TOWARD A NORTH

          AMERICAN UNION
PART 2 of 3

 

 

 

Patrick Wood
August 27, 2006
NewsWithViews.com              http://www.newswithviews.com/Wood/patrick19.htm

Some Unexpected Resistance to NAFTA

Prior to the the 1992 election, there was a fly in the elite's ointment -- namely, presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, founder and chairman of Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Perot was politically independent, vehemently anti-NAFTA and chose to make it a major campaign issue in 1991. In the end, the global elite would have to spend huge sums of money to overcome the negative publicity that Perot gave to NAFTA.

At the time, some political analysts believed that Perot, being a billionaire, was somehow put up to this task by the same elitists who were pushing NAFTA. Presumably, it would accumulate all the anti-globalists in one tidy group, thus allowing the elitists to determine who their true enemies really were. It's moot today whether he was sincere or not, but it did have that outcome, and Perot became a lightning rod for the whole issue of free trade.

Perot hit the nail squarely on the head in one of his nationally televised campaign speeches:

"If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory south of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature workforce - pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care - that's the most expensive single element in making a car - have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you didn't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south..."[1] [emphasis added]

Perot's message struck a nerve with millions of Americans, but it was unfortunately cut short when he entered into public campaign debates with fellow candidate Al Gore. Simply put, Gore ate Perot's lunch, not so much on the issues themselves, but on having superior debating skills. As organized as Perot was, he was no match for a politically and globally seasoned politician like Al Gore.

The Spin Machine gears up

To counter the public relations damage done by Perot, all the stops were pulled out as the NAFTA vote drew near. As proxy for the global elite, the President unleashed the biggest and most expensive spin machine the country had ever seen.

Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iococca was enlisted for a multi-million dollar nationwide ad campaign that praised the benefits of NAFTA. The mantra, carried consistently throughout the many spin events: "Exports. Better Jobs. Better Wages", all of which have turned out to be empty promises.

Bill Clinton invited three former presidents to the White House to stand with him in praise and affirmation NAFTA. This was the first time in U.S. history that four presidents had ever appeared together. Of the four, three were members of the Trilateral Commission: Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Gerald Ford was not a Commissioner, but was nevertheless a confirmed globalist insider. After Ford's accession to the presidency in 1974, he promptly nominated Nelson Rockefeller (David Rockefeller's oldest brother) to fill the Vice Presidency that Ford had just vacated.

The academic community was enlisted when, according to Harper's Magazine publisher John MacArthur,

...there was a pro-NAFTA petition, organized and written my MIT's Rudiger Dornbusch, addressed to President Clinton and signed by all twelve living Nobel laureates in economics, and exercise in academic logrolling that was expertly converted by Bill Daley and the A-Team into PR gold on the front page of The New York Times on September 14. 'Dear Mr. President,' wrote the 283 signatories..."[2]

Lastly, prominent Trilateral Commission members themselves took to the press to promote NAFTA. For instance, on May 13, 1993, Commissioners Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wrote a joint op-ed that stated:

"[NAFTA] would be the most constructive measure the United States would have undertaken in our hemisphere in this century."[3]

Two months later, Kissinger went further,

"It will represent the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War, and the first step toward an even larger vision of a free-trade zone for the entire Western Hemisphere." [NAFTA] is not a conventional trade agreement, but the architecture of a new international system."[4] [emphasis added]

It is hardly fanciful to think that Kissinger's hype sounds quite similar to the Trilateral Commission's original goal of creating a New International Economic Order.

On January 1, 1994, NAFTA became law: Under Fast Track procedures, the house had passed it by 234-200 (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor) and the U.S. Senate passed it by 61-38.

That Giant Sucking Sound Going South

To understand the potential impact of the North American Union, one must understand the impact of NAFTA.

NAFTA promised greater exports, better jobs and better wages. Since 1994, just the opposite has occurred. The U.S. trade deficit soared and now approaches $1 trillion dollars per year; the U.S. has lost some 1.5 million jobs and real wages in both the U.S. and Mexico have fallen significantly.

Patrick Buchanan offered a simple example of NAFTA's deleterious effect on the U.S. economy:

"When NAFTA passed in 1993, we imported some 225,000 cars and trucks from Mexico, but exported about 500,000 vehicles to the world. In 2005, our exports to the world were still a shade under 500,000 vehicles, but our auto and truck imports from Mexico had tripled to 700,000 vehicles.

"As McMillion writes, Mexico now exports more cars and trucks to the United States than the United States exports to the whole world. A fine end, is it not, to the United States as "Auto Capital of the World"?

"What happened? Post-NAFTA, the Big Three just picked up a huge slice of our auto industry and moved it, and the jobs, to Mexico."[5]

Of course, this only represents the auto industry, but the same effect has been seen in many other industries as well. Buchanan correctly noted that NAFTA was never just a trade deal: Rather, it was an "enabling act - to enable U.S. corporations to dump their American workers and move their factories to Mexico." Indeed, this is the very spirit of all outsourcing of U.S. jobs and manufacturing facilities to overseas locations.

