Wikileaks Drops Another Damning Trove Of Secret Trade Deal Documents
WASHINGTON -- The latest trove of secret trade documents released by
Wikileaks is offering opponents of the massive deals currently being
crafted by the Obama administration more fodder to show that such
agreements can impact United States laws and regulations.
The latest leak purports to include 17 documents from negotiations on the Trade In Services Agreement,
a blandly named trade deal that would cover the United States, the
European Union and more than 20 other countries. More than 80 percent of
the United States economy is in service sectors.
According to the Wikileaks release, TISA, as the deal is known, would take a major step towards deregulating financial industries, and could affect everything from local maritime and air traffic rules to domestic regulations on almost anything if an internationally traded service is involved.
The pact would be one of three enormous deals whose passage through
Congress could be eased with passage of Trade Promotion Authority, also
known as fast-track authority. The Senate has passed fast-track, and it
could be taken up in the House this month.
The other giant pacts
are the Trans-Pacific Partnership covering a dozen Pacific Rim nations
and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership targeted at
Europe.
Among the staunchest opponents of the deals are unions,
whose members point to job losses sparked by previous free-trade
agreements, and to the excessive secrecy surrounding the measures.
"Once
again Wikileaks reveals what we cannot learn from our own government, a
government that defaults to giant trade deals that affect generations
of Americans shrouded in secrecy until they are virtually adopted," said
Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen.
