Trade Trap: EU as Model for Misnamed TPP, TTIP
Two massive and dangerous “trade” agreements, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) loom on the near horizon. Like icebergs of doom, they lie mostly submerged, threatening to rip asunder the hulls of all sovereign ships of state that dare to sail their waters.
We place the word “trade” in quotation marks because these twin pacts, which the Obama administration has listed as top priority items on its overall agenda, run to thousands of pages and establish international “rules” for hundreds of domestic issues that have nothing to do with traditional notions of trade, ranging from farming, banking, mining, fishing, manufacturing, immigration, migration, and labor, to environment, insurance, intellectual property, textiles, etc. If the federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act were applied to the TTIP and TPP, then President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, current Secretary of State John Kerry, U.S. Trade Ambassador Michael Froman, and all the rest of the negotiators of these fraudulent and deceptive deals would be arrested for criminal misrepresentation, not to mention the even more serious charges that they could (and should) be hit with for pushing these schemes to destroy our national sovereignty and the constitutional order they have sworn to defend.
The TPP treaty is an incomprehensible labyrinth of legalese running to 5,544 pages (longer than the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy). Negotiated in total secrecy (despite promises of “transparency”), the TPP proposes “integration” that would entangle the United States in the political and economic affairs of 11 Pacific Rim member states: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. That’s the current membership, but there are already plans to “widen” it to include more nations, including Communist China and Russia.
Likewise, the still-secret Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership calls for “deep and comprehensive” integration between the United States and the European Union, now comprised of 28 member states (27, if the British follow through on the “Brexit” referendum mandate to exit the EU).
And that’s another kicker: The integration of the United States and the EU would mean the United States would be bound by the same stifling, all-encompassing, top-down rules (issued either by the unelected EU bureaucrats in Brussels or another international entity) that the British just voted to escape from with the Brexit vote — and that many other countries wish to vote to reject but can’t because the elites in their governments are stopping them.
The British were right to reject the EU because the consequences of remaining in the EU were astoundingly bad, including authoritarian government, without voter input on most issues; a rapidly inflating currency that political elites print and use to favor one country or group over another to maintain power and guide policy; out-of-control immigration, which has steadily led to cultural conflict and increased spending on welfare, hurting the employment picture; and rules covering every aspect of daily life, including the size and shapes of fruit that are allowed to be sold, which are simply stultifying.
The Brexit vote on June 23 was an astounding rebuke, not only to the pro-EU elites of all three major British parties, but to the entire globalist lobby worldwide. In announcing their demand to leave the European Union, British voters signaled the first major reversal in the nearly seven-decade march toward a European superstate. Year after year, decade after decade, the EU has expanded, inexorably adding new member states, as well as claiming new powers and jurisdictions, and proliferating new institutions, agencies, and offices.
Unchastened by the clear Brexit message, EU leaders are grabbing for additional power. Immediately following the Brexit vote, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault held a secret meeting to push forward on EU control over military policy, foreign affairs, border control, and migration/refugee policy. Leaked texts of their plans are stirring outrage throughout Europe.
Also generating controversy and worry among the EU’s populace is the clear intent of political elites to stop the Brexit though the British voted for it. While the elites are publicly making pretense of accepting this huge setback to their evolving EU Project, they are working furiously behind the scenes to sabotage the Brexit process, drag out “negotiation,” and ensure that Britain never actually leaves the EU.
The Obama administration and the pro-EU governments of European Union member states are sending intentionally mixed signals. On the one hand, President Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, and other committed globalist politicians are publicly stating that they accept the will of the British voters and will cooperate in speeding an orderly exit of Britain from the EU, even as they discuss plans to undo the voters’ wishes.
Amexit Now to Avoid EU Trap
Without intending in any way to diminish the heroic effort carried out by the Brexiteers in securing their referendum victory, it is important we point out that they are still a long way from actually extricating themselves from the multitude of EU snares that currently entrap them. When joining the EU in its earlier incarnation known as the Common Market (or EEC, European Economic Community), the British people never intended to yield up control over all aspects of their lives to eurocrats in Brussels. They thought — because they were repeatedly, falsely assured by deceitful politicians and their media allies — that they were merely entering a “trade” agreement to bring about more jobs, commerce, and prosperity. Everything would be peachy! Popular author and columnist Sir Peregrine Worsthorne wrote in London’s Sunday Telegraph in 1991: “Twenty years ago, when the process began, there was no question of losing sovereignty. That was a lie, or at any rate, a dishonest obfuscation.”
