'Local' – a dirty word!

[Staunton]

When the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is signed behind closed doors it will become illegal to promote 'local' business.

 

This is the logic of the market. After all, how could the executives of those multinationals who are sitting down with their political friends to agree TTIP protect their incomes and maintain their lavish lifestyles in Monaco and Switzerland if some paltry local businesses can employ, source materials, manufacture and sell within their own communities? They couldn't – so laws must be passed to make such operations illegal.

 

Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of the multinationals and the profits their executives enjoy, and anyone who tries shall be subject to new laws designed to lock in corporate profit.

[tzijlstra]

There is a thread on TTIP somewhere, but I just thought I'd point something out in reply to your post anyway. When the EU introduced obligatory open bidding, for public projects over a certain amount, in the whole of the EU there were similar reactions to the one you have now by many SME owners.

 

However, once the ashes settled on the battlefield, it turned out that it was the SMEs that were gaining enormously due to this process. I worked with a German firm that quadrupled its revenue in three years time by undercutting the mighty SAP for enterprise systems. A mechanical engineering firm that a friend of mine works for, who are specialised in concrete civic works, all of a sudden got work all over the Netherlands, rather than being unable to find routes to get work in parts of the land where they could not entice the local decision makers with football tickets and nice meals.

 

Multinationals will in fact be the ones to suffer from this sort of agreement, they have the money and power to go beyond national barriers to trade, it is the local SMEs that will gain.

Edited October 13, 2014 by tzijlstra
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