Although not nearly as well-known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trade
in Services Agreement (TiSA) should not be overlooked.
Equally potent and potentially even more debilitating to our
nation's independence and domestic economy than the TPP and TTIP, the proposed
TiSA currently being negotiated would be imposed on the entire world, not just
a particular region.
The TiSA would give the UN's World Trade Organization (WTO)
unprecedented control of the service sector, including jobs in banking,
finance, courier and postal services, delivery and freight services, energy
distribution, health care, insurance, maritime, professional services, legal
services, licensing, real estate, telecommunications, transportation, tourism,
and much more.
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative,
such services "account for three-quarters of U.S. GDP and 4 out of 5 jobs
in the United States."
As for its stated purpose, the Office of U.S. Trade
Representative's website declares: "TiSA will support the development of
strong, transparent, and effective regulatory policies, which are so important
to enabling international commerce."
Despite TiSA's purported intentions aimed at
"transparent" regulatory policies and then-presidential candidate
Senator Barack Obama's promise to run the "most transparent"
administration in history, the official TiSA text remains anything but
transparent, as it is shrouded in secrecy and will likely remain so for some
time, even after its possible passage.
Following WikiLeaks' release of its first batch of
classified TiSA documents in 2014, William F. Jasper reported in "TISA,
Yet Another Secret 'Trade' Threat" (posted at TheNewAmerican.com on
October 3, 2014):
The very first page of the draft text states:
"Declassify on: Five years from entry into force of the TISA agreement or,
if no agreement enters into force, five years from the close of the
negotiations."
Moreover, it states: "This document must be protected
from unauthorized disclosure.... It must be stored in a locked or secured
building, room, or container." Members of the U.S. Congress are not
allowed to see the secret text; it will be presented to them, finally, in a
high-pressure, no-debate vote, following a massive lobbying effort by the usual
crony corporatists from the financial, insurance, and information technology
sectors.
In addition to its level of concealment, the TiSA, as
alluded to earlier, would further abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the WTO. In
fact, the WTO's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, was the site of
TiSA's secretive four-day negotiations on September 22-25, 2014.
In a more recent article, "TISA Leaks: Another Secret
Obama Trade Deal, More Reasons to Stop 'Fast Track,'" posted at
TheNewAmerican.com on June 5, 2015, William F. Jasper writes, "U.S.
courts, or tribunals created under TiSA, or World Trade Organization (WTO)
tribunals are virtually certain to use TiSA — as they have already done
using NAFTA — to rule that U.S. laws are illegal and must be
changed."
TiSA courts, like those created under the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), would override and supersede our domestic U.S.
state and federal courts, thereby overturning legislation in favor of foreign
corporations from any one of the TiSA participatory nations.
Currently, TiSA is being negotiated by the United States,
the European Union, and 23 other nations, including Turkey, Mexico, Canada,
Australia, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Israel (parties to TiSA agreement shown in
blue on map on left). Should Congress approve the TiSA, there is no known
guarantee that additional countries such as APEC member-states Communist China
and Russia would not also become part of TiSA, without the consent of Congress.
Proponents claim that TiSA would help American businesses
sell services overseas. Yet it is much more probable that TiSA would help
foreign businesses sell services in the United States. But promising the
opposite of what we should expect based on the agreements themselves is nothing
new for the globalists. Recall that they deceptively "sold" (and
continue to "sell") "free trade" agreements on the basis
that they would create American jobs and prosperity, but that the agreements
delivered the opposite.
TiSA assistance to facilitate foreign businesses to sell their
services in the U.S. would be twofold: (1) TiSA's proposed international
regulatory scheme would enable foreign services businesses to compete more
effectively against American services businesses; and (2) TiSA's new regulatory
landscape would more easily facilitate the outsourcing of American services
jobs overseas.
Americans in services jobs that require occupational
licensing would likely be hard hit by TiSA's changes in the regulatory
environment. Services professions requiring occupational licensing include
physicians, lawyers, teachers, plumbers, electricians, real estate agents,
insurance agents, audiologists, architects, barbers, certified public
accountants, professional engineers, and more. According to a recent article,
dated January 27, 2015, published by the Brookings Institution, occupational
licensing "has spread to cover around 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, up
from just 5 percent in the 1950s."
With so much at stake, ranging from jobs to most importantly
our national sovereignty and independence, it is imperative that you call and
email your U.S. senators and representative and encourage them to vote against
any legislation that advances TiSA.
Please take the following actions: Phone
your representative (202-225-3121) and senators (202-224-3121) and
tell them to vote NO on any legislation that advances passage of the TiSA.
Send your senators and representative an editable,
prewritten email with reasons that they should vote NO on TiSA.
Source: The John Birch Society JBS.org
Comments
Don’t let
Congress give any more jobs away. It’s time to quit the UN and the WTO.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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