The agreement is the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services or "GATS" which was part of the URAA which was the bill that brought the US into the WTO in 1994, the GATS commits signatory nations to "progresive liberalization" of their public sectors
Progressive means that standstill, ratchet and rollback clauses apply to freeze the existing level of non-liberalisation, (regulation, safety net programs, state owned monopolies like schools, hospitals, trade distorting subsidies (welfare, food subsidies and wage subsidies, i.e. protectionism) and they pledge to eliminate them gradually in any service sector using this two part test to determine scope.
"For the purposes of this Agreement…
(b) 'services' includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority;
(c) 'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers." (emphases added)
Good discussion at http://www.iatp.org/files/GATS_and_Public_Service_Systems.htm !
Countries also have to open their services markets and allow firms that win competitive bidding to perform their jobs without discriminating against them by country, with "disciplines on domestice regulation" which eliminate or modify any domestic law or regulation that has the effect of reducing international trade even if that is not the intent.
Its expected that this bill, once it is finished - or a plurilateral, GATS compatible, non-WTO version of it which is almost ready to go after ten years of negotiations in Geneva, will change the global services marketplace (70% of all jobs in the US) "everything you cannot drop on your foot" basically.
You can see how important it must have seemed to corporations with high labor costs, also the exporting of our successful private health insurance and private higher education models.
Especially, preventing any new countries from adopting state owned monopolies on health care. Competition increases profits a lot in health care because of unecessary duplication of expensive equipment must be paid for.
The agreements on GATS still hasnt come, and the recent Nairobi talks collapsed,
I think that the Mode Four issue has been a reason for collapse of these talks many times. Poor countries can't afford to get rid of their ---public healthcare---- state owned monopolies in healthcare and ---public education--- state owned monopolies in education without getting some way to pay for it. So Mode Four, the 'movement of natural persons' provisions are a top priority for them.
They really want to help us solve our various crises in healthcare, teaching, IT and soon, energy retrofitting of buildings and houses that will become too expensive to heat.
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