Free Republic

The Trump administration said the United States made mistakes letting China and Russia join the World Trade Organization (WTO) because they have failed to shift to market-based economies. China and Russia have made little progress to align their economies with the commitments they made when joining the WTO, the U.S. trade representative wrote in two reports sent to Congress on Friday. "The United States is committed to working with all WTO members who share our goal of using the WTO to create and enforce rules that lead to more efficient markets, reciprocal benefits and greater wealth for our citizens," wrote...

RUSH: Reiterate that point. I really have to reiterate, because to me it is crucial. It is, well, crucial. Yeah, key. It’s very important to understand this. Greetings, folks. Great you have to here, Rush Limbaugh revved and ready for yet another three hours of broadcast excellence right here behind this the Golden EIB Microphone at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative, anti-media, and Anti-Leftist Studies. The curriculum keeps expanding. No graduates, no degrees, the learning never stops. The telephone number if you want to join, 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us. First things first. Want to go...

Trump in Vietnam says U.S. will not 'surrender our sovereignty' in trade agreements By Ray Downs | Nov. 10, 2017 at 2:46 AM Nov. 10 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump took the stage at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam Friday and said the United States will no longer "be taken advantage of" through trade agreements. "The U.S. is prepared to work with its Asian allies to achieve mutually beneficial commerce," Trump said. "I will make bilateral trade agreements with any Indo-Pacific nation that will abide by fair and reciprocal trade. What we will no longer do is enter...

The new US bill on anti-Russian sanctions will affect European countries cooperating with Russia in the energy sector, and, therefore, these restrictive measures can ultimately run counter to international law, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Brigitte Zypries, said in an interview with the newspapers, which are part of Germany’s Funke media group, published on Monday. "We believe this is a violation of international law," the minister said referring to the fact that the fresh sanctions may restrict companies’ activities in the EU. "America cannot fine German companies for doing business in another country," she said. "According to Zypries,...

Now that the dust has settled on the elections, the time has come (or so some of the punditry in the media assure us) to set aside political acrimony and unite under the new leadership of President-elect Donald Trump and the new House and Senate. Although it’s far from clear what President Trump will choose to prioritize, now that he will face the realities of entrenched political interests in Washington instead of his fired-up political base on the hustings, it seems at least possible that he will show much more sympathy for certain constitutionalist and Americanist causes — such as...

Germany could take the United States to court if Washington goes ahead with plans to tax imports, Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said Friday, hours before Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first meeting with Donald Trump. “I’m betting partly on reason and partly on the courts” to prevent a damaging trade war, Zypries told Deutschlandfunk public radio. The minister’s combative stance comes ahead of Merkel’s first meeting with Trump in Washington and a gathering of G20 finance ministers in Baden-Baden, western Germany, set to be dominated by the US president’s “America First” policy. […] If a US border tax was found to breach...

The voters of the United Kingdom stood up for British national sovereignty with their recent decision to leave the European Union (EU), and now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is suggesting that he might take the lead in the United States leaving the World Trade Organization (WTO).When NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Trump on Meet the Press if his punitive tariff plan for businesses that leave the United States could be nixed by the WTO, Trump responded strongly, “It doesn’t matter. Then we’re going to renegotiate or we’re going to pull out. These trade deals are a disaster, Chuck. World Trade...

The FBI yesterday seized a pair of UK servers used by Indymedia, the independent newsgathering collective, after serving a subpoena in the US on Indymedia's hosting firm, Rackspace. Why or how remains unclear. Rackspace UK complied with a legal order and handed over hard disks without first notifying Indymedia. It's unclear if the raid was executed under extra-territorial provisions of US legislation or the UK's Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). Provisions of RIPA make it a criminal offence to discuss warrants, so Rackspace would not be able to discuss the action with its customer Indymedia, or with the media....

A World Trade Organization (WTO) compliance panel ruled Thursday that the European Union has fallen dramatically short of remedying the harm to Boeing from illegal subsidies to Airbus. The decision opens a path for the U.S. to implement trade sanctions against the EU — potentially imposing billions of dollars in tariffs on its goods or services.

