At this week’s “Three Amigos” summit, the leaders of the United States, Canada, and Mexico vowed to stay the course of more international environmental controls, more open borders, and more entangling trade alliances with the rest of the world — no matter what a majority of their citizens might want. With the twin specters of the Trump campaign in the United States and the Brexit vote in the U.K. brooding over the proceedings, President Obama, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, and Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto delivered a stinging rebuke to the misguided little people in their respective constituencies who dare to hope for a return to free market capitalism, sensible border controls, and national self-determination.
In a rambling joint “Statement on a North American Climate, Clean Energy, and Environment Partnership,” the Three Amigos pledged, among other things, to:
“[Scale] up clean energy through aggressive domestic initiatives and policies.” (Translation: “Saddle private enterprise with reams of new environmentally-motivated regulations, to encourage the use of less efficient but politically-correct forms of energy, such as solar and wind power.”)
“[Enhance] trilateral collaboration on greening of government initiatives including the purchase of more efficient products, cleaner power, and clean vehicles.” (Translation: “Saddle private enterprise with reams of new environmentally-motivated regulations, to encourage the use of less efficient but politically-correct forms of energy, such as solar and wind power.” [Is there an echo?])
“[Strengthen] and [align] efficiency standards across all three countries, facilitating the seamless movement of products, reducing pollution, and cutting costs for consumers. We commit to promote industrial and commercial efficiency through the voluntary ISO 50001 energy performance standard and to align a total of ten energy efficiency standards or test procedures for equipment by the end of 2019.” (Translation: “Saddle private enterprise….” Okay, you get the idea.)
Afterwards, an ebullient Justin Trudeau described the new environmental protocol in alarmingly specific terms:
Together, we will advance clean and secure energy with the goal of 50 percent clean power generation across the continent by 2025. We will drive down short-lived climate pollutants — things like methane, black carbon, and hydrofluorocarbons. We will promote clean and efficient transportation, creating clean jobs as we reduce energy consumption, air pollution, and greenhouse gases. We will work together to protect nature and to advance our scientific understanding of the environmental challenges we share. And finally, we will respond directly and decisively to the challenge of climate change, working to make our own countries more resilient as we encourage others to do the same.
In addition, all three leaders pledged to keep fighting to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) ratified by their respective legislatures. The TPP, after all, is the latest free trade agreement, ostensibly designed to create a regime of free trade and open borders with several large Asian countries, including Muslim Malaysia and Brunei. What could possibly go wrong?
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After the summit ended, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s young Visionary Leader, beloved of the international liberal set, introduced President Obama to Canada’s Parliament in a jaunty address that included a defense of Canada’s decision to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees. Not to be outdone by his Canadian counterpart, President Obama used his platform to rail against the Trump campaign, while coyly avoiding calling Donald Trump — who was campaigning only a few hundred miles away in Maine — by name. “The politics that scapegoats others, the immigrant, the refugee, someone who seems different than us, we have to call what this mentality is,” Obama thundered. “A threat to the values that we profess … we have to stand up to the slander and the hate.”
At the conclusion of his address, giddy Canadian lawmakers broke into a spontaneous chant of “Four more years!” It would appear that the disconnect between citizens and their elected representatives is just as wide north of the border — where people are no more interested in being dragged into a forced union of the three countries than are Americans.
The latest NAFTA summit is yet another dreary reminder of what the Europeans — and the British in particular — already know too well: There is nothing more costly than “free” trade.
Photo: AP Images
