China’s arrogance on downing U.S. Plane may set stage for MFN Trade Status Loss

By William J. Gill, President
American Coalition for Competitive Trade, Inc.

President George W. Bush carried Bill Clinton’s model for merging the U. S. economy with all Latin America to the hemispheric conference of 34 heads-of- state and made an impassioned plea for them to help him ram the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) through our Congress.
Actually, Bush must get Fast Track authority to negotiate the monster treaty first. And it became clear at the Quebec summit he will elevate that to his No. 1 priority once the tax-cut bill clears the Senate.

Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade legislation, said his panel could approve Fast Track next month or in early July. Now known by the euphemism “trade-promotion authority” (TPA), it would give bush dictatorial power over the FTAA negotiating process. When the treaty is finally hammered out with the 33 other countries Congress can only vote it up or down with limited debate and no amendments. But the most critical vote will be on Fast Track debate and it is now almost certain to come up in the House and Senate by the fall.

Our ACCT coalition of 22 organizations with an aggregate membership of over 500,000 citizens, plus other patriotic, agricultural, labor and environmental groups, educated enough people on the dangers of Fast Track to defeat it in the House 243-to-180 in 1998, thus slowing the globalist march into world government.

This time, with both the AFL-CIO’s John Sweeney and House Democrat leader Richard Gephardt wavering on the issue, ACCT must mount an even more extensive educational campaign if Fast Track is to be defeated ...again.

Further evidence of the Democrat Congressional leadership’s willingness to sell out American workers, farmers and our national sovereignty came in the wake of Quebec summit. Senate minority leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), was quoted as saying, “Fast Track trade authority is a real possibility so long as it recognizes other elements (i.e., labor and environmental concerns) we have to take into account. I have always expressed a willingness to provide the president — any president — with Fast Track and I’m hopeful we can do it again.”

The last time Congress granted it was to the first President George Bush in 1991 and that is what gave us the disastrous NAFTA treaty in 1993 and the GATT treaty that produced the World Trade Organization (WTO) one year later. ACCT was the very first to sound the alarm and if it had been heeded with sufficient funds for expanded education on NAFTA and GATT/WTO they would have been defeated. A change of 18 House votes would have killed NAFTA!

All contributors to ACCT this month will receive our April 1991 newsletter, “Mexican Roulette,” which revealed the primary motive behind NAFTA — “to enable those (Latin American countries) to pay off, or at a minimum, service the hundreds of millions of debt dollars they owe U.S. banks.” This was admitted at a Senate hearing presided over by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) on the 1991 Fast Track that I Attended. The revealing confession was made by David Mulford, then Under Secretary of the Treasury, and prime mover for NAFTA and GATT/WTO in the Bush I administration. Lest we forget: George Bush I signed NAFTA and passed it on to Bill Clinton to ram through Congress. Our Mexican Roulette newsletter is worth a careful read to find what is really behind globalism’s suicidal drive into world government.

George II Bush is, tragically, just as fanatically devoted to “free” trade as his father. Do either of them realize the price we must ultimately pay for this is America’s sovereignty? I doubt it. In spite of all the evidence of what NAFTA and the WTO and our trade policy generally have done to hollow out the U.S. economy and our defense industrial base, the Bushes remain committed to what Bill Buckley once confessed to me in a letter is his Free Trade “theology.” It is, quite obviously, the Bush theology too. Ironically, this blind faith of otherwise sensible conservatives in free trade was once shared and promoted by Karl Marx who know it would destroy the sovereignty of all nations and hand their governments over to the One World Communist state Marx envisioned.

The present President Bush, after signing the Free Trade Area of the Americas declaration in Quebec City April 22, had this to say about his quest for America’s merger with Latin America:
“We have a choice to make. We can combine in a common market so we can compete in the long term with the Far East and Europe. Or we can go on our own. Going on our own is not the right way. Combining in a market on our own hemisphere government and its armed forces dependent upon Japan, Germany and a host of others for key components in our high-tech military planes, ships and submarines? Or upon communist China for the black berets U.S. Army soldiers will all soon be wearing?

Moreover, at the Quebec Summit,. George Bush and the 33 other heads-of-state proudly signed a “democracy clause” of their declaration. It stated: “The values and practices of democracy are fundamental to the advancement of all our objectives.” A veteran ACCT member in Texas, on reading this called to ask the pertinent question, “What about China?” My response was “When it comes to trade with China democracy and all human rights are just waved away.” By the same people who signed the Quebec Summit Declaration!

AAM is a part of the American Coalition for Competitive Trade. They are changing their name to Americans for Trade Defense. They do oppose PNT with China.