The Department of Transportation, acting through a Security and Prosperity Partnership "working group," is preparing in 2007 to issue North American biometric border passes to Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. "trusted travelers" according to documents released to WND columnist and author Jerome R. Corsi under a Freedom of Information Act request.
"The FOIA documents show the organizational chart and the composition of a 'shadow Department of Transportation' which includes formal membership from Mexico and Canada's Departments of Transportation," asserts Corsi.
"SPP has in effect created a fully-functioning trilateral Department of Transportation which will dictate policy to Mary Peters as soon as she is confirmed to replace Leon Mineta as U.S. secretary of Transportation."
..."Evidently SPP has decided to erase our internal borders with Mexico and Canada," Corsi told WND. "We have no trilateral treaty voted by two-thirds of the Senate that has authorized North American trusted traveler biometric cards to be issued to the citizens of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Yet this is exactly what the shadow administrative branch created within the Bush administration under the auspices of an SPP working group is doing."
See what I mean? If you actually bothered to read the document in question, as I have, you'd know that the CFR treats it as an opinion-piece. So how does the opinion of a group of individuals published by the CFR make the CFR a "Shadow/Quasi government?
"
No, I am not the forum problem-solver. My staff at the CFR is tasked with that duty. I am the Official Implementer (NAU division). Please try to keep up."
Good, I'm glad you're finally admitting to being a CFR hit man, must be good pay$$$ I take from your post, that yo are a self proclaimed thread cop, or thread crapper...which is it? And that if you don't like what is posted or deem in your small feeble mind to be silly, you intentionally interrupt, and harass other FR Conservative posters? Seems to me you're the one from the DU underground doing damage to the Free Republic! So let's get YOUR ground rules down, does everyone on this forum have to obtain permission from you before commenting/posting? SINCE WHEN?
To some of you that are concerned and don't believe this topic silly, I converted a Robert Pastor PDF file to text for you to read. You decide for yourselves how dangerous Pastor, an avowed Socialist is to America's sovereignty.
A North American Community
A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
November 1-2, 2002
DR. ROBERT A. PASTOR
Vice President of International Affairs
Professor of International Relations
Director, Center for North American Studies
American University, Washington, D.C.
The entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in
1994 represented a breath-taking continental opportunity. The tragedy of
September 11th
- seven years later - signaled the continent's vulnerability. The U.S.
decision to close its borders underscored the two dimensions of integration
and how security trumps welfare.
There are three sets of choices on how we might respond to the opportunity
and the vulnerability - the two sides of integration. Canada, Mexico, and
the United States could each choose to defend itself by retreating behind a
fortress of tighter security and more barriers at the borders. This path
would offer only a false sense of security, and it would reverse the
remarkable progress made in the last decade in expanding trade and
investment. More importantly, it would diminish the standard of living of
all three countries. A second option is to act as we always have - handle
one problem, one country at a time. This is the most likely course, but
it is flawed, for reasons I will describe below. The third path is to lift
NAFTA to a new level of cooperation. That is the direction I hope the
Trilateral Commission will consider and endorse. 1
NAFTA - An Analysis
Despite misgivings and criticisms, the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) succeeded in what it was designed to do. It reduced trade and
investment barriers, and nearly tripled trade and investment among the
three countries. Today, the United States exports nearly four times more to
its two neighbors than to Japan and China and 40 percent more than to the
15-nation European Union. In the 1990s, Mexico had the highest rate of
export growth in the world, and Canadian investment in the United States
grew twice as fast as U.S. investment in Canada. Two decades ago, less
than one-third of the three countries' trade with the world was with each
other; today, it's more than half. Our firms have become continental and
more competitive, and North America has a combined gross product of $10
Trillion, making it the largest free trade area in the world,
1 For a fuller development of the arguments in this paper and the data, see
Robert A. Pastor, Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old
World for the New (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics,
2001).
2
15 percent higher than the European Union. Social integration has also
accelerated, and there is now about 500 million border crossings in North
America each year.
NAFTA’s setbacks have been due partly to failures of compliance - related
to sugar, softwood lumber, trucking - but mostly to what it omitted. The
income gap between Mexico and its northern neighbors has not narrowed.
Illegal migration has increased. Bureaucratic duplication on the border,
combined with inadequate infrastructure and divergent regulatory policies,
has raised transaction costs above the level of the tariffs that were
eliminated. If Europe built too many institutions, NAFTA made the
opposite mistake. It lacks institutions to anticipate or respond to crises
or take advantage of opportunities. We also lack a vision of an inclusive
identity that would inspire citizens of all three countries to think of
themselves also as North Americans. Indeed, NAFTA is little more than two
bilateral relationships that rely on old habits and too often an
unproductive paternalism by the United States.
