The Dangers of Free Trade

Until I started researching the views of the Constitution Party, I never realized how dangerous free trade agreements were to the United States. I had always believed that these agreements would help lower the trade barriers that are in the way, that our nation would benefit by increasing its customer base, and that the more prosperous our neighbors were, the better it was for us.

Unfortunately, although there are countless benefits for other nations, the truth is the middle class of the United States is being destroyed by these agreements. Having a wife originally from Costa Rica, I understand how some trade agreements can help her original homeland. The bad news is that as these other nations prosper, the only Americans to benefit are our politicians and CEOs.

Free Trade vs. Mercantilism (Tariffs)

Originally, I believed that using tariffs would destroy the economy of the United States. No stranger to history, I remember horrible tariffs like Smoot-Hawley that helped destroy our economy during the onset of the Great Depression (read The Forgotten Man). Believing that tariffs were a thing of the past, and that the world engaged in a free trade system, I found it hard to believe in the CP's desire to return to a tariff system in order to pay for the government (repealing the income tax).

As it turns out, the world still engages in tariffs against products made in the United States. Changing the name from ‘tariff’ to ‘value-added tax’, the end-result is still the same: US products remain more expensive than domestic products.

I read an amazing article by the brilliant Phyllis Schlafly, where she explains the typical path a US product takes in Europe. When the US product arrives, the importing nation will place a value-added tax on our product that will be a percentage of the price of the product, the transportation cost to get it there, and the tariff that the importing country charges. This is the way US products are processed in 139 countries worldwide. Every year these rates increase. In 2006, value-added taxes reached a staggering $327 billion.

Let’s say we make a car to sell in Germany and our car costs $20,000. When it gets to Germany, thanks to their 16% value-added tax, the car will now cost $23,200. Now, let’s say Germany takes a $20,000 car of theirs and sells it in the US. The German government (just like all the other VAT governments) will subsidize their manufacturers with a 16% rebate, dropping the cost of their car to $16,800 in US markets! This is essentially zero-cost to them, since the initial VAT compensates for the rebate loss when they export a product.

Does the US do anything like this? No – that wouldn’t be free trade, would it?

When companies add in the wages of US workers, the US tax rate (we have the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world), and the cost of shipping (especially with today’s fuel prices), US companies are looking to either illegal workers or outsourcing in order to grow their profits.

Outsourcing

If you observe the location shift of companies, many are leaving the high taxes of the West Coast and the Northeast and are relocating in the American South or West/Midwest. Once this has no longer become profitable, many companies move their businesses out of the country. The jobs used to relocate to Mexico and Central/South America, but even those locations cannot compete with the low prices of slave labor in China and India.

High-Tech India

According to an article by Paul Craig Roberts, the outsourcing company Convergys Corp. had one Indian employee in 2001 – by 2005, they had 10,000. This is because they could hire Indian university graduates for only $240 a month. By the way, Convergys Corp. is set to make billions of dollars due to Verizon’s upcoming acquisition of Alltel.

India is no longer an American punchline, filled with endless supplies of phone banks. OfficeTiger, a high-tech IT company, in 2005 employed 200 Americans and ten-times that amount of Indians. They wish to hire even more Indians in the future for their “tech-heavy financial solutions.”

In 2005, India’s top-three companies for IT and engineering outsourcing reported revenue gains ranging from 34-53%.

Low-Tech America

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, their forecast for the next ten years says the vast majority of US jobs will not require a college education. This is interesting because the same federal government has been assuring Americans that as blue-collar jobs go to illegals or are outsourced, that Americans will have plenty of high-tech jobs to select from. As we can see, those jobs are also being outsourced.

While this is going on, the government and media try to convince us that there are jobs Americans just won't do, even though we used to do them. As someone that has cleaned a supermarket's butcher shop, mopped school locker rooms and bathrooms, and cleaned dishes in restaurant kitchens, if I had known I wasn't supposed to do those jobs I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. The sad thing is, this brainwashing - coupled with today's parents spoiling their children - is starting to make the lie a reality. We look the other way as millions of illegal workers, in unsafe and underpaid positions, pick our fruit, watch our kids, and clean up our messes. It's an abomination.

