Goode: Bush wants North American Union to increase profits for corporations

By Terri Hall - T.U.R.F. - Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Link to article here.

Rep. Virgil Goode says below: "We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer." Goode stressed that the Bush administration supports both a NAU regional government and a NAFTA Superhighway system.

Congress debate begins on North America Union
Resolution calls for end of NAFTA superhighway, abandonment of integration with Canada, Mexico
By Jerome R. Corsi - WorldNetDaily.com - September 25, 2007

House resolution urging President Bush "not to go forward with the North American Union or the NAFTA Superhighway system" is – according to its sponsor Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., in an exclusive WND interview – "also a message to both the executive branch and the legislative branch."
As WND previously reported, on Jan. 22 Goode introduced H.C.R. 40, titled "Expressing the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in the construction of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a North American Union with Mexico and Canada."

The bill has been referred to the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

WND asked Goode if the president was risking electoral success for the Republican Party in 2008 with his insistence on pushing for North American integration via the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP.

"Yes," Goode answered. "You won't hear the leadership in the Republic Party admit it, but there are many in the House and Senate who know that illegal immigration has to be stopped and legal immigration has to be reduced. We are giving away the country so a few very rich people can get richer."

How did he react when President Bush referred to those who suggest the SPP could turn into the North American Union as "conspiracy theorists"?

"The president is really engaging in a play on words," Goode responded. "The secretary of transportation came before our subcommittee," he explained, "and I had the opportunity to ask her some questions about the NAFTA Superhighway. Of course, she answered, 'There's no NAFTA Superhighway.' But then Mary Peters proceeded to discuss the road system that would come up from Mexico and go through the United States up into Canada."

Goode is a member of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development of the House Committee on Appropriations.

"So, I think that saying we're 'conspiracy theorists' or something like that is really just a play on words with the intent to demonize the opposition," Goode concluded.

Goode stressed that the Bush administration supports both a NAU regional government and a NAFTA Superhighway system: "The Bush administration as well as Mexico and Canada have persons in the government in all three countries who want to a see a North American Union as well as a highway system that would bring goods into the west coast of Mexico and transport them up through Mexico into the United States and then in onto Canada," Goode confirmed.

The Virginia congressman said he believes the motivation behind the movement toward North American integration is the anticipated profits the large multinational corporations in each of the three countries expect to make from global trade, especially moving production to China.

"Some really large businesses that get a lot from China would like a NAFTA Superhighway system because it would reduce costs for them to transport containers from China and, as a result, increase their margins," he argued.

"I am vigorously opposed to the Mexican trucks coming into the country," Goode continued. "The way we have done it and, I think, the way we should do it in the future, is to have the goods come into the United States from Mexico within a 20-mile commercial space and unloaded from Mexican trucks into U.S. trucks. This procedure enhances the safety of the country, the security of the country, and provides much less chance for illegal immigration."

As WND reported, the Department of Transportation has begun a Mexican truck "demonstration project" under which 100 Mexican trucking companies are being allowed to run their long-haul rigs throughout the U.S.

Previously, Mexican trucks have been limited to a 20-mile commercial zone in the United States, with the requirement that goods bound for locations in the U.S. beyond the 20-mile commercial zone be off-loaded to U.S. trucks.

WND reported last month that Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., successfully offered an amendment to the Department of Transportation Fiscal Year 2008 appropriations bill to block DOT from spending any federal funds to implement the truck project.

Dorgan’s amendment passed 75-23, after Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., changed her vote to support Dorgan.

By a voice vote, the House passed an amendment offered by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., to the DOT appropriations bill comparable to Dorgan's, designed to block the agency from using federal funds to implement the truck project.

DeFazio chairs the House transportation subcommittee that oversees motor carriers.

"With the Trans-Texas Corridor, which I would say is part of the NAFTA Superhighway system, and with this NAFTA plot with the Mexican trucks just coming in and not loading off to U.S. trucks, they will just drive right over the Rio Grande and come on over into Texas," Goode argued. "A lot of these Mexican trucks will be bring containerized cargo from the west coast of Mexico where they will be unloaded in Mexican ports to avoid the fees and costs of unloading at U.S. ports."

"So, when you look at the total package," he continued, "we do have a NAFTA Superhighway system already in place. There are those in all three countries that believe we should have a North American Union and the Security and Prosperity Partnership, in my opinion takes us down that road. And I am vigorously opposed to the loss of our sovereignty."

Why, WND asked, do so many congressmen and senators insist on writing and telling their constituents that they don't know anything about the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or that SPP working groups are really just to increase our competitiveness?