Although the EU lies and obfuscation were becoming increasingly apparent when Sir Peregrine made that observation, it would take an additional quarter of a century of arduous educating and organizing to build the understanding and popular support needed to make the break from the fast-encroaching EU superstate. And it is still not a fait accompli. Meanwhile, in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Austria, and other EU member states, large, popular movements are under way for Brexit-style referendums. But, particularly because these countries, unlike Britain, have given up economic sovereignty by adopting the euro currency, they are working against even greater odds than the Brexiteers, and their success is far from certain. Will they be able to break free and regain their independent, self-governing status as genuine, sovereign nations, or will they fail, and end up being absorbed as mere administrative units of the EU superstate? No one knows, at this point.
The lessons for America should be obvious: We can avoid the calamitous experience of Europe under the increasingly tyrannical rule of the EU elites. We can do that by enforcing our own Amexit — before these new “trade” agreements can get off the ground and entrap us in an oppressive EU-style integration scheme. The TTIP/TPP architects have stated they hope to move these new projects through the same process as the EU, but on a vastly accelerated schedule — taking only years to accomplish what has taken decades in Europe.
And the time to pressure American leaders to reject TPP and TTIP is growing short.
What is the current timeline on TTIP/TPP action? We cannot say, for certain; leaders in Congress and in the various globalist lobbying groups have been sending mixed signals as to whether there may be a vote on TPP before the end of the year. Some are suggesting it could be brought to a vote after the November elections during a lame-duck Congress; others are saying it will be delayed until early next year. Regardless of when it comes to a vote, it is still vitally important to register staunch opposition to members of the House and Senate now; otherwise the globalist banking, corporate, and political lobbies — which are very powerful, well funded, and highly organized — will ram through their EU-style TPP.
The most trenchant critic of the TPP in Congress is Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who has fearlessly denounced the agreement, including its features that bear an unmistakable and ominous resemblance to the structures of the European Union. Commenting on the long-secret pact after it was finally released by the Obama administration last November, Senator Sessions warned: “At bottom, this is not a mere trade agreement. It bears the hallmarks of a nascent European Union.”
“These 5,554 pages are like the Lilliputians binding down Gulliver,” the Alabama solon declared. “They will enmesh our great country, and economy, in a global commission where bureaucrats from Brunei have the same vote as the United States.”
According to Senator Sessions, under the verbiage about trade and jobs, the TPP is hiding an entirely new governance system, one that would gradually supplant our own. “Among the TPP’s endless pages are rules for labor, environment, immigration and every aspect of global commerce — and a new international regulatory structure to promulgate, implement, and enforce these rules,” he warns. “This new structure is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission — a Pacific Union — which meets, appoints unelected bureaucrats, adopts rules, and changes the agreement after adoption.”
According to the TPP treaty, this new TPP Commission — modeled after the EU Commission — would have authority to:
• “consider any matter relating to the implementation or operation of this Agreement”;
• “consider any proposal to amend or modify this Agreement”;
• “supervise the work of all committees and working groups established under this Agreement”; and,
• “merge or dissolve any subsidiary bodies established under this Agreement in order to improve the functioning of this Agreement.”
The senator warns that, like the European Union, the Pacific Union could, among other things, take immigration and migration of foreign workers out of the hands of national governments. The text states: “No Party shall adopt or maintain … measures that impose limitations on the total number of natural persons that may be employed in a particular service sector.” The devasting (and ongoing) migration/refugee/terrorism crisis in Europe underscores the very real danger loss of sovereignty in this area represents.
“The predictable and surely desired result of the TPP is to put greater distance between the governed and those who govern,” warned Senator Sessions. “It puts those who make the rules out of reach of those who live under them.” Is not resistance to this same type of tyrannical elitism what the Brexit revolt was all about?
Although the official text of the TTIP is still secret, the parts that have leaked out confirm that it shares all the same subversive features of the TPP. That is what one would expect, since virtually all of the key individuals crafting the TTIP and TPP are members of the shadowy world government organizations that put together the scheme for the United Nations and EU following World War II: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the United States and the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) in England. These one-worlders have repeatedly stated their intentions of using regional integration schemes as steppingstones to global integration and governance under the United Nations and the World Trade Organization.
In 1994, high-level UN poohbah Robert Muller declared: “I hope that more regional communities will be created, following the example of the European Union, so that the UN can be transformed soon into a true World Union.” Muller, who for 40 years held the post of assistant secretary-general of the UN, was also creator of the UN’s World Core Curriculum and chancellor of the UN’s University for Peace. Muller praised regional blocs such as the EU as “a great hope for peace and building blocks for the World Community or Union.”
The experience of the British people under the EU provides us with fair warning; we ignore it at our own grave peril. We would be wise to strike a pre-emptive “Amexit” blow against the TTIP and TPP and shoot them both down in Congress before they can get their feet in the door. And then we must bring about an Amexit from the UN, the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, and all other regional building blocks of the globalists’ envisioned “World Community or Union.”