Posted on 07/18/2005 12:40:00 PM PDT by datura
Since democracy is the worldwide goal of the Bush Administration, we must face the stunning fact that the integration of different nationalities under a common European Union (EU) Constitution was rejected by decisive democratic votes. President Bush can thank conservative leaders for saving him from the embarrassment of endorsing the EU Constitution, shortly before it was so soundly defeated in France and the Netherlands.
The EU Constitution was defeated, because Western Europeans don't want to be politically, economically, or socially integrated with the culture, economy, lifestyle, or history of Eastern Europe and Muslim countries. Western Europeans recognized in the proposed EU Constitution a loss of national identity and freedom, to a foreign bureaucracy, plus a redistribution of wealth from richer countries to poorer countries.
Will the political and business elites in America hear this message, and stop trying to force CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement) on America?
The Senate Republican Policy Committee appears to be tone deaf. Its just-released policy paper argues that CAFTA should be approved, because its purpose is "integrating more closely with 34 hemispheric neighbors - thus furthering the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)," which the 2001 Quebec Declaration declared would bring about "hemispheric integration."
Americans don't want to be "integrated" with the poverty, corruption, socialism, and communism of our hemispheric neighbors, any more than the French want to be integrated with the Turks and Bulgarians.
Just as the French and Dutch were suspicious of the dangers lurking in the 485-page EU Constitution, Americans are wary of the dangers hiding in the 92-page CAFTA legislation, plus the 31 pages that purport to spell out the administrative actions the U.S. must take in compliance. No wonder CAFTA's supporters are bypassing our Constitution's requirement that treaties can be valid only if passed by two-thirds of our Senators.
The Senate Republican policy paper argues that CAFTA "will promote democratic governance." But, there is nothing democratic about CAFTA's many pages of grants of vague authority to foreign tribunals, on which foreign judges could force us to change our domestic laws to be "no more burdensome than necessary" on foreign trade.
We have had enough impertinent interference with our lives and economy from the international tribunals Congress has already locked us into, such as the WTO (World Trade Organization) and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). Americans don't want decisions from another anti-American tribunal any more than the French and Dutch wanted their lives micro-managed by Belgian bureaucrats.
The EU political elite ridiculed the French and the Dutch for not realizing that globalism is on the march, and we should all get on the train before it leaves the station. The French and Dutch woke up to the fact that the engineers of the EU train are bureaucrats in Brussels and judges in Luxembourg, who invent regulations and judge-made laws, without so much as tip of their hats to democracy.
The pro-EU political bosses blamed the "non" vote by the French on worry about losing their jobs to the cheap labor of Eastern Europe and Turkey. But the worry was grounded in reality, and Americans are likewise correct, to worry about how CAFTA will put U.S. jobs in competition with low-wage Central America, where the average factory worker is paid about one dollar an hour.
CAFTA would even prohibit U.S. states from giving preference to American workers when taxpayer-funded contracts are granted.
CAFTA is not about free trade; it's about round-trip trade. That means multi-national corporations sending their raw materials to poor countries, where they can hire very cheap labor and avoid U.S. employment, safety and environmental regulations, and then bringing the finished goods back into the United States duty-free, to undersell U.S. companies that pay decent wages and comply with our laws.
The promise that CAFTA will give us 44 million new customers for U.S. goods is pie in the sky, like the false promise that letting Communist China into the WTO would give us a billion-person market for American agriculture. Or, the false promise that NAFTA would increase our trade surplus with Mexico to $10 billion when, in fact, it nosedived, to a $62 billion deficit.
Knowing that Americans are upset about Central America's chief export to the U.S., which is the incredibly vicious MS-13 Salvadoran gangs, the Senate Republican policy paper assures us that CAFTA will diminish "the incentives for illegal immigration to the United States." That's another fairy tale, like the unfulfilled promise that NAFTA would reduce illegal aliens and illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico.
By stating that CAFTA means the implementation of a "rules-based framework" for trade, investment, and technology, the Senate Republican policy paper confirms that free trade requires world, or at least hemispheric, government. You can't have a single economy, without a single government.
CAFTA may serve the economic interests of the globalists and the multinational corporations, but it makes no sense historically, Constitutionally, or democratically. Americans will never sing "God Bless the Western Hemisphere" instead of "God Bless America."
I respectfully disagree that we lose our sovereignty when we cooperate closely with other countries having common interests. I am most certainly not an "internationalist" by any means. I believe our Constitution is one of our greatest assets, and we should preserve it according to its meaning as adopted. We are strong enough to befriend other smaller countries, and we actually make ourselves stronger by doing so. On the other hand, if you were a citizen in a smaller country to the south, how would you feel towards a larger neighbor with a much stronger economy that would shut you out of business with it? We are very fortunate that people in the Western Hemisphere have much in common with us, despite the different experiences they have had with government than we have had.
The ultimate goal of the Free Traitors is to raise the standard of living in other countries. The problem is, in order to industrialize other nations, one has to DE-industrialize the United States.
It reads like a lot of propaganda. Markets should be opened, not closed.