The U.S. penchant for unilateralism combined with the Canadian and Mexican
preferences for dealing bilaterally with the United States has neutralized
the chance to create a true North American Community. “Dual-bilateralism"
is short-sighted and corrosive for three reasons. First, problems are
often resolved by a combination of U.S. power and its neighbors’ weakness,
often leaving a residue of resentment. Second, some issues, like softwood
lumber, never get resolved, and become causes of division. And third, and
most important, a broader continental perspective is absent. The leaders
deal with one issue at a time, and therefore, rarely, if ever, ask
themselves: How can we address this problem in a generic way that will
benefit the entire region and eliminate the need to return to the issue
every year?
Adding a third party to bilateral disputes increases the chance that rules,
not raw power, could be determining. For example, all three governments
are struggling to adjust their agriculture to a competitive marketplace.
Most farmers can manage, but the few who cannot compete – for example, in
timber, corn, and vegetables – use all the legal and political channels to
protect themselves. The choice, then, is simple: the three countries can
continue aggravating each other and subverting NAFTA, or they could
negotiate a North American set of rules that modify the three regulatory
schemes.
Recommendations
First, the three governments should establish a North American Commission
(NAC) to define an agenda for Summit meetings by the three leaders and to
monitor the implementation of the decisions and plans. The NAC would have
an office that would gather statistics from the three governments, and it
would commission studies of different sectors, like transportation, energy,
or technology. These studies would ask what could be done to facilitate
economic integration in these sectors on a continental
basis, and then, it would submit these analyses with specific options to
the Prime Minister and the two Presidents.
3
Unlike the sprawling, regulatory European Commission, North America's
should be lean and advisory – just 15 distinguished individuals, 5 from
each of the countries. Their task would be to help the leaders think
continentally. To deal with immigration and customs at the border, they
could propose “North American passports” for frequent travelers, or “North
American Customs and Immigration Officers” to patrol the perimeter and
reduce the documentation by half.
The Presidents and Prime Minister would continue to be staffed by their
own governments, but the NAC would encourage them to respond to a
longer-term vision and a more panoramic view of the opportunities.
A second institution should emerge from combining two bilateral legislative
groups into a North American Parliamentary Group. The U.S. Congress is
the most insular and clearly the most powerful and autonomous of the three
legislatures. Its approval in July 2001 of legislation to ban Mexican
trucks from U.S. highways was just the latest in a string of laws that
offended Mexico. Congressmen also threatened Canada if it refused to
“voluntarily” restrict its exports of timber. A North American
Parliamentary Group might raise the sensitivity of American Congressmen,
and it could encourage all to think hard about what they share.
The third institution should be a Permanent Court on Trade and Investment.
The dispute panels established under NAFTA are ad hoc, and it is proving
difficult to recruit experts, who do not have a conflict of interest. The
hearings and decision should also be open to the public in order to build
public confidence in the process and the judgment. Some narrowing or
clarification of the scope of Chapter 11 panels on foreign investment is
also needed to prevent the erosion of environmental rules.
The most glaring omission in NAFTA is the failure to recognize or respond
to the huge development gap between Mexico and its two northern neighbors,
and that might explain why it has widened, not narrowed, since the
agreement came into effect. Since 1994, the U.S. share of North American
gross product rose from 87% to 89% while Mexico’s share declined from
5.5% to 4.3% and Canada’s, from 7.1% to 6.5%. The per capita GDP in
1999 of the United States was $31,000; Canada, $20,000; and Mexico,
$4,900. The promise of a North American Community cannot be realized
until the income gap between Mexico and its northern neighbors is reduced,
and illegal migration – a growing U.S. concern – cannot be reduced until
that occurs.
The European Union lifted its poorest countries – Spain, Portugal, Ireland,
and Greece – and while the two models are very different, we could learn
from their experience. From 1986-99, the per capita GDP of these countries
rose from 65% to 78% of the EU average, and emigration slowed markedly.
The astonishing progress was due to free trade, foreign investment, but
mostly to the transfer of aid that amounted to 2-4% of the recipient’s GDP.
The most effective projects were in infrastructure and education.
NAFTA is deliberately laissez-faire, but the result is that most foreign
investment in Mexico has concentrated in the congested, polluted border
area, where it has served as 4 a magnet attracting workers from the heart
of Mexico. From there, many immigrate illegally to the United States.
In other words, the absence of a strategy has meant that NAFTA has been
encouraging illegal migration, not reducing it.
