Globalism vs. Americanism by Patrick J. Buchanan

[bobbyw24]

http://buchanan.org/blog/globalism-vs-americanism-2192


Globalism vs. Americanism

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Down at the Chinese outlet store in Albany known as Wal-Mart, Chinese tires have so successfully undercut U.S.-made tires that the Cooper Tire factory in that south Georgia town had to shut down.

Twenty-one hundred Georgians lost their jobs.

The tale of Cooper Tire and what it portends is told in last week’s Washington Post by Peter Whoriskey. [As Cheaper Chinese Tires Roll In, Obama Faces an Early Trade Test, September 8, 2009]

How could tires made on the other side of the world, then shipped to Albany, be sold for less than tires made in Albany?

Here’s how.

At Cooper Tire, the wages were $18 to $21 per hour. In China, they are a fraction of that. The Albany factory is subject to U.S. health-and-safety, wage-and-hour and civil rights laws from which Chinese plants are exempt. Environmental standards had to be met at Cooper Tire or the plant would have been closed. Chinese factories are notorious polluters.

China won the competition because the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” does not apply to the People’s Republic. While free trade laws grant China free and equal access to the U.S. market, China can pay workers wages and force them to work hours that would violate U.S. law, and China can operate plants whose health, safety and environmental standards would have their U.S. competitors shut down as public nuisances.

Beijing also manipulates its currency to keep export prices low and grants a rebate on its value-added tax on exports to the U.S.A., while imposing a value-added tax on goods coming from the U.S.A.

Thus did China, from 2004 to 2008, triple her share of the U.S. tire market from 5 percent to 17 percent and take down Cooper Tire of Albany.

But not to worry. Cooper Tire has seen the light and is now opening and acquiring plants in China, and sending Albany workers over to train the Chinese who took their jobs.

Welcome to 21st century America, where globalism has replaced patriotism as the civil religion of our corporate elites. As Thomas Jefferson reminded us, “Merchants have no country.”

What has this meant to the republic that was once the most self-sufficient and independent in all of history?

Since 2001, when George Bush took the oath, the United States has run $3.8 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, more than twice the $1.68 trillion in trade deficits we ran for imported oil and gas.

Our trade deficit with China in manufactured goods alone, $1.58 trillion over those eight years, roughly equals the entire U.S. trade deficit for oil and gas.

U.S. politicians never cease to wail of the need for “energy independence.” But why is our dependence on the oil of Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Nigeria, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela a greater concern than our dependence on a non-democratic rival great power for computers and vital components of our weapons systems and high-tech industries?

As Executive Director Auggie Tantillo of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Committee compellingly argues:

“Running a trade deficit for natural resources that the United States lacks is something that cannot be helped, but running a massive deficit in manmade products that America easily could produce itself is a choice—a poor choice that is bankrupting the country and responsible for the loss of millions of jobs.”

How many millions of jobs?

In the George W. Bush years, we lost 5.3 million manufacturing jobs, one-fourth to one-third of all we had in 2001.

And our dependence on China is growing.

Where Beijing was responsible for 60 percent of the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods in 2008, in the first six months of 2009, China accounted for 79 percent of our trade deficit in manufactured goods.

How can we end this dependency and begin building factories and creating jobs here, rather than deepening our dependency on a China that seeks to take our place in the sun? The same way Alexander Hamilton did, when we Americans produced almost nothing and were even more dependent on Great Britain than we are on China today.

Let us do unto our trading partners as they have done unto us.

As they rebate value-added taxes on exports to us, and impose a value-added tax on our exports to them, let us reciprocate. Impose a border tax equal to a VAT on all their goods entering the United States, and use the hundreds of billions to cut corporate taxes on all manufacturing done here in the United States.

Where they have tilted the playing field against us, let us tilt it back again. Transnational companies are as amoral as sharks. What is needed is simply to cut their profits from moving factories and jobs abroad and increase their profits for bringing them back to the U.S.A.

It’s not rocket science. Hamilton, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln all did it. Obama’s tariffs on Chinese tires are a good start.

