It's seen to be a natural relationship where two countries gain from the interaction, poor countries very much want to export services, because they have high unemployment and the workers send home remittances.
Where there is no language barrier, natural opportunities will also likely open up for caring for poorer Americans in foreign health care facilities. (This is called "patient mobility" as it's similar to "labor mobility", it's one of the "four modes of supply" of the GATS)
The barriers are potential liability (which can be both
ways, as iatrogenic injury is already the third highest cause of mortality in
the US) laws will likely include ERISA like preemption of claims for injury and
rollback of profit-killing ACA regulations which could be seen as violations of
the WTO standstill which became effective on February 26, 1998. (See the WTO
Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services) We likely will see cross
licensing and cross border employment of professionals as required by GATS'
'disciplines on domestic regulation'. Laws (all 'measures' effecting trade in
services") have to be the 'least trade restrictive measures possible. This
will mean the proud Republicans and Democrats - who don't want the country
knowing why these things are happening - basically our interests and our jobs
being traded away for corporate profits- so they can get concessions they
otherwise wouldn't, overseas- things which don't translate into more jobs here
at all, often quite the opposite- For example, by trading away good jobs they
may be able to eliminating some affordable generic drugs that compete with name
brands, in addition to lowering wages.) Politics will have to be bent to cover
up the facts, in a big scramble to hide the grand scheme- which is hijacking
democracy globally-in the US, by duplicating trade rules, the real causes, with
local laws is used to keep the deals out of the media. (This is already being
done with state and national preemption in areas like fracking. Similar deals
hide the freezes on numerous other regulations. (Anti-democratic
Standstill" clauses that halt any changes which are not deregulation,
unless carved out before the agreement is signed, blocking any more public
services are at the core of called "negative list" and "top
down" agreements- core features of US style trade deals. See "How to
Design Trade Agreements on Services: Top Down or Bottom Up" WTO document
ersd201308)
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Learning more:
A good web site to learn more about this hugely destructive older WTO GATS deal is PolicyAlternatives.ca - at their Trade and Investment Research Project. Go back a few years, there is a lot of stuff there. Also, citizen.org, bilaterals.org and twn.my are good sources. Also, on YouTube, lots of videos on GATS and videos made by Sanya Reid Smith about recent trade deals - You'll find out a great deal.
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