26 June 2014
Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Source: The New American
As anyone who reads
The New American knows, the are several
fronts in the plutocrats’ war to eradicate our fundamental liberties and
the Constitution that protects them. It is sometimes difficult to keep
up with the manifold threats to the prosperity and perpetuation of the
American Republic.
Of all the weapons aimed at our freedom and founding documents,
though, there is perhaps none more potent than the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP). So imminent is the harm hiding within the
still-secret “trade pact” that one author recently described the TPP as “
The greatest threat to American sovereignty.”
That’s quite a claim, but, a close scrutiny of the details (scant
though they may be) of the 12-nation agreement reveals that the
accusation is accurate.
Since his second inauguration, President Obama has kept his foot on
the TPP pedal, pushing for the quick culmination of the deliberations
and the ratification of the same by the Senate.
Since his reelection in 2012, President Obama has been forced to
focus on domestic issues, chief among which was the ObamaCare rollout
debacle. Not that foreign policy hasn’t had its time in the foreground,
speaking specifically of Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq.
Now, however, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will be brought
front and center, and the president reckons the time is right to renew
his effort to solve the problems plaguing the approval of the 12-nation
regional trade pact.
President Obama used the State of the Union address in January as an
opportunity to request Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) from Congress.
TPA is a tool that the president demands be in the U.S. trade
representative’s bag when he sits down with his colleagues from the
other TPP participant nations.
Not so fast. The
Washington Post reported on February 19 on
the pressure the president is feeling from his own party to pump the
brakes on the TPP and fast track authority:
Already, Senate Majority Leader Harry M.
Reid (D-Nev.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are
opposed to moving forward with granting Obama fast-track authority.
"Everyone would be well-advised just to
not push this right now," Reid said in March. He's generally opposed to
large global trade agreements.
Resistance from Reid and Pelosi usually would be enough to at least
ease the White House push. But Obama and Vice President Biden have also
been directly confronted on the issue in recent weeks by rank-and-file
members. And 151 House Democrats — more than half of the caucus —
co-signed a letter late last year written by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.)
to voice opposition to fast track authority and the TPP.
Others in the president's party have pointed out what should be obvious dangers of the TPP. The
Politico article contains a quote from a Democratic lawmaker:
“TPP would force Americans to compete
against workers from Vietnam, where the minimum wage is $2.75 per day,”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said. “It threatens to roll back financial
regulations, environmental standards and U.S laws that protect the
safety of drugs and food and the toys we give our kids.”
On May 24, the
Financial Times published an article on the
“fast track” debate, focusing on the efforts of Senator Ron Wyden
(D-Ore.) to convince a sufficient bloc of Democrats to drop their
opposition to granting trade promotion authority. The
Financial Times reported:
To do so, he [Wyden] argues, will mean
addressing concerns over the lack of transparency that plague
negotiations. He also wants to make sure any TPA bill, which
traditionally sets US objectives for trade deals as well as limiting
Congress’s ability to amend them, addresses modern sectors such as the
trade in digital goods.
In a move that will cause concern with
some US negotiating partners such as Brunei and Vietnam, Mr Wyden says
he would also like to see trade agreements address human rights,
something advocated by fellow Democrats.
“I think it’s the responsible thing to do
and I think it will bring more support for the cause of trade
expansion,” Mr Wyden says.
A post published on the blog Economy in Crisis expertly lays out the danger lurking in the fast track process:
If Congress foolishly grants Obama
fast-track trade authority, President Obama alone will draft the
agreement without Congressional input. Congress will have just 90 days
before signing and entering into an agreement, requiring a floor vote 15
days after the bill is discharged from Committees. Congress will then
have only 20 hours of debate in each House, not the normal debate and
cloture or the ability to amend the legislation. If passed, the TPP will
become U.S. law and will then require approval from every one of the
other signatory nations before Congress can revoke or change their
content. There will be all sorts of mischief lurking in the TPP pages
and we will not know until it is approved.
As with the multitude of similar trade pacts the United States has
formed, the ultimate aim of the TPP is the creation of a regional super
government — thus the stonewalling of federal lawmakers who dare seek to
assert some sort of oversight.
In the case of the TPP, the zone would be called the Free Trade Area
of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). Members of the proposed “free trade” bloc
include all the current TPP participants: Malaysia, Singapore, Japan,
Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Canada,
and the United States. The regional trading partnership is intended to
establish “a comprehensive free trade agreement across the region.”
Economic and political integration will push the once-independent
United States of America into yet another collectivist bloc that will
facilitate the complete dissolution of our nation and our states into no
more than impotent members of a one-world government.
Predicting such a scenario isn’t exactly a prophetic act, though. The
TPP has been described as “NAFTA on steroids,” and a quick rehearsal of
the devastation washed up on American shores in the wake of NAFTA will
serve as a cautionary tale of the terrors of the TPP.
In its report entitled “NAFTA at 20,” Public Citizen’s Global Trade
Watch provided a primer on NAFTA’s enervating effect on the American
economy. The paper reports:
NAFTA created new privileges and
protections for foreign investors that incentivized the offshoring of
investment and jobs by eliminating many of the risks normally associated
with moving production to low-wage countries. NAFTA allowed foreign
investors to directly challenge before foreign tribunals domestic
policies and actions, demanding government compensation for policies
that they claimed undermined their expected future profits. NAFTA also
contained chapters that required the three countries to limit regulation
of services, such as trucking and banking; extend medicine patent
monopolies; limit food and product safety standards and border
inspection; and waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy
American.
Some of the specific harm caused by NAFTA is highlighted in the report:
1. $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada
2. One million net U.S. jobs lost because of NAFTA
3. A doubling of immigration from Mexico
4. Larger agricultural trade deficits with Mexico and Canada
5. More than $360 million paid to
corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks
of, domestic public interest policies.
Americans who study the subject realize that the domestic legal
processes being carried out in secret by the globalists sitting around
the TPP negotiating table is, like NAFTA before it, an attack on
American laws, American courts, American freedom of expression, American
sovereignty, and the American Constitution.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American
and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment,
the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. Follow him on
Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at jwolverton@thenewamerican.com.
Link: http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/item/18572-trans-pacific-partnership-nafta-on-steroids-threatens-sovereignty.
