More "Free Trade" Follies
John F. McManus
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The New American, January 9, 1995
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One year ago, President Bill Clinton used all of the power of his esteemed office to force an affirmative vote out of Congress for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Now, instead of the promised free flow of commerce between individual Americans and their Canadian and Mexican neighbors, more than a score of bureaucratic commissions are being established to regulate and control trade. The American people were assured that NAFTA would result in lower tariffs. But any nation that wants lower tariffs can accomplish that without creating more international agencies.
Last November, Mr. Clinton traveled all the way to Indonesia, where representatives of a newly proposed Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade group were gathered. The participants bowed to pressure applied by Mr. Clinton and committed to form the trade group, though they reached no agreement on a specific start-up date.
Back home, Mr. Clinton and his congressional allies from both political parties rammed through passage of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its companion World Trade Organization (WTO). They made sure that the vote in Congress occurred during a lame-duck session, held right after the worst drubbing given the Democratic Party in half a century.
No sooner did Mr. Clinton have GATT/WTO in his pocket than he was off to Miami to meet with leaders of 33 other Western Hemisphere nations. With the U.S. President waving the banner of free trade, all agreed to work towards another economic union they hope will be in place by the year 2005. This one will be called the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). No one asked how trade can be free when it is controlled by international bureaucracies.
Steps to World Government
The real reason for this sudden flurry of economic agreements and entanglements is very simple: Economic union precedes political union, and political union is an important stepping stone to socialism and world government. The goal is the breakdown of national sovereignty via economics. In the end, unless all of this is stopped, the "new world order" will emerge and freedom will be a mere memory.
In his 1970 book Between Two Ages, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote that America was becoming obsolete and that a whole new world structure must be created. In a nutshell, the Columbia University professor proposed a "piecemeal" development of ties among nations that would replace "already developing limitations on national sovereignty." Brzezinski admitted that his ultimate goal was "world government." Nevertheless, he would be satisfied with "shaping a community of nations," a less ambitious but more attainable step along the way.
Countering Nationalism
Between Two Ages attracted the attention of David Rockefeller, who began to work with Brzezinski. The two formed the Trilateral Commission in 1973, an organization whose own literature claims its purpose is to form "new and more intensive forms of international cooperation" and "to counteract economic and political nationalism." Nations aren't supposed to act in their own self-interest anymore, especially the United States.
It just so happens that Bill Clinton has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1990. Should he forget some of what the Trilateral Commission intends, he will be helped by other Trilateralists and Insiders he has appointed to high office, such as Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin, and at least a dozen other high Administration officials.
Reporting on the Miami event launching the FTAA, the New York Times summed up its purpose by turning to C. Fred Bergsten, "a Washington economist with close ties to the White House." Bergsten, a Trilateral executive committee member, sees the creation of the FTAA as a way to push Europeans and Asians into the same type of economic linkage. "In short, the essence of modern American foreign policy is to create leapfrogging trade pacts," said the Times.
One indication of how wrong all of these economic ties truly are can be found in the U.S. Constitution to which our President and all members of Congress swear a solemn oath. It declares, "Congress shall have power ... to regulate commerce with foreign nations." Not any NAFTA-created bureaucracy, not the World Trade Organization, and not any of the other groupings Mr. Clinton and his team are pushing our nation into. Congress shall do the regulating of commerce for America.
Adherence to the Constitution would protect U.S. sovereignty, something the "new world order" crowd is anxious to abolish.
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