Respected economist Alan Tonelson, author of The Race to the Bottom, notes the smoke and mirrors that cloud what has really happened with exports:

"Most U.S. exports to Mexico before, during and since the (1994) peso crisis have been producer goods - in particular, parts and components sent by U.S. multinationals to their Mexican factories for assembly or for further processing. The vast majority of these, moreover, are reexported, and most get shipped right back to the United States for final sale. In fact, by most estimates, the United States buys 80 to 90 percent of all of Mexico's exports."[6]

Tonelson concludes that "the vast majority of American workers has experienced declining living standards, not just a handful of losers."

Mexican economist and scholar Miguel Pickard sums up Mexico's supposed benefits from NAFTA:

"Much praise has been heard for the few 'winners' that NAFTA has created, but little mention is made of the fact that the Mexican people are the deal's big 'losers.' Mexicans now face greater unemployment, poverty, and inequality than before the agreement began in 1994."[7]

In short, NAFTA has not been a friend to the citizenry of the United States or Mexico. Still, this is the backdrop against which the North American Union is being acted out. The globalization players and their promises have remained pretty much the same, both just as disingenuous as ever.

Prelude to the North American Union

Soon after NAFTA was passed in 1994, Dr. Robert A. Pastor began to push for a "deep integration" which NAFTA could not provide by itself. His dream was summed up in his book, Toward a North American Union, published in 2001. Unfortunately for Pastor, the book was released just a few days prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and thus received little attention from any sector.

However, Pastor had the right connections. He was invited to appear before the plenary session (held in Ontario, Canada) of the Trilateral Commission on November 1-2, 2002, to deliver a paper drawing directly on his book. His paper, "A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission", made several recommendations:

Pastor's choice of the words "Modest Proposal" are almost comical considering that he intends to reorganize the entire north American continent.

Nevertheless, the Trilateral Commission bought Pastor's proposals hook, line and sinker. Subsequently, it was Pastor who emerged as the U.S. vice-chairman of the CFR task force that was announced on October 15, 2004:

"The Council has launched an independent task force on the future of North America to examine regional integration since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement ten years ago... The task force will review five spheres of policy in which greater cooperation may be needed. They are: deepening economic integration; reducing the development gap; harmonizing regulatory policy; enhancing security; and devising better institutions to manage conflicts that inevitably arise from integration and exploit opportunities for collaboration."[9]

Independent task force, indeed! A total of twenty-three members were chosen from the three countries. Each country was represented by a member of the Trilateral Commission: Carla A. Hills (U.S.), Luis Robio (Mexico) and Wendy K. Dobson (Canada). Robert Pastor served as the U.S. vice-chairman.

This CFR task force was unique in that it focused on economic and political policies for all three countries, not just the U.S. The Task Force stated purpose was to

"... identify inadequacies in the current arrangements and suggest opportunities for deeper cooperation on areas of common interest. Unlike other Council-sponsored task forces, which focus primarily on U.S. policy, this initiative includes participants from Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States, and will make policy recommendations for all three countries."[10] [Emphasis added]

Richard Haass, chairman of the CFR and long-time member of the Trilateral Commission, pointedly made the link between NAFTA and integration of Mexico, Canada and the U.S.:

"Ten years after NAFTA, it is obvious that the security and economic futures of Canada, Mexico, and the United States are intimately bound. But there is precious little thinking available as to where the three countries need to be in another ten years and how to get there. I am excited about the potential of this task force to help fill this void,"[11]

Haass' statement "there is precious little thinking available" underscores a repeatedly used elitist technique. That is, first decide what you want to do, and secondly, assign a flock of academics to justify your intended actions. (This is the crux of academic funding by NGO's such as Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.) After the justification process is complete, the same elites that suggested it in the first place allow themselves to be drawn in as if they had no other logical choice but to play along with the "sound thinking" of the experts.

The task force met three times, once in each country. When the process was completed, it issued its results in May, 2005, in a paper titled "Building a North American Community" and subtitled "Report of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America." Even the sub-title suggests that the "future of north America" is a fait accompli decided behind closed doors. For part three click below.

Footnotes:

1, Exerpts From Presidential Debates, Ross Perot, 1992
2, MacArthur, The Selling of Free Trade, (Univ. of Cal. Press, 2001) p. 228
3, Washington Post, op-ed, Kissinger & Vance, May 13, 1993
4, Los Angeles Times, op-ed, Kissinger, July 18, 1993
5, The Fruits of NAFTA, Patrick Buchanan, The Conservative Voice, March 10, 2006
6, Tonelson, The Race to the Bottom (Westview Press, 2002) p. 89
7, Trinational Elites Map North American Future in "NAFTA Plus", Manuel Pickard, IRC Americas website
8, A Modest Proposal To the Trilateral Commission, Presentation by Dr. Robert A. Pastor, 2002
9, Council Joing Leading Canadians and Mexicans to Launch Intependent Task Force on the Future of America, Press Release, CFR Website
10, ibid.
11, ibid.

Further Reading:
1. Meet Robert Pastor: Father of the North American Union, Human Events, Jerome R. Corsi, July 25, 2006
2. Robert A. Pastor Resume, American University, 2005
3. North America's Super Corridor Coalition, Inc. Website

© 2006 Patrick Wood - All Rights Reserved

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