The voters of the United Kingdom stood up for British national sovereignty with their recent decision to leave the European Union (EU), and now Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is suggesting that he might take the lead in the United States leaving the World Trade Organization (WTO).When NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Trump on Meet the Press if his punitive tariff plan for businesses that leave the United States could be nixed by the WTO, Trump responded strongly, “It doesn’t matter. Then we’re going to renegotiate or we’re going to pull out. These trade deals are a disaster, Chuck. World Trade...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is threatening to leave the World Trade Organization and rip up agreements like the North American Free Trade agreement, and his critics predictably are branding him everything from "wrong-headed" to "insane." But here's the real deal. When our politicians and diplomats negotiate trade deals, we lose because they don't know a good deal from a bad one. For instance, when President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993, he believed it would "create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone." Instead, the U.S. has lost over 700,000 jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while...

Donald Trump has claimed that the European Union was created to “beat the United States when it comes to making money” in an interview with NBC News. Speaking to Chuck Todd, whom the Republican nominee has repeatedly berated as “sleepy-eyed”, Trump also said of the EU “the reason that it got together was like a consortium so that it could compete with the United States”. The European Union was founded as the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952 in an effort to promote strong cross-border ties in Europe and avoid future wars. It has since evolved to a customs...

During the Bretton Woods Conference, in 1944, Lord Halifax is said to have “whispered to Lord Keynes: ‘It’s true: they have the money bags but we have all the brains.’” By “they,” Halifax meant the Americans. His frustration with the American mind—often prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations seems as valid today. As odious as Britain’s elites are; boy, are they cleverer than ours. Take the impromptu interview, on June 28, which Richard Quest, CNN’s imported British broadcast journalist, conducted with Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party. Farage had emerged exhilarated from the coven that is the...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has come to represent the most efficient form of colonization the world has ever seen – reaping all the benefits with no downsides of occupation. The corporate agenda of the organization has destroyed the American economy, allowing multinationalists to exploit the world’s cheap resources and put America out of work and out of business.

Getting Rid of H-1B Visas: Easier Said Than Done Why the battle may be too big even for Trump. March 18, 2016 Ian Smith    During last week’s GOP debate at Miami University, front-runner Donald Trump answered a question about his position on the H-1B guest-worker program noting several times that it was unfair to American workers then concluding that “we should end it” entirely. While the sentiment’s appreciated, ending the H-1B program is easier said than done.  Under the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the US has certain obligations towards foreign nationals wishing to come...

After more than a decade of wrangling, Congress repealed a labeling law last month that required retailers to include the animal's country of origin on packages of red meat. Lawmakers said they had no choice but to get rid of the labels after the World Trade Organization repeatedly ruled against them. The WTO recently authorized Canada and Mexico, which had challenged the law, to begin more than $1 billion in economic retaliation against the United States.

<p>The World Trade Organization ruled Monday that Canada and Mexico can slap more than $1 billion in tariffs on U.S. goods in retaliation for meat labeling rules it says discriminated against Mexican and Canadian livestock.</p> <p>At issue were U.S. labels on packaged steaks and other cuts of meat that say where the animals were born, raised and slaughtered.</p>

"The World Trade Organization (WTO) has rejected the United States' appeal of the international body's October ruling against meat labeling that Canada and Mexico say is too costly for their livestock producers."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry. The World Trade Organization rejected a U.S. appeal last month, ruling the labels that say where animals were born, raised and slaughtered are discriminatory against the two U.S. border countries. Both have said they plan to ask the WTO for permission to impose billions of dollars in tariffs on American goods. The House voted 300-131 to repeal labels that tell consumers what countries the meat is from — for...

As the World Trade Organization delivers another blow against U.S. sovereignty, President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is poised to add more international judicial attacks against American liberty and independence. The May 18 ruling by a WTO appellate tribunal declaring a U.S. federal law illegal should have caused giant shock waves across America and should have sunk any hopes of congressional passage of the TPP, which, twinned with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), forms the centerpiece of the ObamaTrade globalist agenda. Both the TPP and the TTIP would create international courts that could (and would) override American federal, state,...