Withdrawal from World Trade Organization-Contact your Congressmember

[Guest guest]

IAHF List: The Article below provides a lot of detail as to the extreme

importance of going to this link to send a form letter to congress with one

mouse

click to urge removal of the USA from the WTO by passing H J Res 27

_http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=7655411_

(http://capwiz.com/jbs/issues/alert/?alertid=7655411)

The articles supporting this issue are written from a very conservative

perspective. While the original institutions may have been propsed after World

War 11 to get some forms of social control over international capital flows,

subsequent years have seen the rise of international corporate officials to

dominate and even become the delegates to these international trade

organizations (WTO and Codex). This does not negate the valid criticisms of

these Supra

National Trade Organizations that are beyond popular control and

accountability. The more progessive Public Citizen Trade Watch makes a similar

analysis

but does not seek to support withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.

Nevertheless thee excellent Book with article " Whose Trade Organization " by

Lori

Wallach of Public Citizen

_http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7304_

(http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7304) does seem to

give support for this position, but they do not take a position on the

Resolution.

(The vote in congress on H J Res 27 could occur this week according to Norm

Singletonin Congressman Ron 's office who contacted me to ask me to alert

all of you.... please forward this.)

What the article below does NOT tell you, however, is the tie in between the

WTO and the Codex Vitamin issue. You should be aware that the WTO Trade

Agreement, and the NAFTA, CAFTA, and FTAA Trade agreements all contain language

called " SPS " (Sanitary Phytosanitary Measures Agreement) and THIS LANGUAGE

will force harmonization of our dietary supplement laws to mindlessly

restrictive emerging Codex standards.

You will hear nothing but lies and spin on this issue from the pharma

dominated vitamin trade associations, from the world's FDAs, and from the MLM

vitamin companies for reasons which IAHF and others have ably exposed: see:

http://www.thelawloft.com/Freedom/050125_us_law.htm

see: http://www.iahf.citymaker.com/page/page/1794219.htm

_http://www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_154.shtml_

(http://www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_154.shtml)

Much of the opposition described below is taken from a very conservative

perspective on postwar international agreements. The reality is that many

structures once advocated to introduce a measure of more popular social

control on

international capital flows were subsequently distorted to enthrone

international corporate policy makers with a Supra Governmental authority to

override

and be unaccountable to popular opposition within the countries they are

assumed to represent. Many delegates are merely corporate officials who have

gained political advantages to let them " represent " countries that have no

accountable way to voice popoular opposition to international trade

agreements.

But it does not invalidate the dangers to popular accountability of government.

AG

The WTO Trap

Norman Grigg The New American, January 10, 2005

The World Trade Organization, a Geneva-based body composed of foreign

bureaucrats, will control our nation's economic destiny unless we get out --

now!

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A delegation of U.S. cotton farmers had their " day in court " on December 13,

seeking relief from a damaging regulatory ruling. The " court " to which they

made their appeal was a dispute resolution panel of the World Trade

Organization (WTO), a 148-nation global body headquartered in Geneva,

Switzerland. The

U.S. cotton farmers were forced to appeal to the foreign " court " because the

U.S. government illegally ceded part of our sovereignty to the WTO, and the

farmers have been caught in the repercussion of that action.

Last September, noted the December 7 Delta Farm Press, a three-member WTO

panel ruled that a number of federal assistance programs for the cotton

industry are " prohibited export subsidies " that created " significant

suppression of

world cotton prices in marketing years 1999-2002, causing 'serious prejudice'

to Brazil's interests. " This isn't to say that the WTO uniformly bans all

such subsidies. Article 13 of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture allows national

governments to provide agricultural subsidies, but the global trade body

claims the authority to nullify any subsidy it deems inappropriate -- and to

levy

punitive fines and taxes to enforce its rulings.

As has been its habit, the Bush administration reacted to the September

decision by expressing resigned disapproval -- and an eager willingness to

abide

by the WTO's final decision. This left U.S. cotton farmers to seek relief

from the same foreign globalist body that had issued the injurious decision.

" We

have been preparing our defense, " explained Maguire, senior vice

president of Washington operations for the National Cotton Council. " The U.S.

Government is our attorney in this case. " What this means is that, " win " or

lose,

the Bush administration would validate the WTO's authority to regulate our

nation's economic policy.

This was neither the first, nor the most recent, instance in which the WTO

has issued a strongly anti-U.S. ruling. In March 2004, the body ruled that

congressional legislation banning Internet gambling violates the terms of the

General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Described as a measure intended

to facilitate free trade in services, GATS is not an agreement, or even a set

of agreements. Instead, it is an open-ended process in which hordes of

anonymous foreign bureaucrats review local, state, and federal licensing and

certification standards, and other supposed impediments to the global free

trade

in services. Through the GATS process, all of our legislative processes are

thrown open to challenge by foreign governments.

