Free Republic

The members of the #NeverTrump movement cite, in part, Donald Trump’s position on trade as a reason why they cannot support their party’s presumptive nominee, chosen by Republican voters. They argue that Trump’s position on trade represents a betrayal of the Ronald Reagan legacy that defines virtually all thinking and rhetoric among the professional conservative class in Washington, D.C. However, there is one significant problem with this line of attack: namely, Reagan’s record on trade far more closely resembles Trump’s position than it resembles the view of those in the #NeverTrump movement. In fact, by their own definition, Reagan would...

It really is quite stunning to see the voices who support Ted Cruz try and reconcile his prior support for the Trans-Pacific Trade issue.  Their obtuse position is fraught with intellectual dishonesty, and, quite frankly, a necessary head-in-the-sand approach.We’ve previously outlined the issue HERE.   Senator Cruz supported the legislative trade-passage vehicle of TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) because ultimately the trade bill itself (TPP) benefits Wall Street’s interests.However, the best way to understand the issue of his support is to actually listen to Ted Cruz explain in 2015 why he supported, then stopped supporting TPA:You can clearly see, in his own words, Senator Cruz stating he stopped...

Listed below the video from Jeff Sessions you will find two pdf outlines which detail some of the more concerning aspects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Deal. Feel free to share those pdf formats with your friends, family and social circles who are not familiar with the inherent issues.

Outrage is growing on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean following a massive new leak of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a globalist “trade” agreement negotiated between the Obama administration and the European Union. The leaked documents are being used, properly in some cases, to portray the treaty as a giant handout to Big Business cronies. Just as importantly, the almost 250 pages of text also confirm once again that the controversial new “trade” regime aims to merge the regulatory regimes of the United States and the EU under unaccountable transnational institutions. In short, the threats to...

LONDON — The Dutch chapter of the environmental activist group Greenpeace leaked on Monday what it called a trove of documents from the talks over a proposed trade deal between the European Union and the United States. The proposed deal, which President Obama would like to see finalized before he leaves office, has already received criticism on both sides of the Atlantic. According to Greenpeace, the documents indicate that American trade negotiators pressed their European counterparts to loosen important environmental, consumer protection and other provisions as part of the deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The documents,...

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin primary opponent Paul Nehlen launched his first ad, called "Truth Resurrection" Wednesday, calling Ryan out for his support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “It’s not every day you see a candidate for Congress sporting tattoos, riding a Harley, and throwing down on a factory floor,” Nehlen acknowledged. “But I’m not your everyday candidate.” “Mr. Speaker, you championed this trade deal. Why don’t you come back to Wisconsin and debate me—man-to-man, face-to-face—on the realities of TPP. And if you don’t want to debate me, maybe we can arm wrestle,” says Nehlen with a twinkle in his eye,...

Over the past six years, America’s businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs. To keep this progress going, we need to pursue every avenue of economic growth. Today, some of our greatest economic opportunities abroad are in the Asia-Pacific region, which is on its way to becoming the most populous and lucrative market on the planet. Increasing trade in this area of the world would be a boon to American businesses and American workers, and it would give us a leg up on our economic competitors, including one we hear a lot about on the campaign trail these...

Greenpeace charged on Monday that a massive US-EU trade deal would place corporate interests above the environment and consumer safety, as it released classified documents from the negotiations. […] Greenpeace said the papers show, for example, that the US wants to be able to scrap existing EU rules in areas such as food labeling or approval of dangerous chemicals if it they spell barriers to free trade. “TTIP is about a huge transfer of power from people to big business,” the group argued, having also projected an image of a classified text passage onto the façade of Berlin’s parliament building....

Here is the ad Trump is running against Cruz in Indiana Indiana AD

“Carly Fiorina pioneered– pioneered– the practice of outsourcing jobs,” Miller said. “Her great legacy in business has been in finding a way to shift jobs to lower wage countries and replacing American workers with foreign workers. So I think we can all say that Ted Cruz, who supports offshoring jobs, and Carly Fiorina, who supports offshoring jobs, they’re now officially the outsourcing ticket.” “A critical issue for the state of Indiana is steel production and manufacturing,” Miller said, noting that, “on the crucial trade vote in 2015, Ted Cruz voted for Barack Obama’s trade bill that would destroy… the middle...

