The General Agreement on Trade in Services is a program of the World Trade Organization. The U.S. became involved in GATS because a lame-duck Congress signed on to the WTO in 1994. Just as NAFTA and the WTO are advertised as ways to open up trade in goods, proponents describe GATS as a way to open up trade in services.

Services are what most Americans do for a living. Service industries account for nearly 80 percent of U.S. employment and GDP.

GATS is not a single agreement. It is an open-ended process in which hordes of bureaucrats review state and local laws governing the licensing and certification of service workers. GATS targets service industries such as insurance, banking, legal services, accounting, engineering, teaching, real estate, tourism, consulting, energy distribution, transportation, telecommunications, courier and postal services, and much, much more.

To move GATS to the next phase, GATS bureaucrats are currently negotiating major new rules for the conduct of trade in services. Although the Bush administration is pushing for new agreements to be completed in 2004, few have heard of this revolutionary process. Yet everyone will be affected by the GATS rules – consumers of services as well as the suppliers.

GATS also threatens to swell the tide of foreign workers to our shores and greatly speed up job outsourcing.

However, every bit as important as the job and immigration dynamic is the GATS threat to our national sovereignty and our system of constitutional federalism. GATS will subject the U.S. to innumerable charges of trade restriction violations that arbitrators appointed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) will adjudicate. Thousands of federal, state, and local laws and regulations will become "illegal" under the GATS regime.

The bureaucrats designing GATS have their eye on all services that are exchanged across national borders. Hardly anything will be exempt. As an indication of the intrusive regulation that can be expected under GATS, even hotels that cater to tourists will have to submit to international regulation. What a yoke on any nation’s productivity!