"In the House, a strong majority voted to provide no money in the transportation funding bill," Goode responded. "I commend Congressman Duncan Hunter for submitting an amendment to the Department of Transportation funding bill [which] got over 360 votes that said no funds in the transportation appropriation measure, prohibiting Department of Transportation funds from being used to participate on working groups that promote the Security and Prosperity Partnership."

As WND reported, Hunter's amendment to the FY 2008 Department of Transportation funding bill prohibiting DOT from using federal funds to participate in SPP working groups creating NAFTA Superhighways passed 362 to 63, with strong bipartisan support. The House approved H.R. 3074 by 268-153, with the Hunter amendment included.

"So, I think a majority the House, if you had an up or down vote on the SPP, would vote down on the SPP," Goode concluded. "But some still say, and it's a play on words, that we don't have a Security and Prosperity Partnership that will lead to a North American Union. I don't think they can say anymore that we don't have a Security and Prosperity Partnership arrangement between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, because that was done in Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005, and the recent meeting at Montebello was to talk about it further."

WND asked Goode to comment on the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, a group of multinational corporations selected by the Chambers of Commerce in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. as the central adviser of SPP working groups.

At the SPP summit in Montebello, Quebec, the NACC met behind closed doors with the three leaders, cabinet secretaries who were present, and top SPP working group bureaucrats, while various public advocacy groups, environmental groups, labor unions – and the press – were excluded.

Should SPP working group meetings be open to the public?

"I wish they were," Goode responded. "If it is as the Bush administration says, 'We're not planning any North American Union,' then why wouldn’t those meetings be open, why wouldn’t you let the media in?" Goode asked.

"But some of the very big corporations want the goods from China to come in here unchecked," he continued. "It costs money for U.S. trucks to transport Chinese goods from West Coast ports like Los Angeles or Long Beach. But if you can have a Mexican truck and Mexican truck driver, that's going to be cheaper. And it's all about the margins. The margins relate directly to how much money the multi-national corporations are going to make."

Has the Senate debate on the Dorgan amendment brought the issues of the NAU and NAFTA Superhighways more to the attention of the Senate?

"I think so," Goode said. "That debate had a very positive effect. You had grassroots support calling the Senate on the Dorgan amendment.

"The Bush administration engages in the same play of words with all these issues," Goode added. "Take a look at the Kennedy-McCain comprehensive immigration reform, which the Bush administration has now tried to jam through the Senate not once, but twice.

"The Bush administration claims it's not [amnesty] when you let someone stay in the country and give them a path to citizenship," Goode pointed out. "Well, that's their definition, not my definition, and not the definition of the majority of the public. The majority of the public called in and buried the amnesty bill because of public pressure. Public pressure also got de-funded the pilot program on Mexican trucks in this country."

So should the U.S. pull out of the SPP?

"Yes," Goode answered, "but the best way to end SPP would be to have a chief executive that wouldn't do anything with it."

What does Goode think of the state legislatures that are passing anti-NAU, anti-NAFTA Superhighway and anti-SPP resolutions?

"If enough state legislatures pass resolutions like that, it surely should have an impact on the House and the Senate," Goode said.

"President Bush's position is that we need to carry out NAFTA and we need to have this free flow of goods with Mexico and Canada," Goode explained. "Well, Bush's approach involves a derogation of our sovereignty and it also undermines the security and the safety of the country.

"It will be much easier for a truck to get a container on the west coast of Mexico and haul in a biological or radiological or nuclear weapon than it would be if you are going to have to unload the trucks on the Texas-Mexico border and put the goods and material in a U.S. truck," he continued.

"The problem is that the NAU, NAFTA Superhighways and SPP all go back to money," Goode stressed. "The multinational companies want their goods from Mexico and China because they want the cheap labor."

What about the U.S.'s large and growing trade imbalance with China?

"I don't want to have to be an 'I told you so' person," Goode answered, "but I was a vigorous opponent of PNTR ("permanent normal trade relations") and before that of 'most favored nation' trade status with China. We need tariffs and quotas with China. Personally, if I know food is coming in from China, I won't buy it. The American people with the adoption of COOL, country of origin labeling, with the food clearly labeled, I think you will see the American public will shy away from Chinese products."

In 2000, Congress voted to extend to China PNTR. "Most favored nation" or MFN trade status, was given to China first in 1980 by the Carter administration. COOL rules are administered by the Department of Agriculture.

