Stop the "Free" Trade Agenda

[Bryan]

STOP FREE TRADE AGENDA is a major new action project of The John Birch Society with the purpose of preserving our personal freedoms and national independence by stopping congressional approval of any new multilateral free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). A vote to approve the TPP agreement is expected as early as late 2014; a vote on the TTIP agreement is expected in 2015.


Learn More (Get educated on the agenda behind "free" trade)

Stop the Free Trade Agenda: 1-minute intro video



An Introduction to Trading Away Your Freedom video



How the Free Trade Agenda is Knocking Down America Special Report (free 52-page PDF)
http://www.thenewamerican.com/files/TNA2917.pdf



Tell Others (Share what you know to equip others)
Share the above free tools, plus purchase these inexpensive tools to introduce others to the agenda behind free trade.

Isn’t Free Trade Good for Everyone? pamphlet
https://www.jbs.org/webstore/shop-j...w-isn-t-free-trade-good-for-everyone-pamphlet

Free Trade Promises and Reality pamphlet
https://www.jbs.org/webstore/shop-jbs/stop-free-trade/free-trade-promises-and-reality-pamphlet

What’s the Real Price of Free Trade? pamphlet
https://www.jbs.org/webstore/shop-j...-what-s-the-real-price-of-free-trade-pamphlet

Not-So-Free Trade pamphlet
https://www.jbs.org/webstore/shop-jbs/stop-free-trade/new-not-so-free-trade-pamphlet

How the Free Trade Agenda Affects You booklet
https://www.jbs.org/webstore/shop-jbs/stop-free-trade/how-the-free-trade-agenda-affects-you-booklet

International Merger by Foreign Entanglements book
https://www.jbs.org/webstore/shop-jbs/stop-free-trade/international-merger-by-foreign-entanglements



Take Action (What you and others can do to stop the free trade deals)

Contact Congress to stop trade promotion authority:
https://www.votervoice.net/JBS/campaigns/37540/respond

Contact state legislators to oppose trade promotion authority:
https://www.votervoice.net/JBS/2/campaigns/35325/respond

Contact Congress to stop Trans-Pacific Partnership:
https://www.votervoice.net/JBS/campaigns/35305/respond

Contact Congress to stop Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership:
https://www.votervoice.net/JBS/campaigns/35307/respond



Stay Informed (How you can connect with us to stay on top of the trade deals)

Sign up for trade text alerts: Text trade to 88588 or sign up online
http://www.jbs.org/text-alert/text-alert

Use the above Voter Voice alerts to receive new alerts as they are published or sign up here
http://www.jbs.org/legislative-email-alerts

Check often on new news, alerts and updates at the Choose Freedom — Stop the Free Trade Agenda page:
http://www.jbs.org/issues-pages/stop-the-free-trade-agenda


Note: RonPaulForums.com is pleased to provide support to tackle this important issue.

 

[PRB]

Stop free trade, protect protectionism?

 

[William Tell]

Good post, TPP and other international "Free Trade" agreements must fail.

 

[presence]

Stop free trade, protect protectionism?

Trade managed by investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) international tribunals subverts US sovereignty and imposes financial liability on the American people for wrongdoings perceived by foreign corporations and heard before illegitimate international courts.

Note: RonPaulForums.com is pleased to provide support to tackle this important issue.

Great post Bryan!


Supposed "Free" Trade Agreements are supranational SUBJUGATION of the American People to the whims of Transnational Corporations, WTO, UN, and World Bank.


NO ISDS

We don't bow to blue helmets in the land of the free.

 

[NACBA]

Bump

 

[Natural Citizen]

I'm thinking that there isn't much of a desire to put any effort into opposing this or doing anything to help communicate the intricates. May be the defining moment as to whether or not I stick around with this group over the next year or so. Dang. There were some good people here, though.

If we actually look around at the rest of the world, they're taking to the streets. They are communicating and learning about this thing. But just not here. I mean, we're even seeing the courts being used here in the states in the present tense as a sort of a dry run with this thing and nobody is even batting an eye.

 

[Free Radical]

The global free trade networks are the tools of the oppressors. Leaders want to cede their power to international governments creating a vast copyright pan-American conglomerate. The only true free trade is the black market.

 

[Lucille]

The cosmotarians are all for this fascist farce. (They are working my last nerve lately.)

http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/13/us-unions-fight-free-trade-trans-pacific

With the White House potentially on the verge of "fast-tracking" the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a measure expected to lower or eliminate trade barriers between the United States and 11 Pacific Rim nations, U.S. labor unions are once again voicing reservations, selfishly fighting to keep costs on imports high for all Americans.

American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) President Richard Trumka says the proposal is flawed and will promote "wealth for the 1%, with poverty for the rest of us," while Teamsters President James Hoffa says the TPP will allow American corporations to offshore more manufacturing jobs.

