TISA May Inflict Irreparable Damage on Small Firms – Trade Union Federation

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — TISA is one of the three hushed-up trade deals, including Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), that seek to dismantle trade regulations between the United States and the larger part of world economies.

"With increased competition on a global level, new entries will become difficult. Also, with greater market access bigger companies are facilitated in their mergers and acquirement, hence, consolidating market power. We believe that big competitive corporations will be the main winners," Georgios Altintzis, an ITUC policy officer, told Sputnik.

Altintzis explained that in the services economy, regulation is a determining factor of the ability of foreign companies to penetrate domestic markets.

"It is quite worrying that the agreement will not allow to reverse liberalization even where it created damage," Altintzis added.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks released 17 documents related to TISA, which is negotiated between the United States and 23 other nations, mainly in Europe and South America.

Critics of the deal have acknowledged that TISA is greater in scope than the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but say it will open the way to coordinated, supranational regulation labor laws, medical systems, finance and industrial policy.