Goode concluded the interview by thanking WND for covering the SPP, NAU and NAFTA Superhighway issues: "I want to thank you for putting these issues out where people can read it," Goode said. "You have enlightened hundreds of thousands if not millions of American citizens who otherwise would have been greatly in the dark on the SPP."

High Toll on U. S. Business & Industry

By Dennis Behreandt - April 16, 2007
On September 26, 2006, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) unleashed a broadside against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the form of a briefing paper by EPI economist Robert E. Scott, Professor Carlos Salas of Mexico’s El Colegio de Tlaxcala, and Bruce Campbell of the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives. In the opinion of Scott, Salas, and Campbell, NAFTA has been a tragedy for all three nations.

Scott, writing of NAFTA-related problems in the United States, noted: “In the United States workforce, NAFTA has contributed to the reduction of employment in high-wage, traded-goods industries, the growing inequality in wages, and the steadily declining demand for workers without a college education.” According to Scott, those who have lost high-wage jobs have had to take substantial pay cuts to get jobs in the growing service-sector economy. The employment trend has resulted in a much lower standard of living for many Americans. “Growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada have pushed more than 1 million workers out of higher-wage jobs and into lower-wage positions in non-trade related industries,” Scott notes. “Thus, the displacement of 1 million jobs from traded to non-traded goods industries reduced wage payments to U.S. workers by $7.6 billion in 2004 alone.”

According to Carlos Salas, the situation in Mexico has not differed substantially from that in the United States. South of the border too, NAFTA has not lived up to its billing. According to Salas, “Since NAFTA took effect, Mexico has experienced a continual increase in the precarious nature of employment.” Not surprisingly, NAFTA has also hurt the Canadian economy. “Not only has NAFTA failed to deliver the goods it promised, its effect on the well-being of a large majority of Canadians and on the social cohesion of society has been negative,” Bruce Campbell notes in the Canadian section of the EPI report.

The facts are in: NAFTA is an economic disaster for all three nations. Nevertheless, internationalist policy analysts at leading think tanks and within the Bush administration, as well as in both Canada and Mexico, have been pushing hard for further integration of the three NAFTA nations, something many have begun to call a North American Union. Built on the creaky foundation of NAFTA, such a union would be an unmitigated disaster of world-historical proportions because NAFTA itself, as an examination of important sectors of the economy shows, has been and continues to be nothing short of catastrophic in its effects.

Trucking
Ready or not, Mexican trucks are coming to the United States. NAFTA mandated that the roads of all three signatory nations be open to trucks from all three countries, but safety concerns have kept Mexican trucks confined to a narrow corridor along the border. Now a “pilot program” of the Department of Transportation would give Mexican drivers from 100 approved Mexican trucking companies access to the entire country.

It’s a move that is supposed to be good for business, but it is really part of the plan to increase the tonnage of shipping handled by Mexican ports and to move that freight through Mexico into the United States by means of NAFTA corridors — the so-called NAFTA Superhighway (see article "Paving Over Our Borders"). Like everything else related to NAFTA, opening the borders to Mexican trucks will have consequences for American workers, putting U.S. truckers out of business — while making American roads more dangerous.

The pilot plan “is a big push by American and Mexican big business to use cheap labor,” said Jim Hoffa, president of the Teamsters Union. The wage disparity between Mexican drivers and their U.S. counterparts is substantial. According to Fleetowner magazine, the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), for instance, “contends that competition from Mexican carriers will eventually overwhelm U.S. fleets because Mexican drivers are paid 25% to 50% less than most domestic drivers.”

The Teamsters found out how poorly Mexican drivers are paid when they sent investigative reporter Charles Bowden to Mexico to report on the condition of the Mexican trucking industry last August. Bowden talked to drivers who worked for days on end, sometimes driving for 48 hours without a break. “The men earn about $1,100 a month,” Bowden reported. And the pay is for a workload that can be handled only with assistance from narcotics.

The Mexican drivers Bowden talked to insisted that they can only stay awake on their long and frequent journeys across Mexico by using what they euphemistically term “magic dust.” According to Bowden, the truckers “are all family men who run the highways at least 25 days a month and they are adamant about two things — that nobody can run these long hauls without cocaine and crystal meth, and now and then some marijuana to level out the rush.”

The Electronics Industry
From before World War II through the 1970s, the United States’ electronics industry was an economic powerhouse. All of the world’s most advanced electronics, from consumer to industrial applications, were designed and manufactured in the United States. Firms like GE, Magnavox, Sylvania, Zenith, RCA, and others dominated electronics manufacturing and sales — and the products these companies produced were made in U.S. factories by U.S. workers. Foreign competition began to decimate the industry in the 1980s, but the death knell came with the passage of NAFTA, when even Japanese firms moved production to Mexico. The remaining U.S. producers packed up and went south, taking their high-paying jobs with them.

