Women and minority owned businesses likely will lose preferential carve outs under Clinton or Trump

[Baobab]

(In government procurement) - with those preferences, if awarded, going to firms from less developed countries's firms instead- and Bernie may be forced into this too but of the three I think the chances are best of Bernie preventing it. In "skilled" professions.

We will also lose the ability to funnel tax money earmarked for building infrastructure to domestic firms and their domestic (US only) workers.

Wages are also unclear, the lowest qualified bidders - the cheapest- are supposed to win contracts through GPA. and similar trade agreement based e-tendering setups.

The supposed goal is to increase trade and decrease cartel behavior or nepotism, the awarding of contracts to only your own country's favored workers.

However, that's how we still look at stimulus programs, they are viewed as a way to eliminate poverty here, but that may not be possible in the future. it seems these deals will bar new deal like stimulus programs unless the contracts are awarded by non-country based "reasonable and objective criteria"- . To prevent this carve outs need to go into the pending deals - explicitly carving an area out, like needs also to be done for public services, health insurance, public higher education. Otherwise countries like ours will be prohibited from doing things that preferentially help existing public programs and basically we will be prohibited from creating any new ones. The quality of services delivered by an international mix of providers, some services may even be delivered elsewhere- may be mixed, and accountability for quality will be questionable. For example, with public schools local officials are at least supposed to be held responsible for a schools quality. How accountable will a huge multinational firm located on the other side of the world be for declining quality in a high school or grade school? Or hospital? Or prison?

What will the sex mix be in hese firms. Will any of their employees be women, or "minorities"? Nobody is discussing this, because nobody knows its happening besides the trade negotiators and government officials.

These carve outs should now and always should have been an important issue for Bernie's platform.

[thereismore]

1. Oh that is rich. Breaking down all kinds of barriers, for herself and transnational corporations. nt

[Baobab]

2. Sanya Reid Smith is an attorney for the Third World network in Malaysia and she is an expert on this

I highly recommend watching her recent videos on Youtube if you want to know more about it.

There are a bunch there they are all informative. Keep in mind the US is leading the effort for these deals so we are trying to be the country that makes the most radical changes as far as opening up to foreign service provider firms, who will get a right to use their own employees and their wages will likely be between them.

Those firms may not hire any women or US based minority employees at all. (Its entirely possible they may be all men)

It will be a big change.