goon wrote:
I'm completely ignorant on the issue. What's so bad about these trade deals?
Free trade agreements in general have very little to do with what it reads on the packaging. They're meant to encourage and harmonise trade between nations but most of the time they do the exact opposite
Take NAFTA for example, shortly after its inception the trade balance between the US and Mexico shifted dramatically, interestingly enough towards Mexico. Of course that doesn't mean that most Mexicans ever saw a part of that wealth, the poverty rate hasn't changed at all since then - what has changed is the number of Mexicans working in the US, up from 3m to 12m people which is 10% of Mexico's population. The opening of the Mexican market has led to a complete collapse of the agrar sector which now means that Mexico has to import thousands of tons in corn meat etc from the US. Ironically the produce that's exported to Mexico is grown by Mexican workers employed by US corporations that were responsible for the emigrations of their employees in the first place; at the same time many jobs in the US were lost as well because many corporations resettled to the border area leaving regions like the former industry belt around Detroit to die a slow death
It's similar to what the US, China and by far worst of them all the European Union are doing in Africa. These Economic Partnership Agreements are designed to push "free trade" which is infinitely biased towards European economies, crippling their African counterparts in the process. To add insult to injury Merkel, Holland and others are portraying themselves as saints doing them poor little negroes a favour and are asking for services in return such as detainment of African migrants on African soil so as not to have to deal with the whole asylum right hassle.
And that's just the general thing with FTAs. TTIP et al specifically go a lot farther like creating a parallel arbration court system which will have secret sessions, in which corporations will have the right to sue nations whenever the latter implement laws that would potentially risk said company's profits. Meaning if a French commune put out an infrastructure mandate to tender to local companies it would give American, Spanish or British MNCs the right to sue France for compensation. There's also the fact that many studies show that TTIP will destroy 100,000s of jobs for a multitude of reasons both in the US and in Europe
