Trump’s silence on TiSA is deafening.
By Don Quijones | 19 December 2016
WOLF STREET — The year 2016 has not been a good one for the international corporatocracy. Its beloved Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is dead and almost buried. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is probably also mortally wounded. Meanwhile, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a Trojan-horse deal between Canada and the EU that could enable as many as 47,000 US corporations to launch lawsuits against European governments that threaten their profit-making capacity, has been signed but still faces big hurdles before being passed into law.
But the battle is far from over. Transatlantic corporations and their armies of trade representatives, lobbyists, think tanks and corporate lawyers have not certainly given up. They still have at least one card up their sleeve. Its name is the Trade in Services Act, or TiSA, and it is the most covert and, according to Wikileaks, “most important of the United States’ strategic ‘trade’ treaty triumvirate,” which also includes the resting-in-peace TPP and the semi-defunct TTIP.
With services accounting for around 75% of the EU economy, 80% of the US economy and the lion’s share of many of the world’s other economies, according to World Bank figures, it’s not hard to see why TiSA is so important.
The agreement involves more countries than TTIP and TPP combined: The United States, all 28 members of the European Union, plus Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Liechtenstein, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey. Together, these 50 nations form the charmingly named “Really Good Friends of Services” group, which represents almost 70% of all trade in services worldwide. […]
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