The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) are wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy, but it's not too late to save our sovereignty.
The American Coalition for Competitive Trade (known as ACCT) plans this month to file the first of several legal challenges to the NAFTA and GATT treaties and the $53 million bailout of Mexico. The Coalition is determined to block the implementation of these sovereignty-usurping treaties before they cause any more damage. Former U.S. Customs Commissioner William von Raab has signed on with the ACCT Lawyers Committee supervising the legal challenges, which is headed by America's Future Chairman Robert Morris.
Two years ago, at an ACCT conference on NAFTA, von Raab predicted that passage of the trade agreement linking the Mexican and American economies would lead to "chaos on the border," and so it has. "Trucks are rolling across the Rio Grande by the thousands," ACCT reports, "many of them loaded with cocaine and other illegal drugs now being sold on the streets and in the school yards all across our country." Thomas Considine, director of the federal government's Drug Enforcement Administration, advised a Senate committee in August that drug gangs in Mexico could eventually rival the ruthless ring now operating in Colombia. According to the Washington Times, these gangs routinely rob Southern Pacific freight trains "carrying millions of dollars in consumer goods" hecho en Mexico and destined for the U.S. market.
A Congressional Joint Economic Committee reported that "Mexican imports to this country cost the United States 137,000 jobs" in the nine months following passage of NAFTA. Imports from Mexico have soared since then, perhaps tripling the job-loss figure. "Trade with Mexico has been a big factor in the expanding U.S. trade deficit this year," says trade correspondent Richard Lawrence in the August 18th Journal of Commerce. In the first six months of this year, "the U.S. posted an $8.5 billion merchandise deficit in Mexican trade, compared with a $1.1 billion surplus a year earlier."
A study by Vanderbilt University documents some of the specific consequences of NAFTA: tomato production down 25 percent in Florida, Scott Paper Company cutting more than 10,000 jobs worldwide prior to opening multimillion-dollar plants in Mexico, the virtual elimination of the apparel industry in the United States. Syndicated columnist Sam Francis says the impact of NAFTA can be measured in "the destruction of whole lives, careers and lifetime hopes . . . as plants relocate, communities vanish, neighborhoods stagnate and opportunities for Middle Americans gurgle away forever in the backwash of NAFTA's sweep through the American economy and society."
The American Coalition for Competitive Trade is determined to document the true cost of NAFTA and GATT and to see that these treaties are revoked before that cost soars even higher. Their efforts may determine whether or not America remains a land of opportunity.