ShareThis

Related posts:

1. A New Americanismby Patrick J. Buchanan – November 22, 1999 The Cato Institute – Washington, DC Last...
2. Globalism vs. EthnonationalismBy Patrick J. Buchanan Standing before the Siegessaule, the Victory Column that commemorates Prussia’s triumphs...
3. Courting Anti-Americanismby Patrick J. Buchanan – March 12, 1998 This is risky business, and the “reforms”...
4. Anti-Americanism in L.A.by Patrick J. Buchanan – March 5, 1998 Why would about 91,000 of the 91,235...
5. Kim Jong Il at the OK Corralby Patrick J. Buchanan – February 5, 2003 Is Kim Jong Il seeking a showdown...

[Stary Hickory]

Pat needs an education in Austrian Economics. If Chinese workers are willing to work for less, and don't care about polluting their land it saves us from having to produce tires here and worry about the bad effects of manufacturing.

The only problem with free trade is when we run trade deficits. We should elimintate this issue and then the rest works fine. We will trade with them when we have something to trade, right now we trade phony dollar bills instead.

The FED is the problem not all the stuff Pat Buchanan cites here.

[LibertyEagle]

The only problem with free trade is when we run trade deficits. We should elimintate this issue and then the rest works fine. We will trade with them when we have something to trade, right now we trade phony dollar bills instead.

Well, we certainly have a trade deficit in spades and it is doing nothing but getting worse.

[tonesforjonesbones]

No kidding...what are we manufacturing? When we were manufacturing alot of goods we were a wealthy country...now we are broke..so what's workin and what's not workin? you DO know we pay tariffs on exports IF THERE ARE ANY ExPORTS...tones

[Krugerrand]

Pat needs an education in Austrian Economics. If Chinese workers are willing to work for less, and don't care about polluting their land it saves us from having to produce tires here and worry about the bad effects of manufacturing.

The only problem with free trade is when we run trade deficits. We should elimintate this issue and then the rest works fine. We will trade with them when we have something to trade, right now we trade phony dollar bills instead.

The FED is the problem not all the stuff Pat Buchanan cites here.

You missed a key part of PB's argument:

Beijing also manipulates its currency to keep export prices low and grants a rebate on its value-added tax on exports to the U.S.A., while imposing a value-added tax on goods coming from the U.S.A.
...
As they rebate value-added taxes on exports to us, and impose a value-added tax on our exports to them, let us reciprocate. Impose a border tax equal to a VAT on all their goods entering the United States, and use the hundreds of billions to cut corporate taxes on all manufacturing done here in the United States.

Austrian Economics would not consider their currency manipulation and tax rebates as "free trade." Given that the trade is not free ... do you let your industry be run over by their practices, or do you take steps to counter balance them? All PB is asking is to counter the VAT rebate and to cut corporate taxes. That sounds reasonable to me.

[KenInMontiMN]

Well put, Mr. Buchanan.

Take the country's well-being out of the hands of free trade theorists; knowingly or unknowingly they are the pawns of the internationalists.

There has never been global free trade, and there likely never will be global free trade. Just managed markets.

Wild trade imbalance always leaves the theoretical benefits of that free trade submerged in a sea of currency mercantilism as one nation winds up holding massive amounts of the other's currency and treasuries.

The best solution always and invariably involves free trade operating within reasonable limits of balance, regulated through across the board tariffs - or as Mr. Buchanan presents it, the new lingo is now value-added tax on imports, rates adjusted to regulate the desired outcome. No differently really than a t-stat controlling a hot water valve, the further the drift away from the desired setpoint, the greater the automated control system works the valve open or closed to return that desired condition. The trick is to keep the regulatory control system out of the hands of politicians desirous of buying votes from their constituencies, using such a regulatory system to offer particular local industry protectionism.

[Brian4Liberty]

But not to worry. Cooper Tire has seen the light and is now opening and acquiring plants in China, and sending Albany workers over to train the Chinese who took their jobs.


This part is key. What people fail to realize is that massive extra profit is generated by outsourcing. They lower prices to consumers just enough to undercut domestic competitors (minimal cost savings to consumers). But that is nothing compared to the excess profits they will generate. And where do those excess profits go? Not to the US employees that get laid-off. Not really to US consumers. Not really to shareholders of the company. It goes to the executives of the company.

Is this really good for the American economy? To have a CEO/Government (revolving door) super-class, that has the power to make all decisions, and those decisions result in them enriching themselves and putting the rest of society into poverty?