Foreign companies would prefer to invest in the interior (where the
workforce would be more stable), but the roads and infrastructure are
inadequate. The World Bank estimates Mexico needs $20 billion a year for
ten years, just for infrastructure. The three leaders should establish a
North American Development Fund, whose priority would be to connect the
U.S.-Mexican border region to central and southern Mexico. If roads were
built, investors would come, immigration would decline, and income
disparities would narrow. If Mexico’s growth rate leaped to twice that of
its neighbors, the psychology of the relationship would be transformed.
Canada clearly does not have the same stake in the development of Mexico as
the United States does, even though its trade with Mexico has grown faster
since NAFTA than with any other country. There is a second reason - beyond
trade - why Canada should take Mexico’s development seriously. One of the
great challenges of the 21st century is to lift the middle-income
developing countries into the first world and thereby give all poor
countries a sense of hope. If NAFTA can lift Mexico, that would provide
hope for the entire hemisphere and world.
The three leaders should not create a new bureaucracy to administer the
Development Fund; the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank
could do it. But it will need an injection of funding comparable to the
Alliance for Progress.
The governments could contribute in proportion to their wealth, but the
United States needs to lead. Fox has focused on migration because he
knows that Mexicans want respect, but the only solution to our relationship
is narrowing the income disparities. The North American Development Fund
should be the pillar under a new Community.
U.S. and Canadian taxpayers rightfully should ask why they should
contribute to a fund when Mexicans pay only 13% of their gross domestic
product in taxes - less than
one-third of their northern counterparts. In exchange for a pledge by the
U.S. and Canada to contribute to this fund, Mexican President Vicente Fox
should pledge a bolder approach to fiscal reform than the one that Congress
failed to pass. He should ask his people to increase their taxes from 13
to 20% of their gross national product. Mexico cannot expect its
neighbors to fund its public investments unless it is prepared to make a
larger contribution. In brief, the new fund could provide leverage for
helping the Mexican President to do the right thing, and a new sense of
Community could work to bring out the best rather than the petty in all
three governments.
There is much more that a North American Commission could propose – a
continental plan for infrastructure and transportation, a plan for
harmonizing regulatory policies, a customs union, a common currency. Let
us begin with transportation since roads, ships, railroads, and airlines
are our highways for integration.
5
“Crossing the border,” concludes a May 2000 report for this Parliament by
Val Meredith, “has actually gotten more difficult over the past five
years.” The causes are twofold. “While continental trade has
skyrocketed, the physical infrastructure enabling the movement of these
goods has not.” And second, the bureaucratic barriers that confront
cross-border business make the infrastructural problems seem “minor in
comparison.” [104, IIE]
While some people have been critical of the U.S. Congress for imposing U.S.
safety standards on Mexican trucks, the real problem is that there are 64
different sets of safety regulations in North America, 51 of which are in
the United States and 12 are in Canada. A NAFTA Subcommittee struggled to
propose a uniform standard and concluded that “there is no prospect” of
accomplishing that. The elected leaders of the three countries should have
been embarrassed, and would have been if anyone had been paying attention.
The North American Commission should develop an integrated continental plan
for transportation and infrastructure. Each country should harmonize its
own standards on weight, safety, and configuration of trucking and then
negotiate a single set of North American standards (with some variations
based on weather and terrain). Second, the governments should eliminate
“cabotage” restrictions and the “drayage” system, which are notorious
feather-bedding schemes. Third, the governments should plan and finance
new highway corridors on the Pacific Coast and into Mexico. Fourth, the
regulatory agencies should negotiate a plan that would permit mergers of
the railroads and development of high-speed rail corridors.
Many in Canada to think that their border with the United States is so
fundamentally different from the U.S. border with Mexico that there is
nothing to be learned by merging that debate. However, the central
problem in both borders – how to facilitate legal and stop illegitimate
trade – is the same, and experiments on one border might be of use on the
other. More pertinent, if we begin to think about a single perimeter, we
will all need to respond to similar rules. After September 11th, the U.S.
and Canada negotiated a "smart border" arrangement based on distinguishing
and treating differently high and low risks. Among the many new procedures
and systems that have been recommended are “intelligent transportation
systems” that rely on transponders to relay information from trucks to
customs officials. Staging facilities and pre-arrival systems located ten
miles before the border could also reduce delays.
The two governments signed a 30-point agreement in December 2001, and
while both insisted that their border was different from the U.S.-Mexican
one, the U.S. and Mexico signed a similar agreement three months later.
"Smart border" strategies will be helpful, but more could be done. The
duplication of documents that comes with crossing the border could be
simplified and reduced by half by establishing a single “North American
Customs and Immigration Service.” This agency would be composed of
officials from the three 6 governments, trained together in a North American
professional school. The service should be used on the borders and on
the periphery.
An additional step that would do much to foster integration and eliminate
impediments at the border would be to negotiate a Customs Union and a
Common External Tariff. That would eliminate the elaborate and complex
rules of origin.
