The Toronto Star, Canada’s highest circulation and openly progressive newspaper, admitted on Wednesday, “It’s time to end the Charade and walk away from NAFTA.” That matches the position of the Americanist educational group The John Birch Society, which has been pushing to get us out of NAFTA for years.
And for the same reason: the contentious Chapter 19, the “dispute resolution” part of NAFTA that allows unelected third-party bureaucrats to determine just when the parties to the agreement are in violation of it. Canadian officials want to keep it and even strengthen it if possible, while President Trump wants to eliminate it altogether. Canada’s ambassador to the United States, David MacNaughton, was very public about the offending and contentious Chapter 19:
If you can’t resolve disputes in a fair and balanced way, then what’s the use of the agreement? If you can’t have some curb on the arbitrary use of tariffs [by President Donald Trump] under the guise of national security — then I don’t think it’s much of an agreement.
There, in as succinct a statement as is likely to be found in all the discussion over NAFTA and NAFTA 2.0, is what differentiates Canada (and all other countries on the planet, for that matter) from the United States. The Constitution created a republic limiting the powers of the central government to certain specific duties, one of them being the power of the Congress to apply tariffs. The president is free to negotiate agreements with foreign countries, but the Congress has the final say. MacNaughton wants NAFTA to override the U.S. Constitution, with unelected bureaucrats determining the legality of those congressionally approved tariffs.
In other words, MacNaughton is a socialist, and supports the idea of a supra-national body dictating to once-sovereign nations their national trade policies.
The Star got it exactly right:
The [Canadian] ambassador was referring to two major points of contention in the talks between Canada and the U.S. The first is whether there should be some kind of independent [supra-national] system for resolving disputes. Canada wants to stick with the existing … Chapter 19 provisions. The U.S. wants to scrap them.
The second is U.S. President Donald Trump’s insistence on being able to override any trade deal — including NAFTA — for reasons of “national security.”
The paper thinks Chapter 19 can be salvaged so that Canada can be part of NAFTA 2.0 (the text of which is scheduled to be released over the weekend, perhaps as soon as today). Wrote the paper:
The dispute resolution impasse could be finessed. The existing Chapter 19 provision is already weak. It requires only that independent [there’s that word again] panels determine whether each country is adhering to its own trade laws….
In short, there is probably a way to weaken Chapter 19 further, without eliminating it entirely. That would give the U.S. what it wants without embarrassing the Canadian government too much.
But if Trump insists on keeping intact the U.S. national security loophole [approved by Congress in the original agreement], as he almost certainly will, there is simply no point to NAFTA.
That’s why CFR member and globalist Robert Lighthizer, the current U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), is in such a hurry to get the present deal with Mexico completed: A half a loaf is better than none. What’s missing from NAFTA 2.0 can be negotiated into it later when no one is looking. As Lighthizer said:
If we push [NAFTA 2.0] beyond [September 30] then we have a new negotiation with Lopez Obrador [Mexico’s new president who takes office on December 1] and we don’t know where that would go at all.
Besides, said the globalist, it would be unfair to various interested parties to have to start all over again. Again, half a loaf is better than none:
It would be unfair to all the people that have been involved, certainly the U.S. workers, farmers and ranchers, to start a new negotiation with a new president of Mexico.
It would also be unfair, and dangerous, to have to restart negotiations all over again, as it would take time, and time is running out for Lighthizer and the globalists salivating over the new NAFTA. The John Birch society’s project, “Get US Out! of NAFTA” would have more time to educate citizens about the incipient dangers of the new NAFTA, even if Chapter 19 were watered down in order to get it past President Trump. The Society has compared the original NAFTA, called NAFTA NOW, to the new NAFTA, called NAFTA RENEGOTIATED (again, textual details to be announced shortly):
Under NAFTA NOW, the U.S. has seen nearly a million jobs exported, its manufacturing base decimated, and the establishment of (courtesy Chapter 19) a NAFTA court overriding U.S. laws and courts.
Under NAFTA RENEGOTIATED, it’s likely that there will be a further “leveling” of Mexican and U.S. economies, more unelected foreign bureaucrats regulating American businesses and their owners much more aggressively, and the eventual merger of police and military forces for the U.S. and Mexico, with Canada to be added shortly.
The reader may be assured that when the final text of NAFTA 2.0 is made available, activists working on The John Birch Society’s project will sift, sort, winnow, and declaim any and all attempts they might find in it that keeps even a watered down version of Chapter 19 in it. The John Birch Society opposes NAFTA in any form that maintains it under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) or that retains any structures for North American integration. As Christian Gomez wrote in The New American (a wholly owned subsidiary of The John Birch Society):
In the name of freeing world trade, or in this case freeing North American trade, NAFTA’s true purpose is the establishment of a new world order. And for this reason alone, Congress should Get U.S. Out! of NAFTA, rather than renegotiating it, especially considering how the Left wants to use it to further advance their socialist agenda.
Image of NAFTA logo: Wikimedia
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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