"The whole thing has been so secret that nothing has been published in any of the Uruguayan press, about it being in TiSA or out of it either. All that has been published was from the US trade department," Roberto Bissio said on the sidelines of the WTO Public Forum.
He added that, according to "reliable sources," the Paraguayan negotiators, as well as their Uruguayan colleagues, discovered "quite early" that "this club was really not going to work for their benefit."
"The reasons were enormous assimilarities in the capacities of the countries involved," Bissio pointed out.
Critics say the so-called toxic TiSA deal attempts to eliminate trade barriers in sectors favorable to Washington but not in areas where liberalization does not serve US interests and paves the way for coordinated, supranational labor laws, medical systems, finance and industrial policy that could undermine local a government's ability to protect its citizens.
