Despite the many unconstitutional provisions purportedly contained in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, the mainstream media has ignored the subject almost entirely.
A survey of television news coverage of the TPP reveals that a:
transcript search of CBS Evening News with Scott Pelly, ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer, and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams from August 1, 2013 through January 31, 2014 found no mention of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP received one mention on PBS’ Newshour, when Doug Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued that approving the TPP would improve relations with Asian nations.
The 24-hour cable news channels have been almost as silent. The report indicates that “the three largest cable networks — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News — covered the ongoing negotiations 33 times during their evening programming. The overwhelming majority of these mentions (32) originated on MSNBC and aired during The Ed Show.”
That the pro-Establishment media should ignore a threat to the Constitution is no surprise, particularly since their political patrons do likewise. The problem with the information embargo on the TPP is that there are millions of Americans who still rely on the so-called “mainstream media” for their news.
Perhaps this is the precise purpose behind the decision to keep the TPP out of the headlines and off the nightly news.
The “Fast Track” to Tyranny
Forbes reports, for example, that only President Obama can close the deal on the TPP. Part of that includes persuading Congress to “fast track” negotiation of the TPP, in the form of a Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill.
The TPA is a tool that the president demands be in the U.S. trade representative’s bag when he sits down with his colleagues from the other TPP participants. Again, from Forbes:
TPA or “fast track” is essential for the President to complete negotiations. Negotiators for our trading partners would be foolish to sign off on a treaty unless they knew that the Congress could not amend it.
And:
A TPA bill would allow the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty, said to be in its final stages, to be completed and ratified. In addition to its trade and economic benefits, TPP is the most prominent piece of the Obama “pivot to Asia,” his attempt to exercise more leadership in the area. TPP is supposed to lead the region to our version of open, reciprocal trade rather than have the region move toward the Chinese mercantilist model.
That would be a little more believable were it not for the fact that the president himself has entertained the inclusion of China in the TPP.
Obama Seeks Chinese Participation in TPP
As The New American reported, President Obama has signaled that he would entertain the idea of the Chinese communist government’s partnership in the bloc.
Now, word from Tawainese media reveals mainland China’s increasing interest in getting in on the TPP’s destruction of American economic prosperity.
After citing South Korea’s interest in joining the trade pact negotiations, the China Post reports:
Now, China is also indicating interest. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, while outlining diplomatic priorities for 2014, said that economic diplomacy would be a major focus of Chinese diplomacy in the new year and that “China will face the member states of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks with an open attitude, as well as other regional or cross-region FTA initiatives.”
President Obama’s fascination with intertwining the economic welfare of the United States with China is perhaps one reason a recent commentator called the TPP “another disaster from a proven liar.”
Perhaps it is this sinister ulterior motive that has prompted the president to steadfastly protect the secrecy that has shrouded the drafting of the TPP treaty from the beginning.
Secret Surrender of Sovereignty
In November 2013, portions of the TPP draft agreement published by WikiLeaks contained sketches of President Obama’s plans to surrender American sovereignty to international tribunals.
Another WikiLeaks disclosure in January revealed that the president was attempting to surrender sovereignty over U.S. environmental policy to international bureaucrats interested in lowering those standards to mirror those of our TPP partner nations.
U.S. copyright laws, Internet freedom, and web-based publishing would also be obliterated by the TPP, and, although it hasn’t been widely reported, the TPP would give the global government sweeping surveillance powers, as well.
Although the American people (and the people of all nations involved in the pact) are prevented from seeing or commenting on the treaty being ostensibly negotiated on their behalf, multinational corporations have seats at the trading table.
While the TPP grants corporate giants such as Walmart and Monsanto the power to bypass Congress and the courts, the elected representatives of the American people are kept from even seeing the draft version of the agreement.
As with the multitude of similar trade pacts the United States has formed, the ultimate aim of the TPP is the creation of a regional super government, thus the stonewalling of federal lawmakers who dare seek to assert some sort of oversight.
Economic and Political Integration as a Step Toward Global Government
In the case of the TPP, the zone would be called the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). Members of the proposed “free trade” bloc include all the current TPP participants: Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Canada, and the United States. The regional trading partnership is intended to establish “a comprehensive free trade agreement across the region.”
The ultimate goal of the TPP isn’t just the creation of an FTAAP, though. Supporters of the deal insist that the TPP is a “trade agreement designed to achieve broad liberalization and a high degree of economic integration among the parties.”
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 country and our states into no more than subordinate outposts of a one-world government.
In an article examining the devastating effects of the TPP, William Jasper, senior editor 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.
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.
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.
If television news has its way, however, millions of Americans whose lives will be substantially changed by the TPP will never hear a word about it.
Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues. He is the co-founder of Liberty Rising, an educational endeavor aimed at promoting and preserving the Constitution. Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected].
