TPP is Dead, But It’s About to Be Replaced by Something Much Worse — TISA

The president has a huge PR problem on his hands. How Donald Trump keeps his campaign promise to kill the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and remains on good terms with our Asian allies and trading partners may be as simple as a change in semantics. In other words, he’s simply going to call it another name; The Trade-in-Services Agreement (TISA). And some are saying the deal is much worse than the TPP ever was.

According to the source who has inside documentation, the TISA, “if passed would prohibit regulations on the financial industry, eliminate laws to safeguard online or digital privacy, render illegal any ‘buy local’ rules at any level of government, effectively dismantle any public advantages to be derived from state-owned enterprises and eliminate net neutrality.” Some have said that keeping financial institutions in check has been the only thing preventing another global financial crisis. And while the citizens’ right to privacy is currently somewhat tenuously protected by privacy laws, hardly anyone can imagine the impact losing those privacies would entail.

TISA’s specifics are shrouded in secrecy, with Wikileaks and Bilaterls being the only ones to have published any information related to its details.

According to Counter Punch, “Earlier draft versions of TISA’s language would prohibit any restrictions on the size, expansion or entry of financial companies and a ban on new regulations, including a specific ban on any law that separates commercial and investment banking, such as the equivalent of the U.S. Glass-Steagall Act. It would also ban any restrictions on the transfer of any data collected, including across borders; place social security systems at risk of privatization or elimination; and put an end to Internet privacy and net neutrality.”

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Just in case one might be tempted to think the TISA is just hearsay, rumor, or the fodder of conspiracy theorists, the facts are that over 50 countries are actively engaged in negotiations to enact TISA. “The European Union is negotiating TISA on behalf of its 28 member countries, along with, among others, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Norway, Switzerland, Pakistan and Turkey,” according to the documents.

It’s possible some countries are already making moves to allow for the financial takeover. Over the last few months, India has reclaimed most of its currency in circulation by forcing its holders to surrender their currency to the banks or lose their wealth forever. The new currency will replace the old but in order to make the exchange, all cash holding citizens must surrender their bills to the banks to have its value sustained.

According to the Government of Sweden’s fact sheet on TISA, the goal of the agreement is pretty straightforward, largely resembling (for lack of a better analogy) a global NAFTA. They write:

The basic premise is to further develop the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and create a better and more predictable agreement. The aim is for the agreement to eventually be integrated into the WTO. New countries are officially welcome and a number of countries have joined in since the start. If more countries joined, the benefits of TiSA would increase. This would also be a step towards integrating TiSA into the WTO. One key issue is the participation of China, which requested in 2013 to be allowed to take part in the negotiations. China’s entry to TiSA has clear political support from the EU.

TISA’s internet regulations, which have been dubbed “a virtual copy-and-paste out of the TPP’s Electronic Commerce chapter,” will most likely be rammed through by those who stand to gain from it — mega corporations and government who want to control the flow of digital information.

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As the European Digital Rights (EDRi) stated in a letter opposing the Orwellian data measures in TISA:

Fundamental rights must be respected and not negotiated upon. Therefore, data flows–which refer to transfers of individuals’ personal data–must not be part of trade agreements. Trade negotiations are not suitable for shaping rules affecting fundamental rights and the rule of law in a democratic society.

The TPP is Not Dead

(ANTIMEDIA) While many are still breathing a sigh of relief that President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, some are noting that the world is nowhere near out of the woods yet. There’s another deal being negotiated right now, and this one may be even scarier than TPP. And like the TPP, it’s been quietly cobbled together behind closed doors for years.

The Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), which governments began crafting in 2012, represents 50 participating countries around the world. Before examining the text of agreement, however, it should be noted that TISA is largely a U.S.-E.U. deal and excludes some notable global players, as Glyn Moody highlighted for Ars Technica in 2015:

“Significantly, all the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — are absent, and are therefore unable to provide their perspective and input for what is essentially a deal designed by Western nations, for the benefit of Western corporations.”

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As TISA is described on its page at the European Commission’s website:

“TiSA aims at opening up markets and improving rules such as licensing, financial services, telecoms, e-commerce, maritime transport, and professionals moving abroad temporarily to provide services.”

But many analysts are concerned that TISA’s aim of “improving rules” is really only about corporations tightening their grip on their respective industries. Deborah James, writing for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, concluded in November of last year:

“The TISA is intended to lock in a system of rules to allow multinational companies to operate in a borderless digitized environment with minimal regulation and maximum rights regarding the treatment of labor, capital, inputs, and the new key element of data.”

Continuing, she states:

“As promoted by the multinational financial, logistics, and big data corporations through Team TISA, the agreement would set severe limits on the ways that governments can regulate domestic economies, removing key tools of economic management and the ability to shape the service economy while providing an extensive corporate bill of rights for multinational companies’ operations across the globe.”

A corporate bill of rights.

The fact that we know anything at all about TISA is due largely to a series of data dumps from WikiLeaks beginning in 2014, then another later publication from Bilaterals.org, an organization dedicated to shedding light on trade negotiations taking place outside the scope of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

For their part, governments participating in TISA have been reluctant to post updates on the status of negotiations — if they decide to inform their citizens about the deal at all.

Canada’s last update, for instance, is from June, and it says vaguely that “Parties conducted a stocktaking session to assess the level of progress on all issues.” On the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative site, TISA is still described as being “part of the Obama Administration’s ongoing effort to create economic opportunity for U.S. workers and businesses by expanding trade opportunities.”

Given that TISA would do things such as prohibit regulation of the financial industry, including proven-harmful instruments like derivatives — and even, shockingly, instruments and products that have yet to be invented — curtail efforts to safeguard online and digital privacy, and effectively eliminate net neutrality, it’s not surprising that governments haven’t been advertising the deal.

In fact, many are noting that TISA is nothing more than an updated — and reinforced — version of the TPP. Bilaterals.org, noting that despite its unpopularity, the TPP is still being used as the model for TISA, explains:

“Several proposed texts from the failed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have been transferred to TISA — including state-owned enterprises; rights to hold data offshore (including financial data); e-commerce; and prohibitions on performance requirements for foreign investors.”

While these proposals originated in the U.S., which has since pulled out of the deal, Bilaterals.org points out that “they appear to be supported by other members of the TPP” and, as such, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, through the Trade in Services Agreement, still has the potential to become the “new norm.”

And to that idea, the organization concluded quite succinctly:

“TPP cannot be allowed to become the new ‘default’ position for these flawed agreements.”

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