U.S. Trade Representative Seeks to Expand and Empower NAFTA

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Americans, beware — globalists in Congress and burrowed inside the Trump administration are plotting to double down on the economy-crushing, sovereignty-stealing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). At least, that is their plan, if they think Trump and the American people will let them get away with it.

Last month, after talking by phone with his Mexican and Canadian counterparts, President Donald Trump decided not to withdraw from NAFTA yet. Then, last week, the U.S. Trade Representative formally notified Congress that the administration intends to re-negotiate and “modernize” the controversial “free-trade” regime. It is being painted as a fulfillment of Trump’s campaign promises. However, all of the available evidence so far indicates that this portrayal is highly deceptive at best. Although Trump did not explicitly call for terminating NAFTA, he repeatedly expressed his anathema toward the agreement.

On the campaign trail, Trump slammed NAFTA as among the worst trade deals in the history of the world. “I’m going to rip up those trade deals,” Trump said on a campaign stop in Maine during the primary season. Separately, speaking on NAFTA in particular, he said it is “the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country.”

Before that, Trump indicated that he understood how much suffering the scheme had unleashed. “I see the carnage that NAFTA has caused, I see the carnage,” Trump said in early August in North Carolina. “It’s been horrible. I see upstate New York, I see North Carolina, but I see every state. You look at New England. New England got really whacked. New England got hit.”

However, rather than ripping it up, as Trump indicated he would do while campaigning, there is now a very real prospect that the re-negotiation could end up making the scheme even worse — especially on the undermining of national sovereignty and self-government. That much is clear from the statements of top officials and swamp creatures within the administration.

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Indeed, globalists, including some working within the Trump administration, are already scheming to further empower the transnational courts, bureaucracies, and regulations created under NAFTA. They are also plotting to drastically expand the sectors of the economy and government covered under the transnational scheme.

The globalist-establishment swamp known as the Council on Foreign Relations, which markets the subversive agenda to merge the United States with Mexico and Canada as a bid to build a “North American Community,” is leading the charge — and it has its members strategically placed throughout the Trump administration. But Americans are getting active, and can still stop the globalist plan to further expand the worst elements of NAFTA. All that is needed is public scrutiny and the plot will collapse, along with the schemers themselves. And the evidence is all there for anyone to examine.

In a letter dated May 18 addressed to congressional leaders, U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer outlined the plot to drastically expand the controversial “free trade” regime. Among other changes, Lighthizer suggested that the updated NAFTA would encompass a broad range of subjects and economic sectors that were previously not covered. Those include intellectual property rights, government regulatory practices, state-owned enterprises, services, customs procedures, sanity measures, labor, environment, small businesses, and more.

“In particular, we note that NAFTA was negotiated 25 years ago, and while our economy and businesses have changed considerably during that period, NAFTA has not,” wrote Lighthizer in the letter. “Moreover, establishing effective implementation and aggressive enforcement of the commitments … under our trade agreements is vital to the success of those agreements and should be improved in the context of NAFTA.”

In other words, if the scheme gets through, be prepared for North American institutions — including the NAFTA “courts” that already purport to overrule American courts and the American people’s elected representatives — to get sharper “teeth” and more powerful jaws. Already, a wide array of NAFTA bureaucracies, tribunals, and other entities claim the power to make decisions for Americans. Under the “modernized” NAFTA envisioned by Lighthizer, that will get even worse.

And yet, Lighthizer had the gall to paint his scheming as the fulfillment of Trump’s anti-NAFTA campaign pledges. “Today, President Trump fulfilled one of his key promises to the American people. For years, politicians have called for the renegotiation of this agreement, but President Trump is the first to follow through with that promise,” said Ambassador Lighthizer in a statement. “USTR will now continue consultations with Congress and American stakeholders to create an agreement that advances the interests of America’s workers, farmers, ranchers, and businesses.”

Of course, the warning signs surrounding the real agenda are written all over the plot. But perhaps one of the most brazen signs that something is very wrong is the fact that the USTR, Lighthizer, is himself a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which has been a leading driver of the North American “integration” agenda from the start. And according to whistleblowers who have left the extremist CFR organization in disgust, its agenda is literally the exact opposite of what Trump promised on the campaign trail.

