Posted on 07/27/2005 7:07:43 AM PDT by d-back
Using the Clinton playbook for enacting NAFTA in '93, the White House is twisting arms and buying votes to win passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
And the seductive song the White House is singing sounds familiar. It is the NAFTA theme song. CAFTA will ease the social pressures that have produced waves of illegal aliens. CAFTA will increase U.S. exports. CAFTA will not cost U.S. jobs. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
If Tom DeLay's caucus delivers 200 votes for CAFTA, economic patriots will begin to look outside the GOP for leadership.
In 1993, Republicans, by four to one, signed on to NAFTA. They believed the promises that our $5 billion trade surplus with Mexico would grow and illegal immigration would diminish. They were deceived. The NAFTA skeptics were proven right. The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico vanished overnight. Last year, we ran a $50 billion trade deficit. Since 1993, 15 million illegal aliens have been caught breaking into the United States. Five million made it, and their soaring demands for social services have driven California to bankruptcy. As for Mexico's major exports to us, they appear to be two: narcotics and Mexicans.
With Middle Easterners turning up on the Rio Grande, patriotic Minutemen are patrolling the border because President Bush will not enforce our immigration laws. Who can believe this White House is serious, then, about halting the invasion from the Caribbean and Central America?
It is time for Republicans who represent a Middle America that never wanted NAFTA to tell the White House the old talking points will no longer do. The open-borders, free-trade ideology of Clinton and Bush has run its course and begun to endanger our national existence.
Today, "free trade" is about something other than the simple exchange of goods. Henry Kissinger tipped the Trilateralists' hand in 1993 when he wrote that NAFTA was the "architecture of a new international system," a great "step forward toward the new world order."
Today's trade agreements are about reshaping the world to conform to the demands of transnational corporations that have shed their national identities and loyalties and want to shed their U.S. workers. Tired of contributing to Medicare and Social Security and having to deal with Americans who need health-care and pension benefits, they want to dump them all and hire Asians who will work for $2 an hour.
Trade treaties have become enabling acts by which global companies desert their home countries. CAFTA will enable U.S. firms to shut down factories here, lay off their labor force, and hire Dominicans and Costa Ricans, but retain free access to the U.S. market. They get to fire their American workers – and keep their American consumers. What a deal.
NAFTA and CAFTA are the shield laws of corporate absconders.
What these companies want ultimately is a world government that will protect their absolute freedom to go where they wish and do what they want – the country be damned.
Before Republicans go down to the well of the House and vote for CAFTA, they need to look at what has already happened to America.
Under Bush, 3 million manufacturing jobs have disappeared, one in every six. States like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois – which went for Reagan twice – are gone. A shift of 60,000 votes in the GOP bastion of Ohio, and Kerry would be president.
The U.S. trade deficit in 2005 will exceed $700 billion – 6 percent of our entire economy. We are awash in foreign debt.
With China, our trade deficit last year was $162 billion. Beijing is using its trade surplus to buy U.S. bonds, giving her a giant claim on U.S. interest payments – and to build and buy the ships, planes and missiles needed to fight a naval war off her coast. Wal-Mart is subsidizing China's strategic buildup.
The industries we are losing now are not only textiles, shoes, TVs and toys, but autos, airplanes and computers. We are no longer the self-sufficient nation of 1940 or 1960. Even American sovereignty is being eroded, as the World Trade Organization orders Congress to change U.S. tax and trade laws, and Congress meekly complies.
America can yet turn this around, but we are reaching a tipping point – where a sovereign, independent and self-sufficient American republic will cease to be.
Thirty House Republicans can stop this process cold by just saying no to CAFTA. The Business Roundtable will get over it. After all, they have no place else to go.
bump
These are two different issues that need to be kept separate -- the importance of national security on the one hand and the need to help out losers in life's lottery on the other. They're both important, but they're different problems with different solutions. Buchanan wants federal taxes raised to help his unemployed followers all in the name of national security. This is sloppy because there are native born traitors who are mooching off our welfare, and there are those that don't want to increase the welfare roles that are still patriotic.
Uh oh. I don't know what this is supposed to mean.
"...The U.S. trade surplus with Mexico vanished overnight. Last year, we ran a $50 billion trade deficit... As for Mexico's major exports to us, they appear to be two: narcotics and Mexicans."
Isn't this contradictory? I don't think narcotics and Mexicans are included in calculations for the trade deficit!!!
Conversely, the Bush Administration's policy is to make us more deeply indebted to our enemies.
China: Why Won't the GOP Defend U.S. National Security?
Best Way to Change Trade Policy on China: Vote NO on CAFTA
Desperate Deception: CAFTA as Antidote to the China Trade Juggernaut
Bush's CAFTA and China Policies: Linked Only in Ineffectiveness
CAFTA: The Expanding Trade Deficit with China by Another Name?
Why CAFTA Will Not Improve Central American Security and Stability
The Bush Administration Wants a Strong China???
Government to Government lobbyist deals can't be called 'Free Trade' it's 'Fleece Trade'.
Vote out any 'corporate representative' who votes for CAFTA. Power to the voters.
I think Pat's quote is too simplistic...free trade has created jobs...companies that make profit expand, thereby creating more jobs...Look at the economies of nations that greatlty restrict free trade...their job markets are not pretty, to say the least.
Simply stated: NAFTA leads to CAFTA which leads to FTAA then to GATT and WTO which = ONE WORLD ORDER under the UN.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1450574/posts
Trilateralists: Is that something real?
Well that's what the debate is about. Those that benefit vs those that don't - majority wins. Looking at my newspaper I don't see the jobs created by 'free trade'. Maybe yours does.
What is missing in the politician's 'free trade' is the equation - we buy from you, you buy from us. Trade negotiations should produce trade balance, then it's win-win.
Now all we do is export jobs and the dollars to buy America. That for us is 'lose-lose'.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.