FREE TRADE, WTO, and COLONIZATION

In pre-modern history, before global banks and multinational corporations, a despot under title of King or Emperor would attempt retain control over his or her territory. If the despot was wise enough, he controlled the country’s currency, trade, and industries. If these were not under control, then shadow forces could gain power, eventually buying the royal advisors and military, and change leadership.

There has now been a transformation in the modern world, because of the modern mind-set that requires interdependency of economies. Now hidden powers of economic forces act as secret despot, while high-ranking elected officials act as figureheads. The national sovereignty era ended around the 1850s, when China and Japan fell to Great Britain. Both the economies of China and Japan were self sufficient, as any sovereign nation should be. Great Britain was busy colonizing the planet for exploitation, using trade dependency as the foot in the door. The East India Company had already become a powerful force in the East, but China and Japan refused to yield. China ran its trade through the Canton system, a set of rules created to keep a self-sufficient economy.

The British covertly infiltrated China using opium trade, and created a market demand that wouldn't even have existed without the East India Company. Then, with its foot in the door, they were able to defeat China in what is known as the Opium War. Japan followed soon after.

Now, national sovereignty as it was in pre-history is a rare treasure. Tools for retaining one’s leadership, such as tariffs, are vanishing. Our founding fathers of the United States placed great confidence in these tools, yet modern Presidents are signing them into extinction. Thomas Jefferson said, "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none." The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT established 1947, reformed 1995), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA negotiated in 1990), and the World Trade Organization (WTO, established 1994) are hard at work breaking down barriers to sovereignty. International banks and corporations are becoming the new world despots, with the most powerful countries holding the reigns to this new world order.

"Where I agree with the sea turtles and the porpoises and (consumer activist) Ralph Nader and (conservative) Howard Phillips and the union guys is, when you make a law in the United States of America, no international organization should have the right to tell us that we've got to alter or change our laws. I do believe in the full restoration of America's lost sovereignty and independence. And I do not believe in surrendering authority to a World Trade Organization," he says.

The increasingly integrated world economy and the move toward open markets threaten the livelihoods of U.S. manufacturing workers, he says. It's an issue he focused on in bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996. The major party candidates now take "virtually identical" positions on issues of globalization, trade and foreign policy, he says. "They're two wings of the same bird of prey."

USWA Condemns WTO Ruling Opposing Steel Tariffs - Cites Trade Organization's ``Unalloyed Assault on U. S. Sovereignty'' Thursday March 27, 3:27 pm ET

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 27, 2003--News From USWA: United Steelworkers of America (USWA) President Leo W. Gerard today assailed the World Trade Organization's (WTO) findings that the tariffs imposed on imported steel one year ago as "an unalloyed assault on United States sovereignty."