The globalists won again.
Even as it began the ridiculous impeachment trial of President Trump, the U.S. Senate passed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the long-awaited replacement for NAFTA, the failed North American Free Trade Agreement.
Of course, the only people long-awaiting it were the global elites who would further ensnare American citizens and businesses in a complex web of rules and laws administered by an unaccountable global bureaucracy.
The vote to continue eroding American sovereignty was 89-10. Of the 10, just one Republican, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, voted against the bill. And he did so for the wrong reason.
GOP backers are calling it a victory for the president. Problem is, it’s not a victory of Americans or the rule of American law.
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Good News?
GOP backers of the plan who should know better, the Washington Post reported, called the vote “good news for the U.S. economy and workers, pointing to initial projections from the International Trade Commission that it will add 176,000 U.S. jobs — although that amounts to increasing employment by just 0.12 percent, a modest impact on the nearly $21 trillion U.S. economy.”
Trump repeatedly attacked NAFTA, the quarter-century old trade pact that USMCA replaces, on the grounds that it harmed Americans, then sold the latter as a deal that protects them.
Problem is, the same pack of ruling-class elites who gave us NAFTA gave us USMCA. As The New American reported in October 2018, citing the Huffington Post, “at least half of the men and women standing behind Trump during his Rose Garden ceremony praising the new deal were the same career service staff who negotiated nearly identical provisions in [the Trans-Pacific Partnership], which Trump had railed against.”
A former Obama trade official crowed that it was the “same [deal] with a new name.”
Hard-left Democrats voted against the bill on environmental grounds — “it does not address climate change, the greatest threat facing the planet,” New York’s Chuck Schumer said — and Toomey claimed it is “a badly flawed agreement, an agreement that restricts trade rather than expanding trade.”
Toomey said likewise on CNBC last month.
The Real Problem
Whatever USMCA’s pros and cons with respect to trade or unemployment numbers, the John Birch Society’s objections are rather more to the point.
As TNA reported when the agreement began moving forward, USMCA creates a massive 16-committee Free Trade Commission to manage agriculture, transportation, financial services, telecommunications, and intellectual property rights.
That unaccountable body, which lies beyond the control of American voters and elected representatives, can alter the agreement, including tariffs, without the consent of Congress, which trespasses the U.S. Constitution. In other words, the Senate just voted to undermine its own authority and prerogatives granted in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”
As well, JBS has noted, “Consistent with other globalist schemes, the USMCA follows the ‘rules-based system’ of submission to international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, International Labor Organization, a plethora of United Nations conventions including the Law of the Sea Treaty (which the U.S. has never ratified), and the furtherance of ‘sustainable development,’ which is mentioned no less than six times in the environment chapter.”
The trade pact is another step forward to a North American Union similar to the European Union that is now falling apart for myriad reasons, not least the Brexit movement begun by British patriots who do not want their sovereignty wiped away in an amalgamation with mainland Europe.
Attacks the States
The globalists pushing for a North American Union can use USMCA to override laws passed in the 50 states, as TNA observed when the House passed the bill last month.
“No State law, or the application thereof,” Section 102 says, “may be declared invalid as to any person or circumstance on the ground that the provision or application is inconsistent with the USMCA, except in an action brought by the United States for the purpose of declaring such law or application invalid.”
“In other words,” we noted, Section 102 invites “the federal government to sue states to overturn their laws that conflict with the USMCA. Turning federalism upside down, this language would virtually transform the federal government into an enforcer against the states on behalf of the regional integration scheme.”
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
