Is There Something We Should Know about the New Obama’s Trade Agreement

It’s highly unlikely that anyone would be surprised by the announcement that Washington is entirely dependent on the US financial and military circles, that treat the elected officials as their servants that allow them to plunder other countries and peoples. These circles have brought the sitting President Barack Obama to power and are now invest huge sums in the election campaigns of the both presidential candidates.

It is therefore only natural that these circles demand their “political puppets” to pursue the financial schemes that were elaborated even before those politicians were brought to power. The ultimate goal of such schemes is the signing of international agreements, that would secure America’s dominant position in trade and fiscal policies, allowing those special interests to pursue further enrichment.

This notion can be be illustrated by such designs as the the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TTP), which was signed last February by the 12 member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum: Australia, Brunei, Vietnam, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Singapore, Japan and the US. It comes as no surprise that the United States was an initiator of this agreement, since Washington has been fairly concerned about its diminishing impact on the situation in the Asia-Pacific region, the strengthening economic and political influence of China, the chance of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) being signed and the failure of the Free Trade Area for Americas (FTAA). For the US, the TTP – a real tool for creating the long-term Free Trade Area for Asia Pacific (FTAAP) that must secure the US dominance in the region. However, the TTP still has to be ratified by all the states that signed it. And the chances of this are pretty slim, since there’s a growing awareness among the public of those states that the agreement will only benefit American corporations, so it’s unlikely that Obama will be able to get the agreement approved by the Congress before he leaves office.

In addition, the US has also been negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union that was to be signed before the end of the year. The total value of this deal, that has been in negotiations for three years, is estimated to reach 34.2 billion dollars. But the negotiations are now stalled, since European officials faced a harsh public resistance, since Europeans are convinced that this deal will give too much preferences to US companies.

Both the TTP and TTIP are being created with the sole purpose of establishing US control over international financial flows, that would allow the Wasll-Street to gets its hands on one half all trade in the world. The dominant role of the US in these two associations may allow Washington to maintain its dominance over the world, since those two associations, if the free trade agreement between Japan and the EU is to be signed, will allow it to establish the staggering level of control over 80% of international trade, creating an alternative to the WTO, where the United States will dictate the rules of the game.

But the problem is that those two agreements are unlikely to be finalized any time soon, if ever. Therefore, the Wall-Street is pushing yet another agreement on the table – the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). There’s hardly any information available to the general public about this deal, since Washington is trying not to repeat the mistakes it has done with the TTP and TTIP, preventing the international community from raising the alarm before the deal is finalized.

The CNN Money would report (emphasis added):

The US is negotiating a trade deal that’s worth 38.5 trillion dollars and spans 50 countries – and most people have never heard about it.

The Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) has been in the works since April 2013 and it could soon become America’s most important trade deal. The deal encompasses every sphere of public life, from tourism to communication and finance, since the services are getting increasingly important for the US economy, producing three quarters of the American GDP. It’s been reported that the Office of the United States Trade announced that the 50 nations deal would make the US much richer.

The group of countries that are supposed to sign the deal is calling itself “Really Good Friends of Services.” It includes all EU member states, the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Turkey , Korea, Japan and 15 other countries, making this new initiative the largest trade deal in the world, since they represent nearly 70% of the world’s 55 trillion dollars services market. The agreement is negotiated in utmost secrecy, but the WikiLeaks has still managed to release a series of secret TiSA documents in mid-September, exposing Washington’s reasoning behind this deal. The Global Justice Now group that was formed to oppose the deal has launched a campaign to raise the awareness of the general public, stressing the fact that TiSA poses a threat to Europe’s public services like health care and education, since it opens the door to their privatization.

The ancient Latin proverb says: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” (Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes) can be easily changed these days to “Beware of Washington proposing trade deals”, since every time a deal like this surfaces, the ultimate losers are always the people of the states that sign it.

Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”