In 2004, Sen. Joe Lieberman released a report through his Senate office detailing the economic impact of this “offshore outsourcing.” The report, prepared by Lieberman staffer Sara E. Hagigh and Mary Jane Bolle of the Congressional Research Service, noted that the trend to move business offshore is still “contributing to historically high levels of unemployment among electronics, software and computer engineers in the United States.” The Lieberman report also noted, ominously, that “the loss of R&D infrastructure could have important ramifications for our ability to create high-wage, high-technology jobs in the future. What is at stake is the ability of the United States to remain a global leader in innovation, to maintain high-paying jobs, and to ensure future competitiveness and growth.”

Oscar F. Contreras, visiting fellow at Mexico’s El Colegio de Sonora, and Rhonda Evans of the University of California, Berkeley, were more blunt in their assessment of NAFTA’s effects on the U.S. electronics manufacturers. In a 2002 report, they wrote: “The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that went into effect on January 1, 1994 encouraged a regional reorganization of the consumer electronics industry in general and the TV segment of the industry in particular.... All stages of TV production, including design, the manufacture of key components, and final assembly shifted from the U.S. to northern Mexico in the wake of the agreement.”

The drain on electronics continues. In Pittsburgh, 900 jobs in the industry have been lost at the city’s Sony Technology Center as the company moves capacity to Mexico. “Now, Sony Technology Center-Pittsburgh no longer manufactures anything, only assembles Grand Wega and SXRD rear-projection TVs; and that business moves to Mexico this year,” the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported. While Sony may move some LCD production to Pennsylvania, that too may be transitory. “The way things go with Sony is that things start in Japan, then they bring the idea to the U.S. to refine it, then when they’re really ready to ramp up production, they’ll take it to Mexico,” Edward Taylor, former head of business planning for Sony’s U.S. TV operations, told the Pittsburgh paper.

Professionals
NAFTA is not just about destroying good blue-collar jobs. White-collar American professionals will also see their jobs disappear and their standard of living fall as, because of NAFTA, professional standards and licensing practices and requirements are harmonized across the continent. The effect will be a substantial downward pressure on white-collar compensation, something strongly advocated by no less a luminary than former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan.

At a conference on maintaining the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets on March 13, Greenspan said that it was essential to flood the United States with foreign professionals in order to drive down salaries of high earners. “Our skilled wages are higher than anywhere in the world,” Greenspan said, according to Bloomberg News. “If we open up a significant window for skilled workers, that would suppress the skilled-wage level and end the concentration of income.”

That could be accomplished by harmonizing licensing and professional requirements across all three nations. Doing so would result in a larger supply of licensed professionals, driving down rates paid for professional services and possibly driving some in the United States out of business, while simultaneously making it harder for new U.S. professionals to get established.

In accounting, the harmonization of licensing began very early in the evolution of NAFTA. The CPA Journal reported in 1995: “In addition to harmonizing accounting standards, there is also an initiative to extend licensing to the professionals of other NAFTA countries. Partly as a consequence of the predecessor U.S./Canada free trade agreement, the AICPA [American Institute of Certified Public Accountants] and the CICA [Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants] have developed special examinations for CAs and CPAs interested in becoming licensed members of the other professional body. In November 1993, the AICPA administered the first such examination, while CPAs took the fast shortened CA examination in May.”

The groundwork for this kind of harmonization has been laid in other professions since NAFTA, though resistance remains. A case in point is the engineering profession. Writing for the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta, Canadian engineer Darrel Danyluk notes “that a NAFTA Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) was signed by Canadian, American and Mexican representatives in 1995” and that “the accord provides a means for recognizing the qualifications of engineers working temporarily in another NAFTA jurisdiction.” But, he complains, it hasn’t been implemented in the United States. “The National Society of Professional Engineers, and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology in the U.S. ratified the MRA without reservations in 1995. The third American national body which had to ratify the MRA, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, gave provisional ratification for a two-year period which now has expired. The expiration of the NCEES ratification has had the effect of making the MRA technically unapproved in the U.S.”

The Timber Industry
What is perhaps the most contentious trade dispute in modern history has been ongoing between the United States and Canada since the early 1980s over the dumping of government-subsidized Canadian timber into the U.S. market. The matter was already a crisis before NAFTA, but turned into a scandal that uniquely highlighted the trade agreement’s destruction of national sovereignty after NAFTA took effect in 1994.

