Under Bill Clinton (a CFR member who selected 12 CFR members for his cabinet), the United States enacted NAFTA, an economic alliance with Mexico and Canada. This arrangement was created by the establishment, not by the American people, who did not suspect the game being played on them. Not only did NAFTA swamp us with cheap, job-destroying imports, but it was designed to be the foundation for a continental economic union leading to political union. Robert Pastor (CFR), a key architect of North American integration, acknowledged in the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs:
“NAFTA was merely the first draft of an economic constitution for North America.”
And Andrew Reding of the World Policy Institute said:
“NAFTA will signal the formation, however tentatively, of a new political unit — North America. With economic integration will come political integration. By whatever name, this is an incipient form of international government. Following the lead of the Europeans, North Americans should begin considering formation of a continental parliament.” [Emphasis added.]
When he was running for president in 1992, Bill Clinton promised that NAFTA would result in an increase in the number of high quality jobs for Americans that it would reduce illegal immigration. A report in 2014 titled NAFTA at 20 reported “NAFTA created new privileges and protections for foreign investors that incentivized the offshoring of investment and jobs by eliminating many of the risks normally associated with moving production to low-wage countries. NAFTA allowed foreign investors to directly challenge before foreign tribunals domestic policies and actions, demanding government compensation for policies that they claimed undermined their expected future profits. NAFTA also contained chapters that required the three countries to limit regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extend medicine patent monopolies; limit food and product safety standards and border inspection; and waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American.“
Ross Perot warned that just the opposite would happen. He warned that if NAFTA was implemented there would be a “giant sucking sound“ as thousands of businesses and millions of jobs left this country. Most Americans chose to believe Bill Clinton. It turns out that Perot was right and Clinton was dead wrong.
In 2014, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch issued a report, NAFTA at 20: One Million U.S. Jobs Lost, Mass Displacement and Instability in Mexico, Record Income Inequality, Scores of Corporate Attacks on Environmental and Health Laws. The report compares the promises with which NAFTA was sold with the results we can measure 20 years later.
NAFTA was not just a “trade” agreement. Trade agreements focus on cutting tariffs and easing quotas and barriers to goods moving across borders. The report points out that NAFTA was much more, giving corporations special rights, incentivizing offshoring and limiting regulation. As the report puts it, “NAFTA created new privileges and protections for foreign investors that incentivized the offshoring of investment and jobs by eliminating many of the risks normally associated with moving production to low-wage countries. NAFTA allowed foreign investors to directly challenge before foreign tribunals domestic policies and actions, demanding government compensation for policies that they claimed undermined their expected future profits. NAFTA also contained chapters that required the three countries to limit regulation of services, such as trucking and banking; extend medicine patent monopolies; limit food and product safety standards and border inspection; and waive domestic procurement preferences, such as Buy American.”
Some of the effects of NAFTA that are highlighted in the report include,
- $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada,
- one million net U.S. jobs lost because of NAFTA,
- a doubling of immigration from Mexico,
- larger agricultural trade deficits with Mexico and Canada,
- and more than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.
The data also show how post-NAFTA trade and investment trends have contributed to:
- middle-class pay cuts, which in turn contributed to growing income inequality;
- how since NAFTA, U.S. trade deficit growth with Mexico and Canada has been 45 percent higher than with countries not party to a U.S. Free Trade Agreement,
- and how U.S. manufacturing and services exports to Canada and Mexico have grown at less than half the pre-NAFTA rate.
The report lists and details many, many more such outcomes.
“NAFTA’s actual outcomes prove how damaging this type of agreement is for most people, that it should be renegotiated and why we cannot have any more such deals that include job-offshoring incentives, requirements we import food that doesn’t meet our safety standards or new rights for firms to get taxpayer compensation before foreign tribunals over laws they don’t like,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
The report also points out that the public “gets it” that NAFTA hurt the country.
For much more on this, please watch the video below by Charlie LeDuff. It is well worth a few minutes of your time…
So if NAFTA is so bad for American workers, then why don’t our politicians just repeal it?
Well, unfortunately most of them are not willing to do this because it is part of a larger agenda. For decades, politicians from both major political parties have been working to slowly integrate North America. The eventual goal is to turn North America into another version of the European Union.
Just check out what former general and CIA chief David Petraeus had to say about this…
“After America comes North America,” Petraeus [lightbox full=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa_trfcJdME”]said[/lightbox] confidently in answering the question about what comes after the United States, the theme of the panel discussion. “Are we on the threshold of the North American decade, question mark? I threw that away — threw away the question mark — and boldly proclaimed the coming North American decade, says the title now.” He also boasted about how the three economies have been put “together” over the last 20 years as part of the “implementation” of the North American Free Trade Act.
[box type=”shadow” align=”alignleft” ]Kissinger admitted in the passage of NAFTA that it:“will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War…” NAFTA “is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system.” (Henry Kissinger, Los Angeles Times, 1993.) [/box]
The “highly integrated” forces of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, Petraeus continued, will become the world’s powerhouse for energy and science. “There are four revolutions that are ongoing at various levels in each of the countries but foremost in the United States,” said the former CIA chief, who now serves as chairman of the KKR Global Institute. “The energy revolution is the first of those, which has created the biggest change in geopolitics since the rise of China since 1978.” The other “revolutions” include IT, manufacturing, and life sciences, which, “as highly integrated as they are, allow you to argue that after America comes North America,” he added.
See Also:
- VIDEO: The Wonderful World of NAFTA
- VIDEO: NAFTA at 20 on Democracy Now w/Lori Wallach
- NAFTA: 20 Years of Regret for Mexico
- After 20 Years, NAFTA Leaves Mexico’s Economy in Ruins
- VIDEO: How NAFTA Displaced Millions of Mexican Farmers
- VIDEO: NAFTA + US Farm Subsidies Devastates Mexican Farmers
