© Alamy

The TTIP is Alive?

all of which are contained in the US sponsored TTIP agreement

Global Trade is part of an Imperial Agenda

CETA and the TTIP

The [EU] ministers themselves are expected now to convene an extraordinary meeting on October 18, allowing the [CETA] deal to be signed during the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Brussels on October 27. It could enter force next year.

But as CETA came closer to approval, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Program (TTIP), a free-trade agreement with the US, suffered a new blow ahead of the meeting when Austrian Economy Minister Reinhold Mitterlehner urged his EU counterparts to end the talks.



.... "TTIP has become a metaphor for the exuberant dealings of big corporations. That has a negative connotation. We hope for a good deal, but it has to be approached differently," he added.



Mitterlehner echoed comments by French Trade Minister Matthias Fekl last month that he would request a halt to TTIP negotiations after German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel declared that talks were "de facto dead."



Fekl said the United States had demanded too much and not compromised enough.



"A crazy machine is moving here, the negotiations are a failure, nobody believes that they will come to a successful conclusion," he told the German business daily Handelsblatt.



TTIP would create the world's biggest free trade area with a market of 850 million consumers stretching from Hawaii to Helsinki.



But the deal, under negotiation since 2013, has become a hot potato as key elections approach in the United States, France and Germany. Washington and Brussels are officially committed to sealing the free trade deal before President Barack Obama leaves office in January.



There are deep-seated fears in Europe that the deal would undercut the 28-nation bloc's standards in key areas such as public health and welfare.



(Deutsche Welle, September 23, 2016)

Has the Atlantic TTIP Trade Deal Negotiated behind Closed Doors been Blocked?

would inevitably lead to de facto integration of the EU into the trading structures of NAFTA

CETA is Washington's Backdoor Mechanism

© NewzShots

In less than a month from now, an important and far-reaching "trade agreement" between Canada and the European Union is slated to be signed and ratified by the House of Commons in Ottawa and the European Parliament.is described by the media as "a high quality agreement that reinforces Canada's fundamental relationship with the European Union."But there more than meets the eye.The CETA agreement - presented to public opinion as an innocuous "bilateral" EU-Canada trade deal - constitutes. It is a de facto "carbon copy" of the controversial) between the European Union and the United States, which has been temporarily "blocked" by both the European Parliament and the US Congress.is the talking point of global trade negotiations.Quite the opposite: it requires conformity and similarity in the formulation of national rules and provisions, on behalf of powerful multinational conglomerates: regulatory convergence implies "removal of impediments" to trade and investment coupled with homogenous and "friendly" provisions (e.g. austerity measures, curtailment of social programs, the toning down of labor laws, corporate friendly environmental clauses and consumer protection laws, "national treatment" for foreign investors, no subsidies to farmers, etc.)While the devastating economic and social consequences of the Transatlantic US-EU trade deals (TTIP and TISA) including the loss of national sovereignty of EU member states have been the object of persistent public protest, the CETA agreement (which has similar neoliberal underpinnings) is going ahead largely unopposed, without debate, minimal protest, no firm opposition at the political level.The US-EU TTIP is viewed by the protest movement as a mechanism of appropriation of Europe's economic landscape by corporate America.In this regard, it would appear that EU politicians are playing a deceptive double game: "Urged to end the talks",or its formal adoption at a later stage and/or under a different label, see below).What analysts and politicians fail to acknowledge is thatThe US-Canada corporate and financial establishment is also integrated.This US-Canada integration does not solely pertain to trade and investment under NAFTA, it also encompasses foreign policy, military affairs, law enforcement and Homeland Security, intelligence, oil and gas pipelines, road transportation, immigration and national borders, strategic waterways and maritime rights, etc.The TTIP would be imposed de facto rather than de jure "via Canada".At the outset, instead of launching a single process of trade negotiations between NAFTA and the EU which would have been the object of widespread opposition, Canada and Mexico were called upon by Washington to launch parallel "bilateral" trade deals with the EU, which would eventually, constituting thereby the core of the US empire'sThe proposed Atlantic Trading Block would also coincide with the structures of NATO and the Atlantic alliance (which in practice are also controlled by the US).CETA is a "copy and paste": it was formulated during the Harper government, starting in 2009 in close consultation with Washington and Brussels. The Harper government was entrusted by Washington "to expedite resolution of the agreement [CETA] talks to avoid losing the European's focus to the TTIP, and to prevent delay due to increasing debate surrounding contentious elements."While the US, Canada and Mexico are member states of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),The latter is in many regards already functional., leading to the eventual integration of the trading structures of the "North American Union" and the European Union. It would create a fait accompli which would contribute to furthering the TTIP negotiations most probably under a different label.It is ain both the EU and North America: it will serve to destroy and undermine the economy at the local level, destroy the family farm, precipitate small and medium sized enterprises into bankruptcy, undermine social programs, etc.It is important that people in the US, Canada and the European Union, across the land firmly oppose the signing and ratification ofIn Canada,former defense minister and deputy prime minister during thegovernment is taking the lead in the campaign against the signing of the CETA agreement by Prime Minister