on an effective public campaign were able to take on the interests of the world's biggest companies and win.

Last week the Uruguayan government decided to end its involvement in the secret negotiations of the Trade in Services Agreement TISA, signifying an important victory in the global fight against bad trade deals.
TISA is a radical new deal that aims to go far beyond current trade rules and force States to further open their markets to foreign corporations, privatize public services and reduce regulations. These measures often mean job losses, less environmental protection, and less accessible healthcare and education.
Uruguay has created a blueprint for how to stop this corporate-driven agreement. It is time for other countries to follow the lead and end TISA once and for all.
After months of intense pressure led by unions and other social movementsincluding a general strike on the issuethe Uruguayan President listened to public opinion and left the US-led trade agreement. The overwhelming majority of members of the ruling Frente Amplio party believe that the deal would undermine the government's national development strategy and therefore considered it "unadvisable to continue participating in the TISA negotiations".
The little-known TISA negotiations involve 52 nations, who together comprise around two-thirds of the global economy: the United States, European Union and 23 other countries, including Turkey, Mexico, Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan and Chile. It relates to the 'services sector' of the economy, which in the EU makes up approximately 75% of the total economic activity.
The agreement being negotiated aims to do away with "domestic regulation" of services with a special focus on certain sectors where free exploitation by corporations would increase at the expense of public interest, such as: finance, telecommunications, internet and e-trade, government procurement, transportation, energy services, postal services and the so called "environmental services." For example, this means prohibiting countries from adopting privacy laws that limit cross-border data flows of sensitive information or require strong data protection.
Despite its wide ranging effects on every part of our economy, TISA is negotiated in complete secret. The public will not know the full details of the text for five years after the agreement comes into force or the negotiations are otherwise closed. It is travesty of democracy that our elected governments will not tell us the laws they are making. The only information available about the agreement has been leaked by Wikileaks.
TISA is driven by the US administration and big business who promote it as a way 'to boost growth and productivity.' Yet as Jane Kelsey of the University of Auckland explains, "the main goals of the negotiations are to increase the commodification of services usually performed by the State (such as education, health care, leisure, transportation, etc.), to put more pressure to privatize public utilities and to dismantle the State's regulating capacity."
The TISA negotiations, together with the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) act to further empower transnational corporations through special rights and provisions. It is also an attempt to counter the growing economic and geostrategic importance of the emerging BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
Yet these trojan horse trade deals are not inevitable.
By leaving the TISA negotiations, Uruguay has created a blueprint of how to beat these corporate-driven agreements. A strong coalition of trade unions, environmentalists and farmers working together on an effective public campaign were able to take on the interests of the world's biggest companies and win.
Information and clear communication was key to the campaign. The negotiation texts released by WikiLeaks and assessments by international experts helped to break the secrecy surrounding the negotiations. Then when Uruguay entered the TISA negotiations in February social movements were able to launch a public awareness campaign that gave rise to ongoing public debate in the media.
The Stop TISA campaign was able to successfully lobby and engage the government on the issue. It exposed the negative effects that Uruguay's participation in the trade deal would have on key government policies in health and education, as well as the role of the State to address inequality.
For example, TISA attempts to transform healthcare into a tradable commodity would "raise health care costs in developing countries and lower quality in developed countries," according to Dr. Odile Frank of Public Services International.
Building a strong coalition of social movements and non-profits against TISA enabled a popular opposition to the agreement to grow rapidly across diverse sections of society, from doctors to train drivers. The Workers' Trade Union Federation of Uruguay (PIT-CNT) played a crucial role in organizing mass mobilization. Thousands marching in the streets and a general strike against TISA increased pressure on the government and led it to walk away from the deal.
Stopping TISA in its tracks is a huge victory for the Uruguayan people and their fight for a more just and sustainable future. It is time for all other countries involved in the negotiation to do the same and end this bad trade deal.



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[David Guyatt]

the draft has been classified to keep it secret not just during the negotiations but for five years after the TISA enters into force.

The level of evil and stealth of the would-be overlords of the sheeple these days is without precedent in recent history!!

My thoughts too, Pete. And what is worse is the media's lack of reporting of these issues. It simply reveals that any concept of democracy and representation is truly dead and buried. The Masters of the Universe now impose their will on us all using secrecy to advance their stranglehold.