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NAFTA--Not a Treaty

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Anonymous

Guest
Sandhusker-- it appears as tho some Congressmen got reminded that NAFTA is not a "treaty"--but only a law-- that can be altered or removed with amendments or another law..... :wink: :lol:

WND reported last week Cornyn's offer of a side-by-side amendment to defeat an amendment by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., to remove funding from the Fiscal Year 2008 Department of Transportation appropriations bill for the department's trucking demonstration project to allow Mexican trucks on U.S. highways.

During the debate, Cornyn offered a mistaken argument from the Senate floor that the U.S. had a "treaty obligation" under the North American Free Trade Act to allow Mexican trucks into the U.S.

The Senate never passed NAFTA as a treaty. Lacking the two-thirds vote needed for passage of a treaty in the Senate, President Clinton submitted NAFTA to Congress as a law.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57672

Under United States law it is classed as a congressional-executive agreement rather than a treaty, reflecting a peculiar sense of the term "treaty" in United States constitutional law that is not followed by international law or the laws of other nations....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agreement

Government-managed trade, not free trade
Milton Friedman (Nobel Prize winning economist and former Reagan advisor) has argued that the North American Free Trade Agreement is actually not a "free trade" agreement, but rather is government managed trade. The essence of this criticism is that such trade agreements don't promote free trade, they inhibit it by implementing another level of bureaucracy on top of national governments. This can not only have a detrimental effect on trade, it results in an erosion of sovereignty for all nations involved and causes citizens and governments to be bound by decisions made by an unelected international body.
 
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Anonymous

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Drogan's Distinction . . . NAFTA: Treaty vs. Law



Daneen G. Peterson, Ph.D.

American Chronicle

October 1, 2007



What follows is about the Senate vote on the stopping the Mexican truck invasion under NAFTA . . . Bush has said he will veto it. Ergo, MANY voted 'yea' on 9/11/07 to CYA and make brownie points. The REAL proof in the pudding will be HOW or IF they vote to overturn the veto. I'm predicting that they WON'T overturn the veto. That way they are 'ollie, ollie home free' and smelling like a rose. The trucks will roll and they can prove they voted against them.



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From my perspective the MOST SIGNIFICANT statements to come out of the Corsi article were THESE:



"Repeatedly, in arguing from the floor of the Senate for his amendment, Cornyn [R-TX] mischaracterized NAFTA as having created a "treaty obligation" requiring the United States to allow Mexican trucks free access to U.S. roads."(1)



"Dorgan [D-ND] objected, pointing out that NAFTA was passed in 1993 as a law, not a treaty."(1)


Why is that distinction important? For two very good reasons:



One is that the dictionary definition of a treaty is: a) "a formal agreement between two or more nations, relating to peace, alliance, trade, etc., b) the document embodying such an agreement" (i.e., NAFTA).



Secondly, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of our Constitution states: "He [the President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur;" of course the President NEVER GOT THAT PERMISSION.


The second set of significant statements were these, also made by Dorgan (my hero) in a news release:



"Tonight, commerce – for a change – did not trump safety. . . . It also represents a turning of the tide on the senseless, headlong rush this country has been engaged in for some time, to dismantle safety standards and a quality of life it took generations to achieve.



I KNOW that they have only just begun that dismantling because that is what the SPP (Security Prosperity Partnership) is all about. Thay are 'harmonizing' our regulatory law into oblivian to accommodate the Corporate Oligarchy.


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Re: Vicky Davis: Very good information, thanks, as you cleared up some questions I had about treaties. I understood that the Supreme Court ruled that treaties supercede the Constitution also! So what is the bottom line here? Is NAFTA law or treaty? If it is law, Marbury vs Madison would make it null and void because it is repugnant to the constitution.


"Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void."


americanchronicle.com
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Maybe the day of the neo conservative and neo Liberal are waning...Folks waking up to the fact that you only get one chance to sell your country- and we need to save what GW hasn't already sold out on us :( :( :mad:

Republicans Grow Skeptical On Free Trade
By JOHN HARWOOD
October 4, 2007; Page A1

WASHINGTON -- By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy, a shift in opinion that mirrors Democratic views and suggests trade deals could face high hurdles under a new president.

The sign of broadening resistance to globalization came in a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News Poll that showed a fraying of Republican Party orthodoxy on the economy. While 60% of respondents said they want the next president and Congress to continue cutting taxes, 32% said it's time for some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to reduce the budget deficit and pay for health care.

Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush's calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.

"It's a lot harder to sell the free-trade message to Republicans," said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Democratic counterpart Peter Hart. The poll comes ahead of the Oct. 9 Republican presidential debate in Michigan sponsored by the Journal and the CNBC and MSNBC television networks.

The leading Republican candidates are still trying to promote free trade. "Our philosophy has to be not how many protectionist measures can we put in place, but how do we invent new things to sell" abroad, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in a recent interview. "That's the view of the future. What [protectionists] are trying to do is lock in the inadequacies of the past."

Such a stance is sure to face a challenge in the 2008 general election. Though President Bill Clinton famously steered the Democratic Party toward a less-protectionist bent and promoted the North American Free Trade Agreement, his wife and the current Democratic front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has adopted more skeptical rhetoric. Mrs. Clinton has come out against a U.S. trade deal with South Korea.

Other leading Democrats have been harshly critical of trade expansion, pleasing their party's labor-union backers. In a March 2007 WSJ/NBC poll, before recent scandals involving tainted imports, 54% of Democratic voters said free-trade agreements have hurt the U.S., compared with 21% who said they have helped.

While rank-and-file Democrats have long blasted the impact of trade on American jobs, slipping support among Republicans represents a fresh warning sign for free-market conservatives and American companies such as manufacturers and financial firms that benefit from markets opening abroad.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119144942897748150.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news
 
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