How can we stand up to China's slavery when we are engaging in our own?

With companies hiring illegals and our better jobs going away, what jobs are left for the American? Government jobs! In President Bush’s first term, 879,000 State and local government jobs were created. When compared to the jobs lost in the private sector, there was a net gain of 119,000 government jobs. So, if the private sector job market is shrinking, have no fear – your ever-growing government will take care of you. After all, we’ll need all those extra workers to manage our upcoming socialized healthcare system!

Selling Our Wealth

While illegals and Americans are competing for the same low-paying jobs, the cost to run the government continues to grow. In order to pay for commitments like social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the government needs to shift its costs. A way that they are doing this is through Public-Private Investments (PPI). In an executive order by George H.W. Bush, it is legal for the US to “sell off” their assets in order to shift the costs to the private sector. A substantial drawback to this is that, according to the Supreme Court, it is perfectly legal for foreign companies to be the buyers. So, like with everything else, foreign companies and governments are buying America out from underneath us.

In the period between 1990 and 2005, foreigners have accumulated $3.6 trillion of America's wealth. According to Forbes.com, foreign governments (through sovereign wealth funds) control approximately $2.5 trillion and are forecast to increase to $12 trillion by 2015. Nations such as Egypt and Abu Dhabi are now invested in several of the top banks in the United States.

Americans were outraged when Dubai was going to be in charge of our port security, but they seem to not even care that other Middle Eastern nations now control our banks. I believe they don’t care because our government and media have made all of this a non-issue. The secretary of the U.S. Treasury even said, "America will keep our markets open at home to investment from private firms and from sovereign wealth funds.” So unless Americans demand different, the government will continue to sell, sell, sell.

The North American Union - It's the Economy, Comrade!

I have recently read an amazing book entitled, The Late, Great USA. Books like this one makes the government regret ever passing the Freedom of Information Act. Extensive research was done by the author (Jerome Corsi) – federal and state email records, speeches, books, pamphlets, web sites, etc. Putting all the pieces together, you can see that there is a serious effort by some to create a European Union-style of government in North America. I highly recommend reading this book.

I was first exposed to this scenario in Glenn Beck's, An Inconvenient Book. It was such a compelling chapter in his book that I scanned it for the blog.

The theory behind free trade is that our agreements will remove trade barriers, like tariffs, and encourage trade between the nations involved in the treaties. The way it has always been spun to Americans is that these agreements will increase the sale of American products, so that means manufacturing will return to the United States. In actuality, these agreements make it easier for companies to move their businesses out of the US and into these new markets. The North American Union takes these free trade agreements and raises them to the next level.

The architect of the idea, Robert Pastor, is a high-level advisor to every major Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter. As ambassador to Panama during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Pastor oversaw the handover of the Panama Canal. But if you think Mr. Pastor is partisan, you would be mistaken - he has the support of several Republicans in Congress as well. Calling our post-9/11 security protocols "speed bumps," Mr. Pastor has encouraged Mexico, the US, and Canada to remove the items that slow down trade. When confronted about the creation of an NAU, Mr. Pastor and the leaders of all three nations deny anything like that is going on. Yet, there are always clues left behind that prove that their denials are lies.

This map shows the massive trade corridors that are proposed to be built in North America over the next 50+ years. The government has already begun seizing private property
in order to have the land needed to build the Trans-Texas Corridor - a massive highway, rail, and energy corridor four football fields wide that will stretch from the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas to the Canadian border of Minnesota. This stretch of super-highway will eventually merge with others that will run through different sections of the country. Thanks to the executive order creating PPIs, the maintenance of these trade corridors will be taken care of by foreign companies funded by large American banks - the same banks that were bailed out by foreign countries through the sovereign wealth funds.

Some of you might be thinking that this can still help the people of the United States. After all, with all of these super-highways, wouldn't that mean that we'd be trading our goods much quicker and easier? That would be true, in theory, if it wasn't for China. Chapter 8 will not only blow your mind, but you'll see proof that our politicians have no intention of bringing manufacturing back to the United States.