[Stary Hickory]

You missed a key part of PB's argument:


Austrian Economics would not consider their currency manipulation and tax rebates as "free trade." Given that the trade is not free ... do you let your industry be run over by their practices, or do you take steps to counter balance them? All PB is asking is to counter the VAT rebate and to cut corporate taxes. That sounds reasonable to me.

He says they are manipulating their currency. When in actuality WE are manipulating ours. You can't blame trade imbalances on the manipulation of currencies. Our inflationary policies is what makes us unable to compete. We run deficits and take chinese money for our US dollars. And although it is complex, it's the exports of China that we are really accepting.

If we did not run deficits and trade deficits, we could not afford to purchase Chinese tires unless they gave them to us for a cheap price. ANd in this case there is no harm, no foul. We get cheap tires, and that frees up our labor force for other activities. It's only when we give them IOUs when we encounter problems.

[InterestedParticipant]

How can we end this dependency and begin building factories and creating jobs here, rather than deepening our dependency on a China that seeks to take our place in the sun? The same way Alexander Hamilton did, when we Americans produced almost nothing and were even more dependent on Great Britain than we are on China today.

Let us do unto our trading partners as they have done unto us.
Here is a fantastic example of a "Containment Vector".... where key information critical to the story is withheld in order to create another reality for the audience.

Pat makes no mention of GATT, passed in 1995 by a Dem Congress and a Dem President: Clinton. This is what set the stage for the exodus of America's manufacturing base offshore, but absolutely no mention of this horrendous bill in Pat's article. This is intellectual dishonesty, and there is absolutely no way this was done on accident.

Pat gives his dishonesty away when he says, "Let us do unto our trading partners as they have done unto us"... attempting to deceive the reader into the conclusion that our current economic dynamic is the fault of the Chinese. What I see Pat doing is deceiving his audience so that they will blame an external enemy, and enemy that our own government created.


Sir James Goldsmith testifies against GATT in US Senate

Sir James Goldsmith was a British establishment member who was exposed to the establishment’s long term plans and had the guts and the soul to tell the public the truth, even testifying at the US Senate in attempt to stop the passage of Clinton’s GATT treaty in 1995. This is critical folks. This is when the cabal secured their Globalization plans, and it is still buried today by people like Peter Schiff and other so-called financial guru’s who somehow fail to leave the most critical part of recent economic history out of any discussion.

Folks, this is how they did it. This is how they moved the USA’s economic engine offshore. NAFTA was a minuscule test run. GATT was the grand daddy of them all!

No one tells the full story of how the USA has found itself in this financial peril. Well, the truth of the matter is that all the wealth that we have built through our hard labor has been allowed to freely move offshore. In fact, in some cases the US Taxpayer made guarantees to reduce the risk of industry’s costs of this move and ramp-up operating expenses.

It’s the great heist ever, and to listen to Peter Schiff tell the story of our economic history, it sounds as if fat dumb Americans are trying to live high on the hog while industrious Asians do all the work. Well, the fact of the matter is that the Americans gave the Asians all of our know how, all of our tooling, an established market place, all the financing, and even guaranteed operating expenses. All the Asians had to do was supply cheap labor and their elite would be granted huge profits and the global market place. We’ve been lied to by everyone, even those who pretend to have our backs. And to add insult to injury, they insult us and blame us for this predicament. It’s like we’re the rape victim and the rapist is telling the world that it is our fault for wearing short skirts, being healthy and pretty, and walking down the sidewalk.

It’s an outrage! Please listen to Goldsmith’s Senate testimony. This audio file was recorded by an individual at the time using very poor equipment, so the audio quality, while it has been digitally improved, is still a challenge to hear. But this simply confirms the efforts to squander Goldsmith’s words, as to my knowledge no other recording of his testimony is available (a transcript of the recording has also been created by other interested individuals).

Audio of Goldsmith's Testimony to US Senate
http://www.filefreak.com/files/30222_njnlb/Sir%20James_Goldsmith_US_Senate_Speech_GATT.mp3

Transcript of Testimony
http://www.alanwattsentientsentinel.eu/english/transcripts/Alan_Watt_Blurb_Sir_James_Goldsmith_US_Senate_Spee ch_Oct192007.html


Goldsmith Interview on Charlie Rose (video)
This 1995 Charlie Rose interview of Sir James Goldsmith really expresses the outrage and the concern over where the planet was headed. In this interview, Goldsmith had traveled to the USA to try to convince the US Senate to vote against the GATT treaty, which Clinton signed not long after the interview. Goldsmith was clearly disturbed.

