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Selected Provisions: TPP, CETA, and TiSA Trade Agreements
While proponents suggest that international trade agreements increase economic prosperity, writes reader Dangerous_Minds, it's often hard to find much detail about their details. Here's an exception:
Freezenet is offering an update to known provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), and the Trades in Services Agreement (TiSA). Among the findings are provisions permitting a three-strikes law and site blocking, multiple anti-circumvention laws, ISP liability, the search and seizure of personal devices to enforce copyright at the border, and an open door for ISP-level surveillance. Freezenet also offers a brief summary of what was found while admitting that provisions found in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as it relates to digital rights remains elusive for the time being.
Yes. I am from Argentina, which, as many of you know, is a really shitty country right now. But, a few years ago, we rejected (along with most of South America) the ALCA/FTAA. The problem with this agreement is that it's full of technicalities that benefit no one but the US. Americans learned a lot from NAFTA (with Mexico taking a hit in US manufacturing), so they added quite a few provisions to make the FTA one-sided.
You see, as it is, the US pushes for elimination of trade barriers, or, basically, customs regulations (since they are the simplest and most effective ways of protecting a country's own manufacturing). But the agreements say nothing about INTERNAL REGULATIONS: for example, food standards. One of Argentina's main exports used to be beef. But for many years we've been banned from selling in the US market due to "concerns" about foot-and-mouth disease: It takes only 1 confirmed case of this disease for the USDA to impose a 3-year ban on beef. Or, in other words, it takes only 1 CIA operative to infect a cow in Argentina to ban all beef, at once (Argentina's surface is "only" about 1/3 of the size of the US, so you understand that a country-wide ban for a single case is just plain stupid).
Another problem is that the US HEAVILY subsidizes certain products, enabling two things: on one hand, unfair "competition" since Argentina is completely unable to sell, for example, corn due to the extremely high subsidies. On the other hand, it enables dumping: the US can flood Argentina's market with extremely cheap corn, destroying the corn "industry" here.
This is the problem with "free trade" agreements proposed by the US. They follow the same doctrine as US foreign policy, and only benefit the US and their blood brothers (UK, Australia, Canada and NZ).
Unfortunately, the US has never seen Latin America as an ally (the explanation being really simple: pure racism, still deep in US roots - see who their "partners" are and what color their skin is), and they have historically manipulated Latin America's economies and governments, generating hate and division between neighbors. They decided to make deals with a single country and allow them to become an enemy superpower and creditor, instead of dealing with many smaller states and yet retain cheap labor but with the added benefits of: easier language, smaller distance, not so different culture, and basically the same timezone.
Unfortunately the US will never accept these conditions.