[dennisw]

Sadly, you are correct. I would say that many of these "folks" work in the white house, the state department and the USTR.

How did the USTR get in the mix? But I do get your point. Traitors all. Even under Ronald Regan the USTR was populated by skunks and turncoats. I was reading Pat Choat years ago

[hedgetrimmer]

The trade representatives office, now headed by Rob Portman, is off making deals with "least developed countries" or "poor countries" with the goal of "poverty alleviation". To do this, the US must follow the rules of the WTO, which states that a certain percentage of our GDP must be given to the Millennium Challenge Account, and a significant amount of our tax dollars for "trade capacity building". The congress, which has traditionally overseen so-called foreign aid, has no oversight in this process, unelected bureaucrats, corporate entities and nongovernmental organizations get to pick and choose where the money that has been funneled through the USTR will go.

So there are multiple problems here. The USTR has taken the point of view that it is our duty to redistribute US wealth through trade deals that give money and trade preferences away with no reciprocity on the part of the poor countries, that we must build the infrastructure of those countries with our tax money so they can participate in the global trading system, that the USTR has usurped the authority of congress to do this and that the WTO and the WTO member states have more authority over where the US sends it "trade capacity building" tax money and even over what kinds of industrial sectors are allowed to remain in our economy.

Finally, as part of these WTO trade deals, one of the rules, called Mode 4, or "free movement of persons" is in NAFTA,GATT and the WTO. This is the reason, I believe, that our border isn't being enforced.