Free Republic

Rudy Giuliani and The NAFTA Superhighway - Brit Hume said on the Fox News Sunday program that it is possible that Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani could overcome his convoluted posturing on abortion and secure the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. But Giuliani has some other major problems. These include foreign clients, one of whom is constructing part of the "NAFTA Superhighway" project that has people in Texas and around the nation up in arms. Hume, the moderator of Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, will be in a position to ask Giuliani about it. Questions will also be...

“I would like you [of the press] to understand the magnitude of what this means. It is transcendent, it’s something that goes well beyond the relationship we have had up to now.” —President Vicente Fox, regarding NAFTA Plus, onboard the presidential plane returning to Mexico from George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch, March 2005. NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) has been in effect almost 12 years and a new stage, NAFTA Plus, is in the works, referred to as “deep integration,” particularly in Canada. The elites of the three NAFTA countries (Canada, the United States, and Mexico) have been aggressively...

The Bush administration's free-trade agreement with Central America would cost taxpayers $50 million a year in loan forfeitures by sugar farmers, the Congressional Budget Office says. An administration official said Thursday that the analysis was unrealistic and that there would be virtually no cost under sugar provisions in the deal. The CBO released its estimate as House leaders planned for a vote next week on the Central America Free Trade Agreement. It would remove or lower trade barriers with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and he Dominican Republic. Overall, CAFTA would cost the U.S. about $4.4 billion over...

OTTAWA - Mexico wants its North American neighbours to move more quickly towards integration on a continental scale, the country's foreign secretary said on Friday. Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Jorge Castaneda was in Ottawa on Friday, meeting for the first time with Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham. "We would like to continentalize as much as possible," he said. Castaneda said the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 brought to the fore the idea of harmonizing several policy areas across the continent. What Mexico wants, he said, goes beyond the continental perimeter idea that has been discussed at length in Canada...

North American national borders would be virtually eliminated under plans being considered by senior business and political leaders from Canada, the United States and Mexico for a "NAFTA-plus," continent-wide, customs-free zone with a common approach to trade, energy, immigration, law enforcement and security. A tri-national task force, chaired by former Liberal Party deputy prime minister John Manley, with the full backing of all three governments, is plotting the roadmap for this new, bolder alliance meant to compete with the European Union. William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts and Pedro Aspe, former Mexican finance minister, join Manley on the panel that...