Charlie Rose November 15 1994 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5064665078176641728)


Goldsmith's Book
Sir James Goldsmith in his book called “the Trap” discussed how Globalization would lead to the total destruction of society. Goldsmith disagreed with this approach to create global disarray and chaos, remaking society into a totally new system.

The Book: The Trap
Sir James Goldsmith
http://www.amazon.com/Trap-James-Goldsmith/dp/0786701854

Book review of “The Trap”
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0504/article_480.shtml

Discussion of Goldsmith & The Trap
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16830077/Sir-James-Goldsmith-Argues-That-Free-Trade-and-Modern-Agriculture-Are-Destroying-Society



Sir James Goldsmith quotes

“What is the good of having an economy which grows by 80% if your unemployment – people excluded from active economic life – goes from 420,000 to 5.1 million?”

“You go and you create a corporation in China. And you build a factory in China. And what do you want to sell, mugs? You sell mugs in China. And you conquer part of the Chinese market by competing fair and square in China. That’s life. That’s adding to the activity of China. You’re a corporate citizen over there, you’re working over there.”

“But if you move a factory from the States and take that to China, not so as to conquer the Chinese market but so as to re-import the goods into the States, so as to get cheap labor, what are you doing? What you are doing is you are saying to your employees here, ‘You’re too expensive, folks. You want money. You want protection. You want unions. You want holidays. Forget it! We can employ 47 people over there (for each one of you) who want nothing.’”

“So, don’t confuse 2 issues. One is going out to participate in their growing economies by building there and conquering part of the market. The other is merely killing off employment in your own country, getting rid of your own labor force – transferring it over there and importing it back – purely so as to increase your profit margins.”

“Now, the average company has about 25% of it’s costs in labor costs, including the social costs, the welfare costs around it, 25%. When you move – 25% of volume, that is – you, all of a sudden, can save over 25%, so your profits go leaping up. But you’re destroying – totally destroying – not only the number of people who’ve got jobs but also their salaries.”

“Now, you realize that salaries in the States – earnings, weekly earnings, hourly earnings over the last 20 years – have already dropped about 19% in real dollars. It’s already been a massive decline and that is why the so called recovery – which is a recovery of economic indexes – hasn’t got the feel good factor because people’s salaries have gone down. They’re gonna go down much more. It’s only beginning and the reason is very straightforward.”

“When you manufacture something, anything – this table – you have a value added. The value added is when you take the raw materials and you manufacture a product. Value you add is known as value added. And that is shared between capital and labor. And the whole division – the sharing of that – has been the subject of massive debates for generations. How much should go to capital? How much should go to labor? You’ve had strikes, you’ve had lockouts, you’ve had political debates.”

“All of a sudden, by creating a global marketplace for labor, by creating circumstances where people are making the same product with the same technology for the same capital and the only variant is cost of labor, you are shattering that – shattering the way you share the value added and that means that you are destroying the basis on which we’ve been able to create an equilibrium and have a stable society.”

“I am entirely for free enterprise. I am for free markets. I’m not for the destruction of one’s society.”

“The economy is there to serve the fundamental needs of society, which are prosperity, which are stability, and which are contentment. That is the basis of my thinking. And what I’m saying at this stage is that if, purely for an economic doctrine, you have a situation whereby the economy grows but you create poverty, unemployment, and you destabilize the society, you’re in trouble.”

“Look what’s happened in the last 50 years. You see, people are not willing to look at fundamentals. When I was a boy we were taught that irreversibly we were moving towards progress. That material wealth, material prosperity would solve our problems, would improve our way of life, and improve our civilization. We were taught that. And we achieved the creation of material prosperity in a way which we would never have dreamt of. We made the economy grow 400%. Incredible! And what have we done? We destabilized our society. We’ve increased unemployment massively. We’ve totally destabilized our cities. We’ve uprooted our countryside. We’ve increased crime. Every single viable criteria for a stable society has become negative. Therefore, something must be wrong. And what has become wrong is that instead of the economy being there to serve us, we are there adoring, serving economic indexes.”

