Is it really free trade?

[AC]

03/08/2011
Trading Away Sovereignty

by Virgil Goode
Former Congressman Virginia’s 5th Congressional District from 1997 through 2009.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Obama received received “rare bipartisan praise” from Republicans when he signed the South Korean Free Trade agreement, known as KORUS, last December. However Republicans stalled congressional approval of the agreement, largely because of “partisan feuding,” in part because Republicans want even more free trade agreements with Columbia and Panama.

While I am glad that KORUS is stalled, Republicans should oppose it on principle because it creates a globalist bureaucracy that will cost hundreds of thousands of American jobs, not because of partisan bickering over how quickly we expand these globalist agreements.

Republican supporters of KORUS claim that the agreement is about promoting capitalism, free markets, and free trade. The truth is that this agreement does not promote free markets. On the contrary, it will make American businesses more regulated.

KORUS is not even about free trade. If we wanted free trade, we would simply reduce our tariffs with Korea. Such a bill would be a few pages. KORUS is 1,000 pages long. My former colleagues Ron Paul (R-TX) and Walter Jones (R-NC) wrote that “Free trade theorists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo must be rolling in their graves to see pacts like [KORUS] called ‘free trade.’”

Instead KORUS is about managed trade, which puts partial control of our economy in the hands of international bureaucrats.

Like other managed-trade agreements, KORUS gives special benefits to certain corporate and labor interests. For example, to get the support of the United Auto Workers Union, the agreement specifically requires Korea to change their internal environmental and safety regulations to fit these cars.

The flipside is that our own policies and sovereignty will be affected. KORUS sets up foreign tribunals under the jurisdiction of the World Bank and the United Nations where Korean companies operating in the United States can sue Americans outside of our jurisdiction.

Additionally, the treaty gives Obama unconstitutional authority to impose regulations under the treaty on state government. The National Council of State Legislators warned against the “effect that investor-state dispute resolution chapters have on American principles of federalism, state sovereignty, and state lawmakers’ ability to address the localized concerns of their constituents.”

Although ostensibly just a deal with Korea, KORUS will allow other countries to usurp our sovereignty by proxy. Chinese and other foreign companies could simply set up front corporations with up to a 65 percent of the ownership in South Korea and they too would be able to sue Americans in foreign tribunals.

This is not the first time we’ve proposed a managed-trade agreement. In the last two decades America has ratified the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Dominican Republic/Central American Free Trade Agreement, and the Singapore Free Trade Agreement.

Based on these past experiences, we also have reason to worry about increases in immigration from KORUS. Because the negotiations are hidden from the public, we will not know until the last minute, but all the previous FTAs have included increases in guest workers. With nearly 25 million Americans out of work, we do not need any more foreign workers.

The combination of mass immigration and globalist free trade was summed up by Pat Buchanan as “Exporting Jobs, Importing Workers.” The results are disastrous for the American worker.

NAFTA, CAFTA, and the other FTAs have led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs and the erosion of sovereignty has led to a slippery slope with the globalists trying to go a step further with the NAFTA Superhighway. We should remember that the European Union began as a free trade agreement.

A quote commonly misattributed to both Ben Franklin or Albert Einstein, but insightful nonetheless, defines insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” After the disastrous results of NAFTA, it would be literally insane for Republicans to side with the Obama administration in surrendering our sovereignty.

[Adrianne Knobloch]

Not quite, Clay.  Left and right are perceptions the outlaw regime and their propagandist arm, the media successfully use to keep Americans distrusting other Americans in a perpetual civil war. 

"Us against them," in the dichotomy today amounts to American vs. American and a continued (verbal) civil war.

What is needed is Americans shoulder to shoulder, prosecuting a Second American Revolution, against the true, real, clear and present danger, that is the ONE globalist socialist Oligarchy Party.  In real terms, the legitimate and constitutional US gov't has been overthrown by bona fide traitors who are in the employ of foreign interests. The fait accompli against our sovereign nation is due to both "sides," but those sides are for our perception only, are complicit in the dissolution and utter destruction of our nation.

[AC]

Adrianne, the way I see it, we have the left...the right...and then there's the truth.  The neo-cons have been guilty of trampling on our rights just like the Left/wing Democrats.

God bless.

[Adrianne Knobloch]

Yeah, free for everyone else.

 

For us, it cost us our nation.  Thank you GOP, Newt and all the other "conservatives" who are really neo-conservatives aka, globalists aka, global oligarchy.

 

Those who put all the blame on the Dems are sadly mistaken.

 

"Whether the boot at your throat is the left boot or the right boot, makes no difference."  ~~ Anon

 

Would this logic would reach those good conservatives who have happily voted for the right boot on their throats.

 

You have a choice .... loyal to the GOP or loyal to your nation.  YOU CAN NOT be both. 

As for me, niether is acceptable.  And both parties are complicit in the take down of the USA.