The Perils of NAFTA

Free Trade and the Continued Deindustrialization of the United States

President Clinton has taken it upon himself to champion the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In so doing, he is completing President Bush's "domestic agenda," and continuing the process of the deindustrialization of the United States fostered by Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush.

During the administrations of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the United States was reaping the rewards of its favored position as the champion of the free-world. World War II had been brought to a successful conclusion. The Marshall Plan was fabulously successful and the United States was well on its way to becoming the richest most successful democracy in the history of the world. The post-World War II GI Bill had produced the most aggressively successful socially upper movement in the history of mankind and the distribution of the nation's new wealth, caused not by economic theory or welfare or subsidy payments, but by improved education—higher education—and hard work moved in of substantial portion, not to the top 1/2 to 1 percent of the population where it normally would have gone but to the middle class. The proportion of the nation's wealth held by the supperrich changed from about 36% of the total to about 17%; a 19% change representing about 6.84 trillion dollars. The middle class was by almost 7 trillon dollars. The dollar was at the highest value it ever was and ordinary citizens were improving their standard of living by leaps and bounds. Home ownership soared, new cars abounded, the nation's debt was trivial and there were budget surpluses. The Soviet threat was at it greatest as evidenced by the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the defense budget was reasonable.

In the ensuing years the United States dissipated its economic and strategic advantages. It has become the most indebted nation in history. Its infrastructure and its industrial and education system is in shambles with employment increasing and the standard of living declining daily. The veterans of World War II could look forward to a brilliant future and could hope for even better things for their children. We are now living through the greatest crisis of broken promises and broken dreams in the history of our great republic courtesy of supply side-trickle down economics. The Founders and the Framers would be in tears if they could see what has been done with their legacy. The grinches stole the American Dream.

The downward spiral of America's fortunes begins with the Vietnam War. President Nixon won his first election for president based in part on his vow to end the war. It was ended all right, seven needless years and considerable wasted treasure later. Nixon allowed Japanese dumping and allowed the destruction of the consumer electronics industry. The Reagan decade of the 1980s saw mass carnage as corporation after corporation was dismantled—liquidated—and sold for its parts. Business and industry in the United States was disintegrated in the name of greed. Reagan was a union basher and unleashed vicious antilabor activities, Reagan tried valiantly to dismantle the social programs of the Federal government. President Reagan was to make abundant use of the OMB, OPM, and SES to wreak havoc in Federal programs with which he disagreed. His stewardship was to treat the Federal government as if he had won it in a crap game.

President Bush did not have a visible domestic, program. He touted himself as a foreign policy expert and he staged managed one of the most theatrical wars in the history of the planet. The object of his wrath, Saddem Hussain, the President of Iraq, is still in power. Bush's approval rating went to an astronomical 91% in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War. Bush lost his bid for reelection because the people of wanted a change that he could not or would not see. But if Preident Clinton is successful in getting Congressional approval for NAFTA he will have furthered the Reagan-Bush agenda for the deindustrialization of the United States. Bush had no domestic policy. It was business as usual in a continuation of the Reagan policies. His domestic program policy is contained in NAFTA and the Uraguay Round of GATT.

I have been in favor of improving relations with Mexico for many years. I would of be happy to see the border between Mexico and the United States opened up in the same way our border is open with Canada. We had an open border with Canada decades before we had a free trade agreement with them. There is nothing wrong with either Canadians or Mexicans crossing the American border in search of employment or higher wages, which they promptly take home to our mutual advantage, since employment for ordinary citizens is the best form of foreign assistance. It is free of the graft and corruption found in ordinary foreign assistance where only a small fraction of the money may go to the people who need it and the rest goes into the pockets of politicians along the way. If we really want free trade with Mexico, why not open the border first? We could issue them green cards as of they cross the border. We need a free trade agreement but one that is to the benefit of the citizens sovereign of both the United States and Mexico. We don't need and should not want the present agreement.