Beginning as early as 1982, U.S. timber producers charged that Canadian lumber was trading at artificially low prices in the U.S. market because Canadian timber is mostly owned by provincial governments that set stumpage prices at artificially low levels resulting, essentially, in a subsidy to the Canadian timber industry. To offset the subsidy, the U.S. assessed tariffs against Canadian lumber.

In 1991 a review of U.S. tariffs was conducted by a panel convened under the authority of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (the precursor to NAFTA). That panel found against the United States, as would NAFTA courts convened under Chapter 19 of the later agreement. The Commerce Department finally settled on a tariff of 10.8 percent in 2005. But in March of 2006, the NAFTA panel again found in Canada’s favor, stating that Canadian subsidies were too small to be of any consequence, even though, according to the Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, “Canada’s lumber subsidies are destroying the U.S. lumber industry, threatening its workers with mounting unemployment, and denying many tree farmers a market for their timber crops.”

The NAFTA rulings forced the United States to agree to a new Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA) with Canada that will result in a massive refund totaling $4.3 billion for duties collected on lumber imports from Canada. In exchange, Canadian lumber exporters will pay an “export charge” collected by Canada on exports to the United States whenever the price of softwood lumber in the United States falls below certain specified amounts per 1,000 board feet.

Despite the agreement, NAFTA is probably not finished wreaking havoc on U.S. timber producers. Critics charge that some Canadian provinces are not respecting the terms of the SLA. According to a March 5 Reuters report, “on Capitol Hill, Senators pressed USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] head Susan Schwab on the deal in a hearing last month. Last week, Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho Republican, asked Schwab to begin steps for consultations. ‘I am very concerned that this agreement is about to come apart at the seams,’ Craig said,” according to the report. It will come apart even faster if NAFTA is transformed into a North American Union.

Small Business
NAFTA has been trouble for many small businesses, something businessman Brian Coons, president of Brico Welding & Fab of Chesterfield, Michigan, knows all too well. According to Crain’s Detroit Business, a business journal serving the Detroit area, Coons “lost contracts to Mexican and Canadian competitors that he said don’t have nearly the wage and health insurance expenses carried by U.S. manufacturers.” Low wages in Mexico meant competitors there could undercut prices while favorable exchange rates meant that competitors in Canada could do the same. “NAFTA has drained us dramatically,” Coons told Detroit Business. “Let’s say I had an aluminum fabrication job, 100 pieces at $38 a piece. [A customer] can send it to Canada or Mexico and get 30 percent off.”

Plastics firm Bermar and Associates is another small business in Michigan that faced trouble in the wake of NAFTA, losing bids to firms in Canada and Mexico. “We were getting underbid by 25 to 40 percent,” company president Jan Roncelli told Detroit Business reporter Terry Kosdrosky. “We lost jobs because we could not compete. That’s into the profit margin. U.S. manufacturers don’t reap the benefits of free trade.”

The anecdotal evidence that NAFTA presents substantial problems for small business corresponds with the real trend of lost market share across the board for U.S. companies. According to the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC), a group that represents small- and medium-sized firms, 111 out of 114 U.S. industries saw market share shrink in the years after NAFTA. According to Paul Johnson of the North Carolina High Point Enterprise, the USBIC data show that during an eight-year post-NAFTA period, “the level of import penetration at least doubled in 26 industry sectors. By 2005, 24 industries had lost 50 percent or more of their U.S. market to imports.” For small businesses, NAFTA has meant both the loss of existing clients and future income opportunities. And because many Americans depend on small businesses for jobs, the NAFTA hit on small business means hard times for the middle class.

Agriculture and Immigration
For thousands of years corn has been grown as a staple crop in southern Mexico. Until the mid-1990s, small Mexican farmers tended the land, following the traditions of their ancestors, protected by trade barriers from competition from America’s heavily subsidized and more efficient corn growers. NAFTA changed all that. In just over a decade, wrote St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Bill Lambrecht in 2005, “An estimated 1 million farmers in rural Mexico have lost their livelihoods.”

Farming jobs lost in Mexico have had a direct effect on the United States in the form of both immigration and drugs. “The idea was that bringing greater growth to Mexico, fewer Mexicans would need to leave. Mexico said, ‘we want to export our tomatoes, not our people.’ But, in fact, it led to greater migration,” said Deborah Meyers of the Migration Policy Institute. Farmers who stayed behind turned to cultivating marijuana. According to the Post-Dispatch, “the amount of marijuana seized annually along the Mexican border has doubled to 1.1 million pounds since 1994, the year NAFTA took effect.”

