The deal also aims to make it so that banks and e-commerce outlets like Amazon could send an individual's data out of a TiSA country for processing, regardless of national privacy laws, breaking with centuries of precedent on locally kept business records accounting to David Dayen at The New Republic.
Alberto Mucci recently explained in an article on Politico that, "TiSA deals with barriers to services' trade such as the conditions by which lawyers from Norway might be able to practice in the United States or German engineers might gain easier access to Mexico."
In other words, TiSA will have profound impacts on immigration and employment policies in every single country that takes part in the agreement.
More than that, it will cripple our democratic republic by making it even easier for corporations to manage or strike down our public laws.
In recent months under existing trade laws, we've seen Canada and Mexico successfully sue the United States to force us to overturn our "Country Of Origin Labeling" law for meat imports.
And Transcanada is suing the United States right now for $15 billion as retaliation for President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Dayen also reported last year that under TiSA, "governments may not be able to regulate staff to patient ratios in hospitals, or ban fracking, or tighten safety controls on airlines, or refuse accreditation to [bad] schools and universities. Foreign corporations must receive the same 'national treatment' as domestic ones, and could argue that such regulations violate their ability to provide the service."
Based on leaked documents, we know that democratically passed government regulations would only be allowed so long as they are not "more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of service."
That would likely mean gutting important rules on financial services, foreign investment limits and it could force state-owned public services around the world to compete with foreign corporations.
Almost every single country that's taking part in the TiSA negotiations is already part of the WTO, and the agreement is actually based on the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services, also known as GATS, which includes 159 member countries.
And it's telling that TiSA involves WTO member nations and is based on the WTO, because as Dayen points out, "The only reason to re-write the rules is to replace GATS, which the European Union readily admits." On the European Commission's webpage it says very clearly that "if enough WTO members join, TiSA could be turned into a broader WTO agreement."
In other words, TiSA isn't just another sweeping regional trade agreement like the TPP or the TTIP.
TiSA aims to corporatize markets and functionally destroy borders around the world so that Corporate Big Brother can know everything about everyone, and so that Big Business can sell anything to anyone, no matter the harm it may cause.
Call your lawmakers and tell them that you oppose any trade deal that gives corporations the ability to challenge the sovereignty of governments around the world.
Instead, democratic republics should be able to pass and enforce laws and trade policies that first serve the best interests of its citizens instead of transnational corporations and billionaires.
Just say "no" to TPP, TTIP and especially to TiSA.
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