Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkrzr | Hacker News Reader

This leak once again shows the importance of transparency in negotiations that will impact the lives of 800 million people (and the rest of the world indirectly).

If TTIP were ratified, it would be out of the control of any subsequently elected democratic governments as it would be part of international law.

Regardless what you think of TTIP it seems like the very least to ask is that a contract of such importance is discussed in the open where the public can have a voice in their own future.

View on HN

What I'm now wondering is, can the WTO bully US and EU states in the way it can bully third world countries?

What if renegade states across both sides of the Atlantic decided to disregard the treaty and the fines that will follow immediately? What will the WTO do then? Sanction them?

This is not how it works. The US and the EU use the WTO for bullying others.

Those treaties are a way of creating a legal framework that can't be altered by national governments. This is not happening against the governments but it's done by the governments to their populations.

This is not US against EU but corporations against people. The idea is to be sure that national governments can't vote against the interest of international business.

I understand that completely. I was thinking, if by some miracle a populist was elected and he went renegade, would they actually dare sanction a western state?

I need help in argumenting: What's the difference between the EU-US WTO agreements and the TTIP, apart from the former being from the XXth century. Aren't we happier and wealthier since the WTO exists?

Please don't tell me about how a treaty should be voted on by the people, because I already agree about this part.

The content is different? Especially with regards to the investor-state dispute settlement system, which currently does not apply to the EU.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlem... )

>Aren't we happier and wealthier since the WTO exists?

Not at all. The only time the WTO interacted with my native country it was to "gently" push for privitisation of state assets all of which have turned out to be disastrous deals for our country. Not even the economic liberals I know think highly of the WTO.

Aren't we happier and wealthier since the WTO exists?

1) If the consumption of mood-altering prescription drugs is any indicator, then indeed, we are not happier.

2) Correlation is not causation.

> Please don't tell me about how a treaty should be voted on by the people, because I already agree about this part.

Direct democracy in diplomacy and trade negotiation sounds like a really terrible idea. It would just be constant protectionism, xenophobia and probably ruin economic growth and everyone will be the worse of for it. Sometimes giving more people a voice does not result in positive outcomes.

That's a really depressing point of view. Especially, as trade seems to have been redefined to mean anything which might enable corporate profit...

That's the difference between signing and ratifying. There's a story that USA's Congress never ratified the end of the war with Europe. A lot of countries voted No to the European referendum. Most of them voted Yes. Ultimately, the citizen should decide when they give up power, and they must repeat it regularly.

> What's the difference between the EU-US WTO agreements and the TTIP

WTO was about import tariffs.

TTIP seems to be mostly about de-regulation and legal harmonisation.

PR flaks are counting on the good will that people have towards free trade to allow them to squeeze through a treaty that surrenders democratic sovereignty to multi-national corporation stuffed courts and tribunals.

We may or may not get to vote on the treaty - I don't know. But I do know that if we vote yes then that will be one of the last meaningful things that we do vote on. Pretty much any law you might want to pass post-TTIP would be blocked by the TTIP ISDS process.

But it will be discussed in the public once it is finalized and IIRC the U.S. Congress has 60 days to pass it.

Changing an already finished agreement will be a major undertaking, bordering on the impossible. The Congress can either pass or not pass it, which biases the vote heavily. Having the opportunity to present a negotiated document implies the opportunity to anchor the discussions starting point.

At least that's more time than Congress got to think about bailing out Wall Street in 2008.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com