“The facts are that people who benefit are big major corporations. There is a divorce between the interests of major corporations and of society. When one used to say and believe – and probably rightly – what is good for General Motors is good for the United States. That is no longer true. Today the transnational corporations have annual sales of $4.8trillion. They account for 1/3 of all – the top alone account for 1/3 of – direct investment. Now how do they operate? They’re no longer linked to the United States, the American ones, or to France or to Britain. They operate by farming out their production to whatever company produces the cheapest labor, wherever they can get the biggest return on capital, and pay the lowest part to labor.”

“Firstly, it started with the textile industries, and the shoes, and those industries were decimated. We lost millions of employment, of people employed. Secondly, it was followed by the high tech industries. And as I say in the last few months we’ve had those. Thirdly, the service industries – these are facts – the service industries, they’ve been moving offshore. There are satellites up there. If you take Swiss Air. Swiss Air has moved part of its back office into Bombay. Why? Because they can communicate through the satellites and reduce their costs by 95%.”

The idea is to create what is known today as efficient agriculture and to impose it worldwide. Let me just give you one [impact] of GATT on the third world. The idea of GATT is that the efficiency of agriculture throughout the world should …produce the most amount of food for the least cost. But what does that really mean? …What is cost? When you produce the intensified agriculture and you reduce the number of people on the land, what happens to those people?…They are chased into the towns. They lose their jobs on the land. If they go into the towns, there are no jobs, there is no infrastructure. The social costs of those people, the financial costs of the infrastructure has to be added to the cost of producing food.

On top of that, you are breaking families, you are uprooting them, you are throwing them into the slums. Do you realize that in Brazil, the favelas (slums) did not exist before the Green Revolution of intensifying agriculture.

In the world today there are 3.1 billion people still living in rural communities. If GATT succeeds and we are able to impose modern methods of agriculture worldwide, so as to bring them to the level of Canada or Australia, what will happen? 2.1 billion people will be uprooted from the land and chased into the towns throughout the world. It is the single greatest disaster [in our history] greater than any war.

We have to change priorities. Let’s take agriculture. Instead of just trying to produce the maximum amount for the cheapest direct costs, let us try to take into account the other costs. Our purpose should not be just the one dimensional cost of food. We want the right amount of food, for the right quality for health and the right quality for the environment and employing enough people so as to maintain social stability in the rural areas.

If not, and we chase 2.1 billion people into the slums of the towns, we will create on a scale unheard of mass migration – what we saw in Rwanda with 2 million people will be nothing — so as to satisfy an economic doctrine. … We would be creating 2 billion refuges. We would be creating mass waves of migration which none of us could control. We would be destroying the towns which are already largely destroyed. Look at Mexico, Rio, look at our own towns.
And we are doing this for economic dogma?…What is this nonsense? Everything is based in our modern society on improving an economic index…The result is that we are destroying the stability of our societies, because we are worshiping the wrong god… Economic index.
The economy, like everything else, is a tool which should be submitted to, should be subject to, the true and fundamental requirements of society.

This is the establishment against the rest of society… I am for business, so long as it does not devour society…[But] we have a conflict of interest. Big business loves having access to an unlimited supply of give away labor.

In every developing nation, you have the same problem. You have a handful of people who control everything, the oligarchs. The poor in the rich countries are going to be subsidizing the rich in the poor countries.

You cannot enrich a country by destroying the health of its population. The health of a society cannot be measured by corporate profitability.

We have allowed the instruments that are supposed to serve us to become our masters.

[Brian4Liberty]

What I see Pat doing is deceiving his audience so that they will blame an external enemy, and enemy that our own government created.

Hmmm...I believe that Pat would agree with your quotes from Goldsmith. And he would probably love to put some of the blame on Clinton and GATT. It's only one article, and it's in the context (wake) of China threatening a trade war. But I can't speak for Pat...


“You go and you create a corporation in China. And you build a factory in China. And what do you want to sell, mugs? You sell mugs in China. And you conquer part of the Chinese market by competing fair and square in China. That’s life. That’s adding to the activity of China. You’re a corporate citizen over there, you’re working over there.”

“But if you move a factory from the States and take that to China, not so as to conquer the Chinese market but so as to re-import the goods into the States, so as to get cheap labor, what are you doing? What you are doing is you are saying to your employees here, ‘You’re too expensive, folks. You want money. You want protection. You want unions. You want holidays. Forget it! We can employ 47 people over there (for each one of you) who want nothing.’”