Shortly after the U.S. presidential election, the WTO issued what would have

to be considered its most dramatic ruling against U.S. interests. As

summarized by Newsday, a November 26 ruling " approved punitive taxes long

sought by

the European Union and other countries because of a law they say unfairly

protects U.S. steel companies and other industries. " The law in question,

commonly known as the " Byrd amendment, " authorizes the imposition of tariffs to

protect various industries from " dumping " -- that is to say, the subsidized

export of goods below production costs as a way of driving U.S.-based

competitors

out of the market.

Under the Byrd amendment, formally known as the " Continued Dumping and

Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, " money collected through the tariffs could be paid

to

U.S. companies who file anti-dumping complaints. Over the past three years,

some $700 million has been paid out. In response to a European Union complaint

in 2002, the WTO ruled that the Byrd amendment was " illegal. " This is to say

that a Geneva-based global body, composed of foreigners who are not

accountable to U.S. citizens, presumed to exercise judicial review over a law

that --

whether considered wise or foolish -- was properly enacted by Congress and

duly signed by the president.

The November 26 WTO ruling compounds that outrage by authorizing the

imposition of " punitive taxes " against the United States. " While quite small

initially, " noted Newsday, " the level of punitive duties will be reviewed each

year

and could rise sharply. The value of the sanctions, on everything from sweet

corn to metals and textiles, hasn't been determined, but trade officials

estimated them at more than $150 million a year. "

The WTO ruling clears the way for " the EU, Japan and five other governments …

to slap tariffs on American imports … unless Congress repeals the so-called

Byrd amendment, " noted the Bloomberg financial press service. Surely

President W. Bush, a man reviled by his detractors as a " unilateralist "

and

hailed by his defenders as a stout defender of national sovereignty, rejected

this brazen assault on our national independence and prosperity.

Guess again.

Asked about the ruling during a November 26 press conference at his

Crawford, Texas, ranch, Mr. Bush replied: " We've worked hard to comply with the

WTO.

It's important that all nations comply with WTO rulings. I'll work with

Congress to get into compliance. " After promising to defer to the global body's

supposed authority, Bush attempted to strike a resolute pose, mewling: " We

expect the WTO, as well, to treat our trading partners as they treat us. And

that's why, for example, I filed [a] complaint on the Airbus situation. We

believe that the subsidies for Airbus are unfair for U.S. companies, such as

Boeing. " But this amounted to a tacit admission on Mr. Bush's part that he

expected

the WTO -- once again, a body composed of bureaucrats representing America's

foreign economic competitors -- to protect our nation's interests.

Caught in the WTO Web

President Bush's enthusiasm for WTO-supervised global " free trade " explains

why " you could almost hear a collective sigh of relief " from foreign capitals

over his re-election, stated the December 2 Christian Science Monitor.

" Because of the administration's strong commitment to free trade, the United

States looks ready to push for even more international agreements that trim

barriers to commerce. " But the " free trade " agreements in question -- which

include

the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the proposed Free Trade

Area of the Americas (FTAA) and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA),

and the WTO -- are not designed to bring about genuine free trade.

Properly understood, free trade results when a mutually beneficial exchange

occurs between buyers and sellers, unimpeded by government intervention. The

agenda being pursued by the Bush administration and its foreign cohorts, by

way of contrast, defines attributes of national sovereignty as barriers to

" free trade " and seeks to destroy sovereignty. At the same time, it builds a

WTO-supervised global trade regime. The result would be the loss of our

national

independence and the delivery of our national economic destiny into the

hands of foreign bureaucrats who have no interest in our continued prosperity.

It is reasonable to believe that measures like the " Byrd amendment " and the

cotton subsidies are poor policy choices by the federal government.

Certainly, if the intent is to make U.S. exporters more competitive, the

rational

approach would be to reduce or eliminate the tax and regulatory burdens on

those

industries, rather than binding them more tightly to Washington through

subsidies. But U.S. policies should not be decided by an international

bureaucracy. And as we will shortly see, the logic of the misnamed " free trade "

agenda

requires that our central government manage trade according to the dictates of

the WTO.