Our addiction to cheap, Chinese products has caused imports to rise so drastically that our ports cannot keep up. A major way around this, and our expensive labor unions, is to take advantage of the Mexican workforce that hasn't come here illegally yet. Chinese products will be imported into the southern port of Lazaro Cardenas. After being unloaded and inspected, it will travel on the super-highway into the US without being inspected at the border. If you think this is not going to happen, we are already in a trial run of this idea. And do you know who is in charge of the tracking system for all of the products in transit? The communist government of Red China! That shouldn't cause any security problems for us, right?

Where will these trucks be inspected then? In Kansas City, Missouri - at a Mexican-owned facility. The KC SmartPort is being constructed and is costing US taxpayers $3 million - even though it will be staffed with Mexican customs officials. If you think people that believe this are nuts, check out the SmartPort's own brochure. One of the companies to make billions off of this is the North American SuperCorridor Coalition. Their website clearly states their goal to make, "international and domestic trade more efficient and secure along the existing network of transportation systems (including highways, rail, inland ports and deep-water ports) running north-south through the central U.S., Canada and Mexico."

Billions of dollars have already been invested in a project that the government claims doesn't exist. Concerned citizens in Canada and the US have asked the government to be open about their intentions and have been met with mocking criticism.

When you realize that 70% of our GDP is based on consumer spending, you can see why we 1) have a debt problem in America, and 2) have business leaders and politicians desperate enough to destroy our Nation's sovereignty.

Splitting Hairs

I am not against trade, nor am I against immigration. But we have to see that there are clear reasons why the government refuses to fix these problems. In clear violation of the ninth amendment of the US Constitution, leaders from the public and private sectors have been manipulating the words of the Constitution in order to remove rights from Americans. By attending conferences as private citizens and not public officials, our governmental leaders can avoid releasing any information to the media about their agenda.

How can American politicians and business leaders get away with this? When you have 500 lawyers together in the same place, they're bound to be up to no good. And one of the things that lawyers are best at is manipulating the English language. By calling something an "agreement" instead of a treaty, you do not have to submit such a document to Congress for approval. By calling something a "community" instead of a union, you can try to discredit the accusations. By making it about money and simplicity instead of power and greed, you can win people over to your side.

Anti-American and Immoral

Due to the greed of these people, in the past two years over 6,000 people have died on the border due to the Mexican drug cartels. Because of corporate greed, illegals work in slavery conditions. Because of "free trade," our borders remain open - that's how Richard Toledo came here to murder my ex-coworker's children. That's how Jose Medellin came here to help gang rape and strangle two American teenagers. That's how 70 Americans have been kidnapped from Laredo, Texas by Mexicans - including two teenage girls that we're given by Mexican police to a drug lord as "presents."

This blood has been spilled so we can have cheap fruit. This blood has been spilled so mega-companies like General Electric, FedEx, Lockheed Martin, Merck, and Whirlpool can make even more money. These lives have been destroyed so that power-hungry politicians can have more power. Women are raped in the desert in front of their husbands and children, all so politicians can get more votes and make more money. The wisdom and sacrifice of our Founders is being stomped on for cheap goods, cheap labor, and foreign oil. The blood of our soldiers from over the past 232 years has been wasted so that Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and the Federal Reserve can pimp our Nation to the highest bidder.

This is why they won't build border fences. This is why they throw our Border Agents in jail when they do their jobs. This is why they go out of their way to assist drug runners during Border Patrol trials. This is why they don't enforce our immigration laws. This is why they are tanking our dollar. This is why they are finding severed heads all over Mexico. This is why they embrace free trade agreements, even though the proof shows they are disastrous for America.

Unfortunately, the Republicans and Democrats will not listen to us. Most of them will be listening to their wallets getting fatter. They'll be listening to the Latino voting population growing by about 15 million. After amnesty, our politicians will ensure a life term for themselves. Power, money, and control are the motivation. Everything that is going on with our government, our policies, and our businesses can be traced to the disaster of "free trade."

Show everyone you're paying attention. Take back your country. Say no to the North American Union. Say no to greedy politicians. Say yes to America.

Vote Constitution Party this November!