I respect your concerns, and would like to comment about them. The trade deficit and the budget deficit are two different matters, but neither has worsened due to NAFTA or GATT. The trade deficit has grown for three reasons: (1) the U.S. is producing wealth faster than any other country, and our citizens are free to spend for whatever they choose; (2) the Fed has either caused or allowed the dollar's value to fall too much, producing the result that foreign goods cost more and U.S. goods are sold more cheaply, and meaning we pay more and get less in foreign trade; and (3) our tax system presently taxes labor and capital, and about 22%-26% of the cost of U.S. goods and services are imbedded taxes, which puts our producers at an unfair advantage.
As to illegal immigration, I think both NAFTA and CAFTA will reduce the economic pressure on people in other countries to cross our borders illegally. As to the federal deficit, it is dependent much more upon the decisions of Congress than upon trade, and indeed our budget would be much worse if we adopted protectionist policies.
"I agree.....I hope I didn't actually force him to think about the reality of what we're facing...these country club conservatives don't seem to have a clue or the stomach to understand what's going on right under their noses."
They think they will remain unscathed.
These are all smaller pacts that are similar to what we are doing as part of the WTO. Have we handed over sovereignty to the WTO? Not that I can see. Bush did impose a tariff on steel, after all.
Some of the arguments I hear against these agreements are very similar to what I hear from Democrats opposing tax cuts, tax reform, and SS reform. The sky is falling!!
Where exactly in here does it say we lose our sovereignty? Item #1 makes it very clear that we maintain control of our food supply.
Article 712: Basic Rights and Obligations
Right to Take Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
1. Each Party may, in accordance with this Section, adopt, maintain or apply any sanitary or phytosanitary measure necessary for the protection of human, animal or plant life or health in its territory, including a measure more stringent than an international standard, guideline or recommendation.
Right to Establish Level of Protection
2. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Section, each Party may, in protecting human, animal or plant life or health, establish its appropriate levels of protection in accordance with Article 715.
Scientific Principles
3. Each Party shall ensure that any sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies is:
a) based on scientific principles, taking into account relevant factors including, where appropriate, different geographic conditions;
b) not maintained where there is no longer a scientific basis for it; and
c) based on a risk assessment, as appropriate to the circumstances.
Non-Discriminatory Treatment
4. Each Party shall ensure that a sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies does not arbitrarily or unjustifiably discriminate between its goods and like goods of another Party, or between goods of another Party and like goods of any other country, where identical or similar conditions prevail.
Unnecessary Obstacles
5. Each Party shall ensure that any sanitary or phytosanitary measure that it adopts, maintains or applies is applied only to the extent necessary to achieve its appropriate level of protection, taking into account technical and economic feasibility.
Disguised Restrictions
6. No Party may adopt, maintain or apply any sanitary or phytosanitary measure with a view to, or with the effect of, creating a disguised restriction on trade between the Parties.
Don't you think it's inconsistent that you are against the government investment spending to increase trade for American companies, which will produce jobs and increase revenue, but fully support them giving billions of taxpayer money (corporate welfare) to inefficient and rich sugar beet farmers so Americans can pay two to three times the world price for sugar?
If you were truly concerned about government wasting taxpayers money, you'd be crusading against entitlement programs instead of the peanuts the government spends on evil trade capacity building.
We are being sold out by the Bush administration on trade policy. I opposed Clinton's NAFTA and GATT betrayals of American workers and I don't expect the results from Bush's CAFTA to be any better. While he was ridiculed by Al Gore in the debate over NAFTA, Ross Perot was right about the giant sucking sound. Now we have record trade deficit thanks to bi-partisan economic treason. I am so sick of the free market economic purists and their ivory tower theories. Sure we will temporarily enjoy getting cheap imported goods at Wal-Mart, but in the long run the working and middle classes in the U.S. are being destroyed. And "free trade" has turned China into an economic superpower - talk about selling the rope to hang ourselves. This is an issue that thinking Republicans, Democrats and Independents can agree on.
Can you cite any settled or pending litigation challenging the constitutionality of fast track authority?
"Fast track does not dilute the power of Congress to regulate trade:
Under fast-track authority, trade agreements are submitted to Congress for an up or down vote under rules barring committee or floor amendments. Fast track does not give the President a blank check to negotiate trade agreements, nor does it undermine the constitutional prerogatives of Congress, which defines the objectives and limits of the President's negotiating authority in the legislation granting fast track. During any trade talks, the Administration must consult frequently with the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, and special advisers designated by Congress. Only Congress has the final say on any trade agreement negotiated by the President."
Thanks for sharing your feelings with us. Please come back when you have some facts to back up your ridiculous assertions.
In order for Americans, including Joe Sixpack, to have opportunities for good manufacturing jobs here, our economy must be attractive to investment capital. Right now, our taxes of productive facilities (and labor, too) are way too high. What is as bad or worse is our undependable currency, the dollar, which the Fed mismanages so badly its value has changed more than 50% in both directions within the past ten years. In those circumstances, it is hard to make capital investments here that provide well-paid jobs for Americans. We can fix these problems, if we realize they are not caused by NAFTA or CAFTA.
I don't find anything to dispute in what you say. I have been more pleased with President Bush's leadership than any President during my lifetime. But his steel tariffs were disappointing from an economic point of view because they cost more jobs than they saved. From a political point of view, I don't know whether they made the difference in his re-election. If they did, then the tariffs were worth it.
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