The Great Trade Deception

This national charter is supposed to limit the federal government to only those powers which it delegates to Washington.

That power-delegation comes from the people, via the states. But, in return, the states had to shed a little sovereignty.

For example, the states are to refrain from raising their own armies beyond the national guard.

Also according to the Constitution, the states cannot enter into compacts with foreign nations.

Yet in Des Moines, Iowa, governors from six states just wrapped up a meeting with Japanese national officials to discuss the details of a trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP.

Granted, the governors of Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Iowa meeting in Des Moines may not have reworked the actual “machinery” of the TPP; that task is assigned to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative in Washington.

But the 46th annual meeting of the Midwest U.S.-Japan Association still provided those governors with a venue that came close to violating the Constitutional prohibition against states negotiating with foreign nations.

But the state officials involved seem tone-deaf to fundamental civics, to say nothing of the TPP’s rather secret contents.

The TPP involves the U.S., Japan and 10 other nations. It stretches across the Pacific, involving Canada and South American nations, over to New Zealand and Australia.

China, however, is not included.
The TPP poses the same problems posed by the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was implemented 20 years ago. These trade deals assume:
• That interdependence trumps independence
• And that national self-sufficiency is a bad thing

So, if Japan agrees to accept heavy rice imports, its own rice farmers could go under. Trade officials seldom stop to ask why a major rice producer which can feed its own citizens would want imported rice.

The same goes for any other product. Logically, international trade works when nations only import those things they cannot make or grow for themselves—and then they export surpluses to nations that need certain items they cannot make.

America imports bananas because our climate is generally not good for growing them. The same goes for coffee.

But this is not how the trade dealers see the world. Their system mainly benefits the shipping companies, large banking interests, insurance companies and other vested interests with their fingers in the big pie of international trade.

Free-traders also deplore tariffs, even though tariffs arguably are one of the most workable forms of taxation.

America, in its first 125 years, funded almost the entire Washington government with such import taxes.

As for the Des Moines trade gathering, Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Kenichiro Sasae stated:
“We are putting up every item on the negotiating table. As a result, tariffs on numerous agricultural products will be eliminated.”

The peaceful Japanese regime only a couple generations ago was considered an arch enemy of America. But get this: In the context of the TPP, Japan is encouraged to fully restore its military to counteract China and North Korea.

That would effectively cancel the disarmament constitution that Washington negotiated with Tokyo right after World War II.

The bottom line is that existing trade deals like NAFTA, and the similar CAFTA deal linked to our border crisis, are proven failures. They have caused massive U.S. job losses, declining incomes and a greatly-weakened tax base.

So, perhaps the TPP would just be another cornerstone for a “new world order” of select financial interests whose own interests are being served—at the expense of everyone else.