The North American Free Trade Agreement has three major parts aside from lowering or eliminating tariffs which will cost the treasury $500,000,000.

• NAFTA will permit the free movement of large amounts of capital (money) within the free trade zone. Capital shifts to Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor will be matter of fact. This provision of NAFTA will be a great boon to the drug cartels since it will give them more options for moving the billions they make in the United States to Colombia and will aid them in establishing their own banking network.

• NAFTA will freeze labor relations in the U.S. and Mexico in their present state of disarray (U.S.) and embryonic development (Mexico) respectively. U.S. corporations will be more at liberty to move factories to Mexico to take advantage of the cheap labor and lax or absent environmental standards, where palm greasing and political payoff will become increasingly important. Mexico is a one party state which has yet to assume the mantle of a democratic republic. The President of Mexico has a dictatorial control over labor relations in Mexico and nothing in the treaty or its side agreements will change that. The NAFTA condemns Mexican workers to be second class citizens—industrial serfs—who can not afford to buy the goods they produce, nor will they be able in the foreseeable future. It also condemns American Workers to compete with Mexican workers in a falling American standard of living. The great American dream will go South with NAFTA, not to be realized by Mexican or American workers but by industrialists who will see their margins increase because they have a large captive and disadvantaged labor pool in Mexico, which in turn will produce a large disadvantaged labor pool of unemployed or underemployed workers in the United States. As a nation, we have for generations pitted poor blacks against poor whites to depress our domestic labor market. NAFTA would add poor Mexicans to the mix and continue the nationally disgraceful and destructive labor relations that began with slavery, moved on to the Jim Crow laws and the assassination of presidents and continues with a totally sense less titanic public debt and the deindustrialization of the United States.

• NAFTA provides for tribunals for the adjudication of disputes among the nations covered of by the treaty. Since these tribunals of are part of the treaty they are above and immune from United States or Mexican law. Article VI Section 2 of the United States Constitution states:

  "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

  The tribunals of NAFTA would not be open to public scrutiny. The tribunals would act as completely independent organs of decision making authority outside the scope of U.S. law with essentially no oversight. Laws of the Congress could be nullifled if they conflicted with NAFTA regardless of express or implied benefits.

The real question is: For whose benefit are treaties made with foreign governments? Treaties are made under the provisions of the Constitution. The Constitution expresses the will of We The People. The Preamble to the Constitution clearly states the purposes and intent of that will to wit:

We the People of the United States, in Order to

• form a more perfect Union,

• establish Justice,

• insure domestic Tranquility,

• provide for the common defence,

• promote the general Welfare,

• and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Can a treaty which may well exacerbate labor relations in the United States for decades to come; which will accelerate the shift of manufacturing to Mexico solely to take advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental laws; which may give a big boost to the Colombian drug cartel by assisting them in putting a banking system together; and which will continue to promote the deindustrialization of the United States, live up to the standards of the Preamble to the Constitution? Will NAFTA promote ecological equity and the unalienable rights? Is NAFTA what We The People need and want? The answer is a resounding no. We need a free trade agreement, but not this one.

In whose interests is the North American Free Trade Agreement being promulgated? The NAFTA is not in interest of the citizens sovereign of the United States, it is explicitly contrary to their interests, and should be defeated in the Congress. We need free trade agreements that promote and foster the enjoyment of the unalienable rights of American workers and which foster the obtaining of the unalienable rights by the workers, who are the citizens sovereign of our trading partners, our trading partners being nations and not persons. Trade treaties should not be a license to exploit at the expense of the unalienable rights and they should at the least live up to the requirements of the Preamble to our Constitution. If we ratify NAFTA, into whose hands then, are we placing the comfort, well being, and security of ourselves and, our posterity? Not our own. If we ratify NAFTA into whose hands do we place the powers of the citizens sovereign to determine what kind of government we shall have and to whom its benefits will flow? Not the citizens sovereign. This NAFTA must be defeated.

...Ted Sudia...

© Copyright 1993
Institute for domestic Tranquility