The late U.S. Admiral Chester Ward, for example, who served as the Judge Advocate of the U.S. Navy, was a CFR member for 16 years before resigning in horror. “In the entire CFR lexicon, there is no term of revulsion carrying a meaning so deep as America First,” said Admiral Ward. Of course, Trump’s campaign platform can be summarized with the two words “America First,” so Ward’s comments on the CFR shed light on why the group would be entirely hostile to Trump’s pro-America, anti-establishment promises.

But it’s even worse than that. “The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence, and submergence into an all-powerful one-world government,” the admiral warned, adding that “this lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of the membership.” In other words, not everyone in the CFR is a fanatical globalist determined to sell out America’s sovereignty, but most are. And from his own comments, it seems clear that Lighthizer falls into that category.

As this magazine and numerous other sources have documented repeatedly, the same exact process being used by the CFR in North America to subvert national sovereignty was pioneered across the Atlantic to foist the European Union on the formerly sovereign nations and peoples of Europe. First, it was supposedly just a “free trade” agreement with transnational institutions. Now, generations and many lies later, its a full-blown superstate that has usurped power over every aspect of life, leaving national governments as mere administrative units to implement its never-ending deluge of bureaucratic decrees.

But in America, opposition is just gearing up to fight back. One of the conservative organizations already getting to work on getting the U.S. government completely out of NAFTA is the constitutionalist John Birch Society. The nationwide group, which has grassroots activists and chapters in all 50 states and played a key role derailing George W. Bush- and Obama-era schemes to “integrate” North America along the lines of what was imposed on Europe, distributed over one million copies of a 2006 special issue of this magazine exposing the plot.

That was wildly successful, forcing the globalists to back down — for a time. In fact, CFR operative Robert Pastor, the outfit’s lead man on the North America project, blamed the Birch Society for scuttling his plot. But now the globalist swamp is back at it again. And so, the Society is asking members and other supporters of self-government and independence to get involved in the fight to preserve U.S. independence and constitutional government by exiting NAFTA altogether.

“On April 27 President Trump announced he had decided to renegotiate NAFTA rather than withdraw,” the John Birch Society, which publishes this magazine, said in a legislative action alert. “What had happened is that President Trump had run smack-dab into one of the internationalist establishment’s most important steppingstones towards world government, the North American Union (NAU). The NAFTA agreement represents the foundation of the eventual NAU, a supranational governmental entity that would be comprised of the three formerly sovereign nations, the United States, Canada, and Mexico.”

Indeed, even official U.S. embassy documents released by WikiLeaks confirmed that subversive elements of the U.S. government were secretly plotting with their Mexican and Canadian counterparts to bypass national constitutions and impose a North American Union on the continent. Among other schemes, the NAU, as outlined in official documents, was eventually expected to include a euro-style continental currency, a continental “security perimeter,” transnational bureaucracies, and more. Former Mexican President Vicente Fox even touted a North American “Parliament.”

JBS, then, is working to crush NAFTA with a U.S. exit, in order to destroy the foundation from with the NAU would spring. “What’s needed to counteract these plans for a North American Union is for the U.S. to withdraw from NAFTA,” the legislative action alert declared. “Just as the UK is restoring its national independence with its Brexit from the European Union, we need to restore U.S. independence with an Amexit from NAFTA, the foundation of the developing NAU.”

Even the alleged “free trade” rhetoric is a fraud. Legendary free-market economist Murray Rothbard, for example, who once wrote articles for this magazine, blasted NAFTA. “It’s worse than open socialism; for it’s internationalist socialism camouflaged in the fair clothing of freedom and free markets,” he wrote, calling the agreement “government-directed, government-negotiated trade, which is mercantilism, not free trade.” And of course, true free-trade advocates also correctly point out that the thousands of pages of regulations making up the agreements should hardly be considered examples of genuine free trade.

Patriotic Americans who support U.S. prosperity and independence have a historic opportunity to kill NAFTA. Trump has indicated that such a move is still on the table. And assuming he genuinely believes his campaign promises, he would likely be incredibly hostile to having his own officials try to dupe him into supporting a NAFTA-empowerment scheme. Members of Congress who live in districts carried by Trump —the majority of them — would also be wise to reject any plan to supersize NAFTA. But for the American people to win this fight, the time for patriotic citizens and business owners to get active is now.

Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. He can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.