Finally, our three governments could learn from the European Union's
efforts to establish 10-15 EU Centers in the United States. These Centers
stimulate research and awareness in the United States of the EU. Our
three governments should sponsor Centers for North American Studies in each
of our countries to help the people of all three understand the problems
and the potential of North America and begin to think of themselves as
North Americans.
Is a North American Community Desirable? Feasible?
Is any of this feasible? Are North Americans prepared to give up their
sovereignty? The term “sovereignty” is one of the most widely used,
abused, and least understood in the diplomatic lexicon. Within the last
two decades, the three countries have so completely redefined the term that
one wonders whether any serious policy- maker could use it to defend any
position. In 1980, Canada used sovereignty as a defense to prevent foreign
investment in its energy resources, and Mexico used it maintain high
tariffs and discourage foreign investment. Within a decade, both countries
reversed their policies. In 1990, Mexico defended its sovereignty by
rejecting international election observers; four years later, it invited
them. Sovereignty, in brief, is not the issue.
The question is whether the people of the three countries are ready for a
different relationship, and public opinion surveys suggest that the answer
is "yes" and, indeed, that the people are way ahead of their leaders. A
survey of the attitudes of people in the three countries during the past
twenty years demonstrate an extraordinary convergence of values – on
personal and family issues as well as public policy. Each nation has very
positive feelings about their neighbors. In all three countries, the
public's views on NAFTA shifted in the 1990s. There is now modest net
support, but a neat consensus: each nation agrees that the others benefited
more than they have!
The most interesting surveys, however, show that a majority of the public
in all three countries is prepared to join a larger North American country
if they thought it would improve their standard of living and environment
and not threaten their culture. Mexicans and Canadians do not want to be
incorporated into the United States, and they are ambivalent about adopting
the American dollar, but they are more willing to become part of a single
country of North America and of a unified currency, like the “Amero,”
proposed by Herbert Grubel. 2 The “Amero” would be equivalent of
2 Herbert Grubel, The Case for the Amero: The Economics and Politics of a
North American Monetary Union (Vancouver: Simon Fraser Institute, 1999).
An October 2001 survey in Canada found that 55% favored the same currency
as the United States, but 59% opposed adopting the U.S. dollar.
See Allison Dunfield, "Canadians Feel Closer to the U.S., but Reject Currency,"
Globe and Mail, November 6,2001.
7
the American dollar, and the two other currencies would be exchanged at the
rate in which they are then traded for the U.S. dollar. In other words, at
the outset, the wealth of all three countries would be unchanged, and the
power to manage the currency would be roughly proportional to the existing
wealth. The three governments’ remain zealous defenders of an aging
conception of sovereignty whereas the people seem ready to entertain new
approaches.
New surveys done by Ekos of Canada suggest that people in all three
countries have begun to think of themselves as part of a larger community.
In Europe, instead of renouncing nationhood, Frenchmen and Germans have
also begun to think of themselves as Europeans. Similarly, 58% of
Canadians and 69% of the U.S. public feel a "strong" attachment to North
America, and most surprising, 34% of Mexicans consider themselves
"North American," though that term in Spanish has referred to the United
States. The surveys also outline a "North American model" that is quite
different from that of the EU. For example, in considering 12 values,
people in all three countries gave the highest priority to "freedom" and
the lowest to government size and "redistribution of wealth." 3
Despite this convergence and a popular desire to experiment, the three
governments have devoted so much effort to defining differences that the
people have not had a chance to expand what they have in common. That is
the challenge of the Trilateral Commission - to sketch an alternative
future for the entire continent that the people will embrace and the
politicians will feel obligated to accept. Perhaps, some might be willing
to lead.
______________________________________________________
Robert Pastor is Vice President of International Affairs and Professor of
International Relations at American University. He is also the Director
of a new Center for North American Studies at American. From 1985 until
September 2002, he was Professor of Political Science at Emory University
and from then until 1998, he was a Fellow at the Carter Center and the
Founding Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Program and the
Democracy Program, where he organized international delegations to monitor
and mediate elections in twenty countries, including numerous in Mexico
from 1986-2000. He served as National Security Advisor on Latin America (1977-81).
Dr. Pastor received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University
and is the author of fourteen books, including Toward a North American
Community: Lessons from the OldWorld for the New (Institute for International Economics, 2001); Exiting
the Whirlpool: U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean (Westview Press,
2001), and Limits to Friendship: The United States and Mexico (with Jorge
Castaneda).
3 Public Policy Forum and EKOS, "Rethinking North American Integration:
Report from the PPF/EKOS Conference," June 18, 2002, Toronto, Canada
CNN Lou Dobbs - video:
