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CETA Signed Off As Wallonia Folds Under Pressure (freezenet.ca)
Dangerous_Minds writes: The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been signed off. The government of Wallonia appeared to be holding off on the agreement, but has since folded under the pressure. Two days after Wallonia agreed to the trade deal, countries signed off on the agreement. The agreement contains provisions surrounding a three strikes law, a global DMCA, site blocking, and the hugely controversial ISDS provisions to name a few. The deal still needs to be ratified for these laws to take effect.
Don't forget the $50 Billion in job losses to offset the $25 B in gains. We tried this crap with NAFTA etc and it only benefits the rich.
People who actually have studied this and know something about it disagree with you.
I don't blame you, it is an easy mistake to make because benefits are diffuse while costs are concentrated and easy to identify, especially due to the inadequacy (in the USA) of the trade-adjustment assistance program.
Big corps say that all the time and ISDS has nothing to do with workers. The point of the ISDS is allowing (US) corporations to sue foreign governments for lost sales caused by changes in law; sound familiar? (Hint: TTIP, TTP) The government that signs this gets absolutely no powers in exchange. In other words, when a foreign government realizes a (US) corporation is screwing them, that corporation can demand compensation for being nice. Such compensation is decided in secret tribunals although governments tend to not hide legal costs, so to date, the rulings have been published.
Since 2011, Australia has refused to "support provisions that would confer greater legal rights on foreign businesses" in new trade agreements. Yet Australia has just signed the TPP, which impacts workers' rights and confers greater rights (actually they're powers, not rights) on non-Australian corporations.
From your own link:
"Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says anxiety over trade deals has grown because wages haven’t kept pace with labor productivity while income inequality has risen. To some extent, he says, trade deals have hastened the pace of these changes".
The fact that "most estimates conclude that the deal had a modest but positive impact on U.S. GDP of less than 0.5 percent" (from your link) is largely irrelevant when most people do not get to see the benefits. Indeed, median American income has been shrinking since the late 1990s (when adjusted for inflation) even while the mean has increased.
Don't get me wrong. I'm one of the people who has done well out of the whole arrangement. But I totally appreciate others have not and are angry about it.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU. CETA has also a system which allows to modify the treaty later without parliamental control. So in short it is undemocratic and I want to keep my democracy.