Our Global Neighborhood, the 1995 report of the UN-aligned Commission on

Global Governance, described the WTO as " a crucial building block for global

economic governance.... The WTO and advanced regional groups such as the EU [as

well as the envisioned FTAA] will increasingly be faced with the issue that

will dominate the international agenda in years to come: how to create rules

for deep integration that go way beyond what has traditionally been thought of

as 'trade.' "

The WTO is intended to dictate the rules governing regional trade pacts such

as NAFTA and the proposed FTAA. The European Union, on which the FTAA would

be modeled, regularly defers to the WTO's jurisdiction, and -- as seen

earlier -- the EU expects the United States to do the same. Completion of the

FTAA

pact would effectively compel our nation to submit to the WTO. Chapter II,

Article 3 of the most recent draft of the FTAA states that signatory nations

will comply " with the rules and disciplines of the World Trade Organization. "

The Constitution assigns to Congress the power of regulating commerce with

foreign nations, as well as imposing taxes and tariffs. No provision of the

Constitution allows Congress to delegate that power to any other element of the

federal government, let alone foreign multilateral bodies like the WTO. And

it should be remembered that economic integration, as the Commission on

Global Governance intimated, leads to political integration and the loss of

national independence. Thus Congress' approval of U.S. membership in the WTO

was

nothing less than an act of betrayal that borders on treason.

A decade ago, Congress approved U.S. membership during a " lame duck " session

of Congress. This was brought about through the bipartisan cooperation of

then-president Bill Clinton and Republican congressional leaders Newt Gingrich

and Bob Dole.

As Gingrich himself admitted in testimony before the House Ways and Means

Committee, approval of WTO membership was nothing less than a

" transformational " moment, a fundamental alteration of our system of

government:

I am just saying that we need to be honest about the fact that we are

transferring from the United States at a practical level significant authority

to a

new organization. This is a transformational moment. I would feel better if

the people who favor this would just be honest about the scale of change....

This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which

twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected. I

am not even saying that we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it. But I

think we have to be very careful, because it is a very big transfer of power.

Had Gingrich's professed reluctance been rooted in principle, rather than a

case of rhetorical posterior-protection, he could easily have held up

approval of the WTO until after the new Congress convened. But he and his

co-conspirators (no other word is adequate) were desperate to thwart careful

deliberation of the proposal by the new Congress, which was loaded with

freshman

members leery of entanglement in multilateral bodies.

In any case, Gingrich accurately recounted the history of the WTO and its

aborted predecessor, the International Trade Organization. Previous efforts to

subordinate the U.S. to a global trade body had come to naught precisely

because Congress was able to exercise its deliberative function. The WTO's

backers didn't intend to allow our country a third chance to escape the WTO

trap.

In the aftermath of World War II, a coterie of international elitists

proposed a constellation of multilateral economic organizations to supplement

the

United Nations: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the

International Trade Organization (ITO). In 1947, a delegation of U.S.

diplomatic

officials attended a conference in Havana intended to finalize the framework

for the ITO.

..

Although the Senate approved U.S. membership in the UN with only two

negative votes in 1945, by 1947 public opinion regarding globalist institutions

had

shifted significantly, and Congress had followed the public's lead.

Congressman Bertrand Gearhart (R-Calif.) described the Hiss-led delegation at

Havana

as " boatloads of smug diplomats, all-wise economists … experts, theorists,

specialists and whatnots, sailing gaily from our shores to barter away … the

little factory in Wichita, the little ship in Keokuk. "

When the final draft of the ITO pact was presented in March 1948, it met

with insurmountable resistance from both Congress and the public. Although the

ITO agreement was depicted " as a charter to 'free world trade,' " it was

actually " a charter for trade control, " noted W. Malone (R-Nev.). " The

result of its adoption would have been socialism, on a global plane. "

Business groups also spoke out in opposition to the ITO. " The entire

document reflects an excessive acceptance of economic planning, " protested the

U.S.

Chamber of Commerce. The National Foreign Trade Council warned that " if the

United States subscribes to the charter it will be abandoning traditional

American principles and espousing, instead, planned economy and full-scale

political control of production, trade, and monetary exchange. The charter does

not

reflect faith in the principles of free, private, competitive enterprise. "

Not surprisingly, although two attempts were made to secure congressional

approval for the GATT accord, the ITO charter was never presented to Congress

for ratification.

But for the Global Power Elite, " no " doesn't mean " no " -- but rather, " not

yet. " The same globalist, socialist body that had previously been decisively

rejected was renamed the World Trade Organization and secured approval in 1994

-- thanks to the timely help of globalists in the Republican Party's

leadership ranks.

" Pincers Movement "

The WTO and the United Nations, wrote Senator Malone in his prophetic 1958

book Mainline, are two arms of " a pincers movement … both on the domestic and

on the international scene. " One arm of that pincers was political -- the

steady entanglement of our nation in international alliances and multilateral

bodies, particularly the UN. The other arm was economic -- created by the Trade

Agreements Act of 1934, in which Congress ceded to the Executive Branch the

power to control our nation's trade policy.