“So, don’t confuse 2 issues. One is going out to participate in their growing economies by building there and conquering part of the market. The other is merely killing off employment in your own country, getting rid of your own labor force – transferring it over there and importing it back – purely so as to increase your profit margins.”

I agree. Hey, is this guy plagiarizing my post above? ;)

[InterestedParticipant]

Hmmm...I believe that Pat would agree with your quotes from Goldsmith. And he would probably love to put some of the blame on Clinton and GATT. It's only one article, and it's in the context (wake) of China threatening a trade war. But I can't speak for Pat...
I just don't know how anyone could ever write anything about our current trade deficit with China without mentioning GATT.... its the elephant in the room.... it's like mentioning WWII without mentioning Hitler or the Nazis.

But notice something, something very important, when is the last time you heard a major pundit or politician mention GATT (other than RP)? You never ever hear it. It doesn't matter whether you're listening to Peter Schiff, Max Keiser, Pat Buchanon or anyone else, none of them ever mention GATT.

This is how you know that they all are holding the line there, they are all using the propaganda technique of Containing a Vector. This is a very very powerful indicator that the person you are listening to is serving someone's agenda.

[Brian4Liberty]

Just did a search on Buchanan and GATT. Found these (not recent):



http://buchanan.org/blog/clintons-gop-vanguard-164

Clinton’s GOP Vanguard

by Patrick J. Buchanan – November 23, 1994

GATT is the Magna Carta of the Multinationals. It subordinates everything, from U.S. sovereignty to social stability, to trade. GATT empowers transnational companies to shut down U.S. plants, move factories overseas, hire foreign workers at 10 percent of the U.S. pay, and ship their products back here…..What we gain as consumers, we lose as citizens…
...
Because GATT is the non-negotiable demand of our financial elite. The men who write the big checks do not care a fig how you vote on abortion or school prayer, so long as you deliver on the bottom line. GATT is the payoff to the boardrooms for all those dinners, all those contributions, all those ads in party brochures.

They want GATT now, not some noisy debate where folks might discover just what’s in it — and rebel.
...
America’s populists lost on NAFTA. But they cannot complain they did not get a hearing. Debate was full, fair, open and robust. On GATT, however, the media censors have choked off debate.
...
All of us believe in free trade among the 50 states. Most of us believe in free trade among compatible economies: America, Canada, Britain, etc. But forcing American workers earning $15 an hour into dog-eat-dog competition for jobs with Asians earning 25 cents an hour is wrong; it is a formula for Asia’s rise and America’s fall.

It is our country that is at stake in this GATT treaty.



http://buchanan.org/blog/the-isolationist-myth-165

The Isolationist Myth

by Patrick J. Buchanan – December 3, 1994

High among the falsehoods is that ‘free trade’ made America prosperous and protectionism always made her poor…

Poor Smoot and Hawley. They get it every time. During the closing hours of GATT debate, their names were everywhere: Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley, architects of that dreadful, ruinous tariff bill of 1931.

Smoot-Hawley, it was said, deepened — if it did not cause — the depression. Smoot-Hawley proved the folly of using tariffs to protect America. Smoot-Hawley made the case, forever, for free trade. GATT opponents were isolationists and protectionists in the Smoot-Hawley tradition. It was their forebears who made the world safe for fascism and laid the groundwork for WWII.

This is part and parcel of The Great Myth of the 20th century: That withdrawal of America’s armies from Europe after World War I, our refusal to ratify the Versailles peace treaty and our isolationism and protectionism in the ’20s and ’30s, made the world safe for fascism, Hitler and World War II. We Americans bear responsibility for those horrors. We are guilty! Therefore, we owe mankind reparations and must never again shirk our duties to the world.

This myth is the greatest of the “Blame America First” slanders. It is endlessly exploited, here and abroad, by men whose dreams have always been to leech out America’s reservoirs of blood and treasure for their own global ambitions.

[InterestedParticipant]

Just did a search on Buchanan and GATT. Found these (not recent):

"GATT is the Magna Carta of the Multinationals."

What a great comment, Pat, too bad it was from 1994. What happened to your manhood since then, eh?

So, why would someone come out so strong about this in 1994 and be silent about it now, when it is ripping our economic security to shreds? You'd think he and Schiff and others were just be railing about this.... but not a whisper.

What is going on?