NAFTA has had other effects on agriculture as well. In the wake of the trade agreement, large farms growing fresh fruit and vegetables sprung up in the Mexican sun with the intent of selling cheap produce in the U.S. market. Not only did this have the potential to undercut U.S. farmers growing the same crops, the new farms further destabilized the Mexican agriculture market. As the Washington Post reported on January 7, after NAFTA, “Huge farms have been developed to grow artichokes, tomatoes and other produce for the U.S. market. But those farms, many launched with American investment, typically pay about $13 a day. That’s not enough to keep workers from leaving: They can make three to four times as much in even the lowliest U.S. jobs.”

What’s worse, produce deemed unfit for the U.S. market is sold in Mexico at cut-rate prices, driving out small producers. Then they go north too. Mexican farmer Ruben Rivera is one such small producer whose livelihood has been destroyed by NAFTA. According to the Washington Post, “He used to grow tomatoes and onions, hiring 150 workers to help at harvest. Now he doesn’t even bother to plant.” It’s cheaper to buy leftover produce from the big producers than it is for him to grow his own. “For people who can grow huge scale for export, NAFTA has been good,” Rivera, whose three sons live in Georgia and send $800 home to Mexico per month, told the Washington Post. “For people like us, it’s been a bloodbath.”

The Auto Industry
The statistics are so incredible as to be almost unbelievable. The Big Three automakers, direct employers of hundreds of thousands of American workers, are hemorrhaging colossal sums of money and laying off workers in droves. Last year Ford alone lost $12.7 billion; Chrysler lost only $1.48 billion, but it was enough for Germany’s Daimler to start looking for a way to divest themselves of their unstable American partner. The huge losses are leading to equally large layoffs. Ford, for one, is laying off over 30,000 employees in North America, many of them in the United States, and is closing a number of U.S. factories. The controversial closure in Atlanta, long the home of Ford Taurus production, came despite the fact that the plant “has ranked among the top 10 most productive assembly plants in North America, as reported by Harbour Consulting,” according to a Ford Fact Sheet. Like Ford, General Motors is cutting 30,000 jobs and closing a number of U.S. factories.

The problems of the Big Three can’t all be attributed to NAFTA. But while Americans lose high-paying jobs in the auto industry, Mexican workers who are paid much, much less can expect more work. In 2005, in the midst of losing $10.6 billion, GM was ramping up the production of trucks at its Mexican factories. “We’re short on trucks. Dealers don’t have them in all the colors and with all the options that people want,” Gilbert Duhn, a GM manager, told the San Antonio Express-News. “We’ve started building more trucks in Mexico.”

Ford is doing the same thing, producing its new family of midsize cars, including the Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, and Lincoln Zephyr, at its Hermosillo plant in Mexico. In fact, Mexico has become a major center for the manufacture of cars and trucks that are intended for sale in the United States. According to Business Week, “Three-quarters of Mexican-made vehicles are exported to the U.S., largely by Detroit’s Big Three but also by German giant Volkswagen.” Those are cars that could have been built in America by Americans.

In the face of recent catastrophic losses, the pressure on U.S. automakers to move to a low-cost environment may be overwhelming. In a May 2002 paper, Korean economist Ho Yeon Kim pointed out that Mexico has always had low “site costs” (defined as “low wages, amenities and taxes”) and that NAFTA had significantly lowered Mexico’s “situation costs” (defined as costs for transport of raw materials and finished products), but that Mexico would not be attractive for small-car production unless other “non-tariff barriers” were overcome or reduced. The increased production of GM trucks and Ford midsize sedans in Mexico suggests that, under the current business climate, Detroit no longer views those “non-tariff barriers” as impediments to Mexican production. So while the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in Detroit’s U.S. factories may not have been directly caused by NAFTA, they may be prevented from ever returning to the United States — largely because of NAFTA.

Longshoremen
If you are a longshoreman and you work at one of the nation’s West Coast ports, especially Los Angeles or Long Beach, NAFTA has an ugly surprise in store for you: your job will soon be gone.

In order to facilitate the shipment of Chinese goods to the United States, freight will be brought to huge and improved ports, like that at Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, according to author and investigative journalist Jerome Corsi, “bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process.” Interestingly, the port in Lazaro Cardenas is owned by Hutchison Port Holdings, a subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, the Chinese firm operated by billionaire Li Ka-shing that now operates the Panama Canal’s anchor ports of Cristobal and Balboa following a controversial takeover in the 1990s.