Because of the 1934 act, wrote Malone, " the business and the enterprise of

individuals now were considered in close connection to the policies of the

State. The State would assist them in the expansion of their markets.

Government

would negotiate the channels of trade. " In brief, " the State would determine

trade, " and the president, not the Congress, would exercise that power.

The president, in turn, was given the means to surrender that authority to

foreign bureaucrats. And that betrayal has been carried out by a succession of

presidents from both sides of the narrow partisan divide. As Malone warned

more than four decades ago, " That power is now being increasingly invested in

international groups, and removed from our Nation's control. " As President

Bush's deference to the WTO illustrates, that body is rapidly assuming control

over our nation's economic destiny.

The ideological bent of the WTO can be inferred by a brief examination of

its director-general, Thai career politician Supachai Panitchpakdi. As

Thailand's deputy minister of finance, Mr. Panitchpakdi " introduced the

value-added

tax system [and] laid the foundation for the establishment of the country's

Export-Import Bank, " notes his official vitae. As chairman of that country's

International Economic Policy Committee, he led the campaign for ratification

of the WTO and " ensured his government's full and faithful implementation of

its obligations " under that body.

As a graduate student at the Netherlands School of Economics (now Erasmus

University), Panitchpakdi was a protégé of the late Jan Tinbergen, a Dutch

physicist who won the 1969 Nobel Prize for economics. Tinbergen, a resolute

socialist and advocate of central economic planning, donated his supposed

expertise to the League of Nations in the 1930s and became an unofficial adviser

to

numerous non-aligned socialist governments following WWII. As a socialist,

recalls an official Erasmus University bio, Tinbergen firmly believed that

optimal economic and social conditions can be achieved by rational government

policies. In later years he applied these ideas to the economic world order, but

to his disappointment his proposals met with little success.

Tinbergen passed away in 1994, shortly before the U.S. joined the WTO. It's

fair to assume that, were he alive today, he would feel a measure of

satisfaction over the unfolding WTO-administered global trade regime.

Panitchpakdi's term ends next August. The odds-on favorite to replace him is

Pascal Lamy, a French official who has the support of the European Union.

Lamy, " a French Socialist, will compete for the coveted Geneva seat in a race

that -- at this stage -- looks likely to include a Brazilian, a Mauritian, and

a Uruguayan, " noted a December 13 Reuters report.

Get Us Out -- Now!

But why should America's economic fortunes be placed in the hands of any

foreign body, headed by any foreign official of any ideological background? The

American colonists who withdrew from the British Empire fought a war rather

than allow a distant, unaccountable parliament to claim the power in principle

to impose taxes. Under the emerging global trade regime, the WTO is actually

imposing punitive taxes against the United States, with the acquiescence and

support of both the president and Congress.

This need not continue. Under U.S. law, every five years (including this

year) any member of Congress can introduce a " privileged resolution " to end

U.S.

membership in the WTO. Such a resolution must be brought to the floor for a

vote within roughly three months of being introduced; it cannot be bottled up

indefinitely or killed in committee.

Five years ago, Rep. Ron (R-Texas) took advantage of this provision to

force the full House to vote up or down on whether to get the U.S. out of the

WTO. " [u.S.] membership in the WTO actually is illegal, illegal any way we

look at it, " Rep. advised his colleagues in a 2000 speech on the House

floor. " If we are delivering to the WTO the authority to regulate trade, we are

violating the Constitution, because it is very clear that only Congress can

do this. We cannot give that authority away. We cannot give it to the

President, and we cannot give it to an international body that is going to

manage

trade in the WTO. This is not legal, it is not constitutional, and it is not in

our best interests. "

" It is not up to the World Trade Organization to decide what labor laws we

have, or what kind of environmental laws we have, or what tax laws, " continued

Rep. . Other countries " can toss their own sovereignty out the window if

they choose. I cannot tell China or Britain or anybody else that they should

or should not join the World Trade Organization.... I can, however, say that

the United States of America ought to withdraw its membership and funding

from the WTO immediately. "

Rep. 's 2000 measure calling for U.S. withdrawal from the WTO was

lopsidedly rejected by a vote of 56 to 363. But now that the WTO has begun

treading

on U.S. sovereignty, the result of a new vote to withdraw from the WTO could

be radically different -- if enough informed Americans apply pressure on

their congressmen to put America first.

Readers are encouraged to ask their congressmen to support a resolution

calling for U.S. withdrawal from the WTO. Click here for information on how to

contact your own U.S. representative and senators.

-------------------

For Health Freedom,

C. Hammell, President

International Advocates for Health Freedom

556 Boundary Bay Road

Point , WA 98281-8702 USA

http://www.iahf.com

jham@...

800-333-2553 N.America

360-945-0352 World

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