The TPP talks have been ongoing for years. They were supposed to wrap up in 2012 and then 2014, but opponents have repeatedly delayed their completion—though a finish line may be in sight given the new Republican-controlled Congress.

These TPP talks come two decades after unions fought against the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which opened up trade restrictions between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in 1994. Former presidential candidate and staunch protectionism proponent Ross Perot once declared that NAFTA would create "a giant sucking sound" of jobs leaving the U.S. for Mexico. More recently, the liberal magazine The Nation called the TPP a "massive assault on democracy" and "NAFTA on steroids."

President Obama supports the TPP, which will include nations that account for 38 percent of total world economic activity, although The Washington Post notes that the support is largely an attempt at tactical maneuvering around China:

The Obama administration's focus on the TPP is part of its "pivot" to Asia — former national security adviser Tom Donilon called it the "centerpiece of our economic rebalancing" and a "platform for regional economic integration" — after too many years of American foreign policy being bogged down in the Middle East. Scholars such as Columbia University's Jagdish Bhagwati are worried that the TPP goes further, as an effort to "contain" China and provide an economic counterweight to it in the region. Many of the TPP's current provisions are designed to exclude China, like those requiring yarn in clothing to come from countries party to the agreement, and could possibly invite retaliation. In addition, 60 senators have asked for the final agreement to address currency manipulation, which wouldn't directly affect China as a non-member, but could create a framework for broader action.

The president will likely face staunch opposition from within his own party. He acknowledged last month that congressional Democrats have "legitimate complaints" and that the issue "makes for some tough politics." But allowing companies and individuals to freely trade goods and services is not an "assault on democracy." Such free trade agreements have long been supported by economists as a means of increasing overall welfare, and rightly so.

 

[NACBA]

We need more free trade and more H-1Bs NOW

 

[Brett85]

This issue isn't really all that clear from a libertarian perspective when these trade agreements lower tariffs, which libertarians support. They are also supported by a lot of libertarian organizations, such as Cato and Reason.

 

[BarryDonegan]

Odds are if a "free trade" agreement has hundreds or thousands of pages of rules, it's not that free. haha

 

[Brett85]

Odds are if a "free trade" agreement has hundreds or thousands of pages of rules, it's not that free. haha

Yeah I know, but I think Rand's position is that they're still a step in the right direction, but that over time we should work to reduce the amount of rules and regulations in trade agreements and just make them much more simplified.

 

[Lucille]

Will the GOP Capitulate Again?
http://takimag.com/article/will_the_gop_capitulate_again_patrick_buchanan#axzz3SQUv46WN
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/on-trade-t-r-s-party-no-longer/

For a quarter century, however, the party of the Bushes has been a globalist, New World Order party, and fanatically free trade.

It signed on to NAFTA, GATT, the World Trade Organization, most-favored-nation status for China, CAFTA, and KORUS, the U.S.-Korean trade treaty negotiated by Barack Obama.

So supportive have Republicans been of anything sold as free trade they have agreed to “fast track,” the voluntary surrender by Congress of its constitutional power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.”

With fast track, Congress gives up its right to amend trade treaties, and agrees to restrict itself to a yea or nay vote.

And who is leading the fight to have Congress again surrender its power over trade? The GOP vice presidential nominee, and current chairman of ways and means, Paul Ryan.

Yet when one looks back on the devastation wrought by free trade, how can a party that purports to put America first sign on to fast track yet again? In the first decade of this century, the United States lost 5 to 6 million manufacturing jobs. We lost 55,000 factories, a devastation of industry not unlike what we inflicted on Germany and Japan in 1944-45.

The trade figures are in for 2014. What do they show?
[It's bad]
Was the national vote to give Republicans majorities in Congress unseen since 1946 a vote to have the GOP turn over all power to write trade treaties to Obama and his negotiators who produced the greatest trade deficits in American history? Do these record deficits justify such blind confidence in Obama? Do they justify Congress’ renunciation of rights over commerce that the Founding Fathers explicitly set aside for the legislative branch in Article I of the Constitution?

 

[Brett85]

Yet when one looks back on the devastation wrought by free trade, how can a party that purports to put America first sign on to fast track yet again? In the first decade of this century, the United States lost 5 to 6 million manufacturing jobs. We lost 55,000 factories, a devastation of industry not unlike what we inflicted on Germany and Japan in 1944-45.

Opposing these trade deals on the basis that they violate U.S sovereignty is a valid argument, but this is just protectionist rhetoric that everyone who believes in the free market should reject.

 

[paleocon1]

We need more free trade and more H-1Bs NOW

Why?

 

[paleocon1]

Opposing these trade deals on the basis that they violate U.S sovereignty is a valid argument, but this is just protectionist rhetoric that everyone who believes in the free market should reject.

NAFTA like agreements do not produce free market results but rather produce endless Rent Seeking opportunities for the politically well connected.