"The world wishes to be deceived."

— Sebastian Franck (around 1500 A.D.)

The drive for a Free Trade Area of the Americas was launched publicly at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami. Proponents heralded the FTAA as a bold move to "foster economic progress, enhance domestic prosperity, and raise living standards" throughout the Western hemisphere.

However, the real objective of the FTAA architects is so revolutionary that the proposal is shrouded in deception and misrepresentation. Even the term "free trade" in the name is a deception – a violation of truth in labeling.

A deeper examination shows that the real objective of the FTAA’s internationalist sponsors is to consolidate power, not to expand prosperity. The FTAA is a raw grab for power disguised as a free trade agreement.

The FTAA would bring the nations of this hemisphere, most especially the U.S., under the heel of a new regional authority. That new authority would have none of the checks and balances of the American constitutional system. To accomplish the globalist goal of economic and political "integration," the independence and distinctive legal systems of participating nations would have to disintegrate step by step, as is happening in the European Union. Americans would lose control of their own destiny.

In part, that means Americans would lose control of their property, suffer taxation by anti-American socialist bureaucrats, and watch helplessly as standards of justice they had taken for granted, such as the Bill of Rights, are trampled. Meaningful national borders would also cease to exist.

The promises of greater prosperity are merely the bait for the internationalist FTAA trap. And it is rotten bait at that since the resulting socialist regulatory bureaucracy would continue the process that is destroying the American middle class. It would also undermine any opportunity for the peoples of Latin America to increase their standards of living.