After unloading at Mexican ports, freight will be loaded onto Mexican trucks for shipment to the United States, bypassing Teamsters and U.S. independent owner-operators as well as larger American trucking firms. According to Corsi, the Mexican trucks “will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of America.”

The plan to ship Asian goods into the United States through NAFTA corridors linking up with Mexican ports has even begun to draw the ire of socialists. Richard Vogel, writing for the socialist Monthly Review, argues that this NAFTA-based plan “signals the beginning of the assault on labor in the north, which could eventually result in the offshoring of hundreds of thousands of transportation jobs to the south and undermine the working class on both sides of the border significantly.” Among those who will be most affected will be America’s dockworkers.

NAFTA Only the Start
When NAFTA was being debated in the early 1990s, the American people were not told that the proposed arrangement would be the starting point for further political integration of Canada and Mexico with the United States. But the planners behind NAFTA had that goal in mind all along. NAFTA, with all its economic dislocations, was meant to be just the beginning of a larger plot. Speaking at the Canadian-American Business Council Luncheon on June 24, 2003 in Washington, D.C., then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Donald L. Evans, referring at the time to efforts to build a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), noted that NAFTA was only a starting point for regional integration. “NAFTA was just the beginning,” Evans enthused. “President Bush has said that ‘We have a great vision before us: a fully democratic hemisphere, bound together by good will and free trade.’”

The FTAA ran into intense opposition but internationalist planners didn’t give up. Instead, following the motto that NAFTA is just a beginning, they hit upon a new plan: North American Union. In a 2005 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal obnoxiously entitled “North America the Beautiful,” internationalist theorists John Manley, Pedro Aspe, and William Weld argued that, over the last decade, “the pace of economic integration within North America has outstripped the capacity of the Nafta framework.” To rectify that, they proposed that the leaders of the NAFTA nations “should announce a plan to establish a North American security and economic community by 2010.”

The op-ed came just a few days after a meeting on March 23, 2005 of the heads of state of the NAFTA nations. At the meeting, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin joined with President Bush and former Mexican President Vicente Fox in taking the first step toward that economic community by constructing the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America — the next step on the road to a North America Union.

The economic dislocations of NAFTA have been terrible; just imagine how bad they will be under a more fully implemented plan for regional governance. If ever there was a time for the country to abandon NAFTA, now is that time — before the nation is maneuvered into a North American Union it can ill afford.

Published in The New American.

A TRANS TEXAS CORRIDOR NAFTA PARABLE

THIS PARABLE IS DEDICATED TO RICK PERRY, DAVID DEWHURST, TODD STAPLES, FRANK CORTE, GREG ABBOTT and all the elected officials in Texas who took Campaign Contributions from H.B. Zachry and worked diligently to get the Texas Transportation Code and Eminent Domain Statues changed to enable construction of the Trans Texas Corridors and similar toll initiatives.

The Trans Texas Corridor initiative seems more like this parable:
Once upon a time let's say that I discovered that it was closer for me to go through your yard than it was for me to go around the block on the public street to conduct my business in the land beyond your homestead. So I begin to habitually take a short-cut through your yard. I make my own path through your shrubbery, detouring around your house and garage and walk through your property to deliver goods to my clients who live far beyond your lot line.

After a while, I complain about how much time I'm losing having to go between your house and garage. For me, I'd get there easier and faster if your house weren't in my way. I mean, after all, why should I be inconvenienced having to detour around your house when I have important business to conduct on the other side of your property!

Under current law, I can't just legally tear your house down. But I know some folks who owe me some favors. I do some things for some other folks so that they'll also owe me. I approach a man who owns a paving company with strong ties with the agency which regulates planning and construction of public paths. Then I find some "business men" and show them how they can profit if your house were gone and we had a direct path WE CONTROLLED through your property and this man's paving company poured the asphalt. Together we start dreaming about this path. Wouldn't it be even better, someone says, if there are concessions along the path. If they can't get off the path to patronize the businesses along existing streets, that will be better for us because we'll make more money. So while the "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" gang is busy revising the Transportation and Property Codes of the government, we have them add in a clause allowing exercise of eminent domain for construction of a facility which serves users of the toll facility.

By scratching backs and showing folks how they can PROFIT from my scheme, I've moved from just cutting through your bushes and walking between your house and garage as I cut through to the other side of property to conduct my business on the other side of you to actually getting the law changed so that I can have your home torn down and land confiscated by the state. I can also get your neighbor's land condemned by eminent domain because it's contingent to a toll corridor and is NEEDED TO BE USED FOR A CONCESSION WHICH WILL BE USED BY USERS OF THE TOLL PATH.

