The 12 countries involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade group reportedly plan to hammer out an agreement on tariffs during meetings in Washington to be held September 20-23.
Although the American people (and the people of all nations involved in the pact) are prevented from participating or even watching the various rounds of meetings, global multi-nationals Monsanto and Walmart are helping draft the agreement.
The ultimate aim of the TPP is the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). Members of the proposed “free trade” bloc include Japan, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. The regional trading partnership is intended to establish “a comprehensive free trade agreement across the region.”
An article in the Georgetown Journal of International Law says that the TPP negotiations “are designed to culminate in a ‘gold standard’ free trade agreement (FTA).” The article continues:
The TPP negotiations are among the more recent of a large number of FTAs and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) that have been or are being negotiated between the member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Since the APEC Leaders’ Bogor Declaration in November 1994, the member economies have been committed on some level to the objective of achieving an environment for “free and open” trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region.
In the argot of globalism, “free and open trade” translates as “economic and political integration.” Later in the Georgetown piece, former U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Ron Kirk is quoted as calling for the TPP to be “more than a broad concept.”
Additional evidence of the “ambitious” goal of the TPP discussions is found in a press release issued by representatives of the member nations attending an APEC meeting in Honolulu in 2011:
We are delighted to have achieved this milestone in our common vision to establish a comprehensive, next-generation regional agreement that liberalizes trade and investment and addresses new and traditional trade issues and 21st-century challenges. We are confident that this agreement will be a model for ambition for other free trade agreements in the future.
In fact, the authors of the Georgetown review state that the ultimate goal of the TPP isn’t just the creation of an FTAAP. They insist that the TPP is a “trade agreement designed to achieve broad liberalization and a high degree of economic integration among the parties.” There’s that word “integration” again.
At the G20 Leading Economies Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico, former USTR Kirk announced that Mexico would soon join the TPP. At a press conference after that announcement, former Mexican President Felipe Calderón described the the TPP as “one of the free trade initiatives that’s most ambitious in the world” and one that would “foster integration of the Asia Pacific region, one of the regions with the greatest dynamism in the world.”
Integration is a word that is painful to the ears of constitutionalists and those unwilling to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a committee of globalists who are unelected by the American people and unaccountable to them. Integration is an internationalist tool for subordinating American law to the globalist bureaucracy at the United Nations. Economic and political integration will push the once independent United States of America into yet another collectivist bloc that will facilitate the complete dissolution of our nation and our states into no more than impotent members of a one-world government.
In a recent article, William Jasper of The New American identified the end game for these globalists and their secretly planned trade pacts. Wrote Jasper:
The architects and promoters of the TPP and FTAAP frequently point with admiration to the “integration” process of the European Union (EU) as the model they would like to see implemented for the Asia-Pacific rim nations. As with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been designed to follow the EU example of relentless widening and deepening, constantly eroding national sovereignty, while building “transnational governance” that is not restrained by the checks and balances of national constitutions.
It’s the secrecy that most loudly condemns the TPP and the coalition of corporate and government negotiators that travel the world meeting behind closed doors. As one commentator recently noted, “Not only is public input not welcome, but even the pretence [sic] of public participation has been lifted. Despite the lack of transparency, some documents have been leaked, and the ‘omissions’ revealed speak loudly to the conspiratorial nature of the ‘partnership.'”
Equally significant is that 600 industry lobbyists and “advisors,” as well as unelected trade representatives, are at the table, while representatives from the public at large and businesses other than huge monopolies, are conspicuously absent.
Each of the “partners” to the pact, including foreign corporations, would be exempted from abiding by American laws governing trade disputes. Moreover, the sovereignty of the United States and the Constitution’s enumeration of powers would once again be sacrificed on the altar of global government by subordinating U.S. laws passed by duly elected representatives of the people to a code of regulations created by a team of transnational bureaucrats.
If you’re as fond of NAFTA and what it did for our economy and our sovereignty as Mexico and Canada are, then you’ll love what the TPP has in store.
In June, recently sworn-in USTR Michael Froman met with NAFTA and TPP partner, Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast, and the pair reaffirmed their commitment to concluding the TPP this year and mapped out plans for doing so.
In June 2012, portions of the TPP draft agreement that were leaked to the Internet contained sketches of President Obama’s plans to surrender American sovereignty to international tribunals. This is just one of many frightening provisions of the TPP that are being negotiated in secret by American and international trade representatives.
U.S. copyright laws, Internet freedom, and web-based publishing would all be obliterated by the TPP, and the global government would be granted sweeping surveillance powers, as well.
Americans who study the subject realize that the redrawing of national boundaries and domestic legal processes being carried out in secret by the globalists sitting around the TPP negotiating table is an attack on American laws, American courts, American freedom of expression, American sovereignty, and the American Constitution.
While Walmart and Monsanto are given a seat at the table, the elected representatives of the American people are shut out.
Last year, Zach Carter of the online Huffington Post reported that Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness, was stonewalled by the office of the USTR when he attempted to see any of the draft documents related to the governance of the TPP.
In response to this rebuff, Wyden proposed a measure in the Senate that would force transparency on the process. That was enough to convince the USTR to grant the senator a peek at the documents, though his staff was not permitted to peruse them.
Wyden spokeswoman Jennifer Hoelzer told HuffPost that such accommodations were “better than nothing” — but not ideal in light of the fact that the real work of drafting and evaluating legislation on Capitol Hill is performed by staffers who often possess expertise in particular areas of domestic and foreign policy.
“I would point out how insulting it is for them to argue that members of Congress are to personally go over to USTR to view the trade documents,” Hoelzer said. “An advisor at Halliburton or the MPAA is given a password that allows him or her to go on the USTR website and view the TPP agreement anytime he or she wants.”
A senator of the United States has to beg and plead and threaten legislation in order to be able to gain access to the TPP trade agreement, but corporate interests are given a password by the USTR that grants them a priori access to those same documents.
Nonetheless, the TPP cannot have these bad effects on America unless Congress approves a final TPP agreement. However, if the American people do not rise up in firm opposition to the TPP and convince Congress to tear down the wall of secrecy built by globalists and their corporate backers seeking to shield their attack on our law and liberty from congressional oversight, and ultimately to reject any TPP agreement, then an approved TPP might finish the integration — economic and political — begun by NAFTA and it may be the last straw in the already weakened broom of American sovereignty.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels frequently nationwide speaking on topics of nullification, the NDAA, and the surveillance state. He can be reached at [email protected]
