U.S. sovereignty slip-sliding away (Henry Lamb, 8/06/05, WorldNetDaily.com)
It began in 1994. All the attention was focused on the new WTO emerging from the Uruguay round of GATT negotiations. Little attention was paid to the Summit of the Americas meeting in Miami. The assembled ministers agreed to create a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas and that it would be completed by January 2005, entering into force by December 2005.
For ten years, 34 governments have been conducting negotiating sessions throughout the Americas, fashioning a new trade agreement that will swallow up both NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and, quite literally, much of the U.S. Constitution.
The final draft agreement addresses every aspect of trade in the Western Hemisphere and requires that every dimension of the agreement be “WTO compliant.” Chapter II contains two provisions that should disqualify the document immediately from any serious consideration by the U.S. Congress.
Article 4.2 contains this language:
4.2. The Parties shall ensure that their laws, regulations and administrative procedures are consistent with the obligations of this Agreement. The rights and obligations under this Agreement are the same for all the Parties, whether Federal or unitary States, including the different levels and branches of government. …
This language requires that existing laws – at every level of government – be conformed to the requirements of the agreement. It requires that all future laws conform as well. The effect of this agreement takes away law-making power from duly elected representatives of the people and gives it to unelected bureaucrats, most of whom represent foreign nations.
This language is consistent with the WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA, all of which were approved by Congress. Both NAFTA and the WTO have required revisions of dozens of domestic laws. CAFTA will do the same, and the FTAA will continue to take away laws that the peoples’ representatives have enacted.
This process is transforming the meaning of national sovereignty.
While freer trade is a laudable goal, we should only free it unilaterally or bilaterally, not transnationally.