Now, there are a lot of places in our town where more people actually need a paved path more than this one. There may even be some places where they need a bridge. But this project gets priority because I agree to pay for the clearing, demolition of your house, and the concrete to pave it. I get a 50 year right to set the rates for the toll and operate all the concessions along the path. I get the government to underwrite a lot of the studies and planning for this project because they are in the business of overseeing planning projects.

After we pour all this concrete the neighborhood looks different. Because it looks DIFFERENT, some people call it progress.

You no longer live there. Your next door neighbor no longer lives in the town. The land now belongs to the state. Your neighbors get their tax bills after completion of this project. The school district and county and city have divided their annual budgets among the number of remaining homeowners. Everyone has a tax increase. There is still a shortfall because even with a tax increase, there is less land available and when they need to build a new school, the price is higher for the land. But that's ok. Because it is now easier for the folks I did business with on the other side of your property to go through the path and not have to detour around where your house used to sit. No one actually stops on your land to do anything. They use the concession where your next door neighbor used to live as they travel through. But they don't patronize any of the businesses on the street where you lived. When they carry packages along this toll road to deliver to your former neighbors, they pay tolls. But that's o.k. because the pass the additional cost along to the buyers.

Oh, I forgot one thing. When I sell the VISION for building this toll path corridor, I point out that we need A MUCH WIDER RIGHT OF WAY than is actually called for right now. We need to plan for 50 years in the future. So we advise the "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine gang" to write the law so that instead of the land that the path needs being condemned, they condemn three times that much land. We won't use it for 50 years, but that's o.k. We'll control it. It goes out of the local tax base too and more folks lose their homes. Those that remain have to absorb an even larger percentage of the taxes formerly paid by you and your neighbor. But I'm content.

I'm given an award by the City Father's for being a "Catalyst of Progress." I have more money, so I give a little of it to a charity run by one of the folks who helped me get the laws changed to Legalize all the illegal obstacles to progress that I decided needed to be eliminated so that I'd be enabled to "get a return on my investment" as I instigate getting this toll path built so that I'll not to be inconvenienced by having to detour around your house. I'm now known as a "humanitarian."

Our project has utilized public governmental planning agencies who usually plan public projects. They haven't had time to concentrate on public works projects except for our path. So the street that runs in front of the property where you used to live becomes filled with potholes and is actually dangerous to pedestrians and drivers. The tax base is less. The businesses on that road have closed down because they lost business when people started patronizing the businesses on the toll path. We approach the city and tell them that we can solve their problem. We'll use a bit of the money we made operating this first toll path to repair roads which are currently PUBLIC ROADS if they are turned into toll roads and we are given 50 years to operate them so we can get a return on our investment.

This time there are activists who are prepared for us and manage to demand this project be put to a vote. But it is obvious that the road will remain impassable because now the tax base of the town has dwindled to such a state that there REALLY IS no money in the budget to pave the public road. The toll initiative on the ballot passes by only a few votes, but I have a new project to profit on with my friend the paving contractor. The public street is now a toll road and we are studying where we want to locate the concessions.


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There will be goods shipped through Texas from Mexico to other states whether or not the TTC is constructed. Some folks are wondering TEXANS should give up our land and finance the TTC by paying tolls and higher property and school taxes! Don't we have other more important transportation needs that need to be met right now? TDoT, elected officials and transportation planners in COGS tell us that the TTC is necessary because we need to plan for 50 years in the future.

Planning for the future is fine when you have your CURRENT HOUSE IN ORDER. People without food on the table can't throw their entire annual budget into a retirement account. This initiative is one that transfers resources away from meeting VITAL TRANSPORTATION NEEDS in communities all over Texas right now! DFW is on the brink of having EPA shut down economic development. We have to address air quality along with transportation. Every urban center in Texas needs SOME transportation solution and this TTC snowgoose doesn't meet ANY OF THEM. But it's true, business interest shipping goods from Asia to Mexican ports will get those goods to market somehow. They want us to cut them a direct, less-costly-for-them route. We must fight for OUR NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED before their comfort! If we build a corridor or highway or rail line for US, and they use it too, that's normal. That's not what they are asking. THE TTC is not a transportation plan to meet the needs of Texans. Instead of concentrating on this state's highest priority transportation needs, we're expected to forgo what we need to build this rail, utility and super toll highway from Laredo to Oklahoma to facilitate shipping through Texas.

Let's end this "good night" story with a quote from a lady who addressed the TDoT officials at the Dallas TTC Hearing: "What part of stupid do you think we are?"