During his recent European tour, President Obama did his best to help beleaguered German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is under intense fire for bringing 1 million-1.5 million (or more, no one knows for sure how many) Muslim “refugee” migrants into Germany in 2015. He also made promotion of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the mammoth treaty aimed at political and economic merger of the EU and United States, a key priority of his trip.

The British government’s sole assessment of the shadowy Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal indicates there are “lots of risks and no benefit,” according to documents seen by Global Justice Now. In February a freedom of information (FoI) request was made to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) to find out whether risk assessments had been carried out in relation to the secretive deal, which is currently in its 13th round of negotiations. The BIS reported that the only assessment had been carried out by the London School of Economics (LSE), which found “little reason” to believe...

British voters are getting set for a national referendum in June that will decide whether they leave the European Union or stay in. There are many issues driving the British exit vote (dubbed the “Brexit”): EU spending, EU taxes, EU regulations, EU bailouts, EU corruption, EU usurpations of power, EU migration — and much more. The ongoing migrant/refugee crisis caused by the disastrous EU policies was the last straw, not only for freedom-minded Brits, but for sensible residents all across Euroland. With a tidal wave of more than a million and a half migrants and “refugees” flooding across Europe since...

Hey Hillary! You really need to do a better job of faking sincerity. That is the advice of Dave Johnson at the Huffington Post. Johnson is worried that in the general election Donald Trump, if he is the nominee, would be a lot more credible in his opposition to trade deals than Hillary Clinton who is merely faking it. What she needs to do to is put on a credible game face to get away with faking her opposition to trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership in order to fool enough people to win the general election. So far Trump is much...

As the battle over TTIP was lost, Angela Merkel feigned resolution yet one more time. "We consider a swift conclusion to this ambitious deal to be very important," her spokesperson said on her behalf on Monday. And this is the government's unanimous opinion. But the German population has a very different one. More than two-thirds of Germans reject the planned trans-Atlantic free trade agreement. And even in circles within Merkel's cabinet, the belief that TTIP will ever become a reality in its currently planned form is disappearing. That's because on Monday morning, Greenpeace published classified documents from the closed-door negotiations....

The European Union is sending mixed signals on business transparency. On Tuesday, the European Commission responded to the Panama Papers disclosures by unveiling new legislation that would force more tax transparency on major companies in member states. But on Thursday, the European Parliament voted in favor of a new measure that critics say could prevent such leaks in the future. Campaigners say the new Trade Secrets Protection Act — aimed at protecting multinationals from corporate spying — will effectively criminalize whistleblowers and make it less likely that revelations like the Panama Papers and the Volkswagen scandal will ever see the...

German states have called for media outlets to release the cache of 11.5 million documents to authorities. But the journalists behind the largest data leak in history say it's not going to happen. Germany's federal states on Friday called for increased measures against tax havens and for media outlets to allow prosecutors to examine the contents of a cache of 11.5 million documents known as the "Panama Papers," which had been leaked to the press. "If the data sets from the 'Panama Papers' are not made accessible, then we cannot draw any consequences," said Lower Saxony's Finance Minister Peter-Jürgen Schneider,...

Secretary of State John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz have invested millions of U.S. dollars through family trusts in at least 11 offshore tax havens, according to an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The revelation comes on the heels of the release of the Panama Papers, a treasure trove of 11.5 million legal and financial records documenting how some of the world’s richest and most powerful people have used offshore bank accounts to conceal their wealth and avoid taxes.

Seizing on the media- and government-manufactured “Panama Papers” brouhaha, governments and globalist organizations announced a wave of new edicts and agreements last week in a plot to kill what remains of financial privacy rights and impose a radical global tax regime on humanity. The Obama administration, the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Socialist International, the European Union, and more are fully behind the effort. Of course, as this magazine has documented, those establishment forces, socialist groups, international organizations, tax-funded shills, and bloated governments have been pushing the same dangerous agenda for years without much success. Now...

Did you see that Sen. Bernie Sanders released his income taxes?....well, his 2014 income taxes, anyway. He did it around 7 p.m. on a Friday night, on the same day that the Democratic presidential hopeful was making international headlines by speaking at the Vatican and meeting Pope Francis, for at least a handshake. In journalism, releasing information at that off hour is what we call "a Friday news dump" -- usually an attempt to bury bad news. That's weird, because if I were handling PR for the Bernie Sanders campaign, I'd be shouting the news from the Green Mountain-tops. They...