WikiLeaks releases Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) documents | Hacker News Reader

WikiLeaks releases Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) documents

wikileaks.org

146 pointsstyx3118 comments

As a citizen of an EU state, I'd say that the whole TISA thing looks like the rules that EU imposes on the EU member-states: non-discrimination against other member-state entities and limitations and/or requirements for local regulations. Also another similarity: there is almost zero-to-none chance for a member state to get out of EU - the cost would be just too big. Once TISA is signed it will be very hard to get out.

As our brief EU history has taught us: mostly the rules are good. But when they are not, there needs to be a way to amend them. The problem with TISA seems to be that once signed it puts most of the decision-making process into hands of people that were not elected by the people.

Press partners: Libération (fr) [0], l'Espresso (it) [1], Publico (es) [2] and Médiapart (fr) [3].

[0] http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2016/05/25/de-nouveaux-docu...

[1] http://espresso.repubblica.it/internazionale/2016/05/25/news...

[2] http://www.publico.es/internacional/cincuenta-paises-dan-vue...

[3] https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/250516/libre-...

Is anglophone press sleeping?

This is when I appreciate journalists who read through all these documents and summarize the important parts, and analyze the interesting implications for me.

I second this.

Surprising that Wikileaks doesn't do this too.

They did? There's expert analysis on the linked page. More in depth than a newspaper article, but more accessible than legalese.

That's not really their job.

So corporations are owning, influencing, and dictating a greater portion of our world? Without the knowledge of the governed? The worse part is that corporations are trying to "domesticate" parts of the world where they do not reside simply for an isolated goal of profitability.

I normally like trade partnerships because it spreads a common set of laws for companies to operate within across regions, but I do not like it when the end goal is provincial in nature.

A chapter on SOE (State Owned Enterprises) seems mainly targeted at China and other state-controlled economies. It basically prevents SOEs to discriminate against other entities (private owned and/or foreign) when buying/selling products/services.

In western world SOEs do majority of business via tenders, where they are already prohibited to discriminates based on non-business related reasons.

See "A snapshot of the TISA annex": https://wikileaks.org/tisa/Annex-on-State-Owned-Enterprises/...

In all honesty, it does not look like a doomsday scenario.

It takes 5 minutes of reading analysis provided on the WikiLeaks page to have a heart attack.

>The US TISA proposal only applies to SOEs at central government level. This was a controversial issue in the TPPA, 15 where each party designated which, if any, rules would apply to the sub-central government level. 16 As a result, the US and other federal jurisdicons whose states or provinces own SOEs have less exposure than countries with a unitary system of government. >New SOEs may need to be created because of market, policy, social or regulatory failure, or because a government rejects the neoliberal model for some or all such actvites. In most instances where new SOEs are created they need special support, at least initally, and may need to adopt measures that favour local services rms or other ‘non-commercial’ practces to meet their objectves. There is no provision for this kind of future-proofng in the Annex (and only limited in the TPPA 23).

Reading the rest of it is even worse. In Poland we had private post service win a contract for most of official gov-to-people mail by severely undercutting SOE post office. They did it by employing almost all of the shitty BS ways one can come up with: temp work (almost show up and get a bag of mail style), almost no physical presence (for official mail/court notices!), outright falsification of delivery status (FOR COURT MAIL) After half a year people were so pissed that they lost the contract Those annexes at least in part will let them get away with it. Sure, it would be nice to stop some of the extreme protectionism (cough, France, cough), but those rules are just downright horrible in practice

You are mixing different stuff together:

>In most instances where new SOEs are created they need special support, at least initally, and may need to adopt measures that favour local services rms or other ‘non-commercial’ practies to meet their objectves.

  If SOA needs "special support" (this usually means some kind of monopoly and inflated prices) and commercial entity does not (in order to deliver same product/service at same price), why would you want to have a SOE?

>After half a year people were so pissed that they lost the contract. Those annexes at least in part will let them get away with it.

  In your words: a local company lost a contract with the government because they did not deliver. How is TISA going to change that exactly?

a local company lost a contract with the government because they did not deliver. How is TISA going to change that exactly?

The GP is pointing out a case where "opening the market" resulted in a significant loss of service. TISA isn't going to change that, TISA is going to enable that.

I'm glad this came out. Now there should be more concrete information to use in lobbying against these nasty deals WIP.

From the Liberation article [0] (which has a strong French bias):

- France has stopped further negotiations with the US regarding TTIP as the US do not seem to be willing to give enough in return

- TISA has now been leaked, although discussions started in March, 2013

- the official aim of TISA is to reduce barriers to competition in the name of growth and employment, by supposedly treating local and international operators the same

- the implicit aim of TISA would be to counter China's economic threat on the international scene

- supporters of TISA (once accepted) would supposedly force members of the World Trade Organisation to adopt the agreement, yet China, Brasil, Russia and India are all members of the WTO

- some recent amendments to TISA ask for less regulations from member states to remove some of the constraints encountered by foreign actors, this would have a substantial impact on industries such as mining, energy, large infrastructures, IT, etc.

- other amendments ask for foreign companies to not be required to have a local branch in in member states where they do business, which may override/impede on national rights

- TISA would require state-owned enterprises to behave as private actors in foreign countries and prevent them from favouring local business (local or national suppliers and clients)

- the above point also suggests that if a member country's public companies represent more than 30% of its economy, other countries can ask other members of the agreement to refuse to support said country through non-commercial means (e.g. cancellation of debts, donations, preferential loan, etc.). This is ostensibly a way to impede on the competitive advantage of countries like China which have strong government support

- TISA would aim to globalize and commodify health services to open the market to health corporations and insurance companies in countries where healthcare is provided by the state or welfare organisations [1]

- TISA aims to establish procedures for the confidential exchange of documents on a need-to-know basis (up to four years after the agreement goes through). While the exchange of documents may be confidential, participating members would be allowed to transfer the documents on non-secure channels and keep them on systems that are not subject to special security measures

- the agreement is criticized for aggressively supporting business and competition, while ignoring the "public service" aspect of the agreement

I may have skipped some things but I think that about covers it.

[0] http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2016/05/25/de-nouveaux-docu...

[1] The actual details come from https://data.awp.is/international/2015/02/04/22.html

I feel like that cartoon is a bit too racist.

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