While it officially embraces 11 countries plus the U.S., 76
percent of our trade with these nations is with Mexico and Canada, already
covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Any export growth
is likely to have been already covered by NAFTA, making the TPP irrelevant to
our trade relations.
The TPP is nothing but an effort by the globalists to
circumvent American sovereignty, transferring a host of issues from the control
of the U.S. Congress and the various state legislatures to international trade
courts.
Start with the fact that nobody knows what is in the TPP.
President Obama will not let anyone see it. Indeed, many of the provisions are
said to be aspirational, setting policy goals and leaving it to the trade
courts to sort out. Any assurance that the treaty curbs currency manipulation
is fanciful. The courts can interpret it any way they want. Indeed, the
International Monetary Fund now does so, preventing any effort to restrict
Chinese manipulation, despite overwhelming evidence that it is happening.
But the main impact of the TPP is to create legal obstacles
in the way of American attempts to regulate access to our market.
Does American or state law restrict genetically modified
food? The TPP won't permit it.
Does the U.S. Congress impose limitations on the "free
flow of labor" between America and Mexico? The TPP can stop it.
Will Congress refuse to take action to restrict greenhouse
gas emissions? Lawmakers can be required to under the environmental provisions
of the TPP.
Obama has labored long and hard to strip Congress of its
authority over immigration, emissions and the environment, food regulations and
energy policy. Congress, in turn, has worked to take away state power over
insurance regulation and banking. Now comes the coup de grâce: a treaty taking
many of these powers away from the United States -- executive and legislative
branches -- and state government.
The long-term goal of the globalists is an international
rule of law unaccompanied by democracy. Because there is no global forum for
the manifestation of worldwide popular will, this formula leads to rule by
bureaucrats: those who know best. It is government by a new aristocracy of
civil servants and technicians.
Why are they so eager to pre-empt the power of elected
bodies? Steeped in the traditions of opposition to democracy, they regard the
will of the people as unpredictable and subject to demagoguery. The French and
the British have always used their civil service to insulate their countries
from the ravages of ambitious populist politicians. Germany has a well-deserved
suspicion of popular sovereignty, and Japan has always been ruled by its
bureaucracy.
Multinational corporations find bureaucrats easy to control,
subject as they are to the influences of the revolving door between regulators
and those they regulate. Coming from industry or planning to return there, the
supposedly disinterested bureaucrats are anything but impartial.
What is incomprehensible is why normally trustworthy
Republican senators and congressmen are falling in line behind Obama. Hasn't
this president stripped our nation of enough power? Has he not tipped the
system of checks and balances all out of kilter? Are we to trust him with more
power? Are the Republicans to vote him more power?
Under fast-track authority he can negotiate anything he
wants, put it in a treaty, jam it through Congress and make it the law of the
land, permanently. Don't Republicans see what they are doing in handing him
this kind of power?
In the hands of other presidents, fast-track made sense.
Before the development of the World Trade Organization, free trade deals were
the only way to stop a world of tariffs and prosperity-killing regulations. But
now, the era of tariffs is over, and trade deals are really about sovereignty
and power.
Don't hand over more of American sovereignty, particularly
under this president!
Source: dickmorris.com
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