Title: TISA and TPP: Trade unions and social movements resist unfair trade deals
Author: Oscar Rodríguez, Public Services Inter- national / Our World Is Not For Sale

Voices from the South E-Newsletter:

Description:

Governments around the globe are currently engaged in the biggest burst of trade and investment treaty negotiations since the 1990s. This new wave of trade deals is primarily being negotiated by governments and corporations in complete secrecy, and is being conducted entirely outside the framework of the World Trade Organization. Social movements around the world are raising their concerns about these negotiations, noting that the processes are fundamentally skewed towards corporate interests, and that the negotiations so far have resulted in legal obligations that tie governments’ hands in many areas only loosely related to trade.

In this month’s “Voices from the South,” Oscar Rodríguez L., Coordinator for Mexico, Central America and Dominican Republic in Public Services International (PSI), writes about the collective resistance struggles against two of these deals that will affect several countries in Central and Latin America. The first is the Trade and Services Agreement (TISA), which is being negotiated by more than 50 governments (including Norway) on the trade of services such as banking, health care and transport. The second is the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is being negotiated between 12 governments that rim the Pacific Ocean.

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