GATS-Facing the Facts -Timely info on the 1995 Free Trade Agreement, completion of it coming soon

[Baobab]

http://www.citizen.org/documents/GATS-facing-the-facts-final.pdf (and other pubs on the same Canadian NGO's site, which are I think the clearest and most accessible writing on the web about trade deals)


Yes, they really have been negotiating it for 20 years! It keeps falling apart over the controversial public services. Developing countries dont want to give up public healthcare and education and follow the successful US models! But that is what GATS requires!

There is little wiggle room, as we of all people should know.

"Progressive liberalisation" as the entire scheme is called, is being sold to them as a sort of ElDorado, a glittering city of gold and jobs in the developed world, right over the next hill.

They just have to behave like us and give up the crutch of 20h century burdened, obsolete social services like the successful Americans have! Privatization is the ONLY future possible!

It has to be made irreversible, of course. By giving corporations entitlements to policy staying the same forever. (similar kind of legal case in this case, ISDS - in Slovakia - blocking single payer! )

See how the new FTAs all refer back to the original 1995 deal to block new public services and threaten the continued existence of public education in the EU and USA.

Another example India is just joining GATS now, a condition of which is giving up their right to education.

You can read lots of articles on that in the Indian press a discussion we never had here when GATS was being negotiated here at the beginning in the early 1990s.

Groups like the All India Students Association have held huge demonstrations battling the neoliberal Modi government, citing a return to the caste system where only those of hig caste could afford a good education. But the WTO which we signed in 1995, demands that education be opened for international trade and progressively (irreversibly) privatized and globalized.

Basically, its a trade, they give up new public health care and a national right to education, they and their employees get access to bid on contracts via government goods and services procurement e-portals and the private market in places like the US just as if they were a domestic company.

That is called "National Treatment" and "Most Favored Nation" or "MFN" (see http://www.iatp.org/files/MFN_and_the_GATS.htm )

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[Chan790]

2. I thought that damned thing was dead already.

Ugh. Guess not.

Just one more reason why we have to elect the candidate that has never been a supporter of the "free trade" boondoggle.

[Baobab]

3. Google "Trade in Services Agreement" "negative list"

"negative list" means everything not carved out now is included, so the jobs impact is likely to be huge, and US firms will invariably need to automate fully to compete with really inexpensive foreign firms. Or subcontract to take advantage of the low cost labor.

So, its going to be devastating for both the working poor and the middle class and I suspect the entire economy because of a huge fall in incomes. Additionally, Its quite possible - I think likely that none of the New Deal style spending to increase our own employment may be available due to all of the WTO changes in how services are bid, also, TiSA will have the same effect, thats the bait to participate for developing countries, so its not something we could ignore, not after 20 years of negotiations- Also, now we are entering the WTO Government Procurement Agreement.

Also, similar WTO issues apply in health care, which no candidate talks about, which makes me wonder if the plan is to globalize health care to keep the injustice by dumping the US nurses and doctors..

[Baobab]

4. When will the media cover this? If not now, when?

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.405.5725