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Slowly our country is being globalized, to fit into the world marketplace. In the Trade Act of
1988, the Commerce Department was charged with the responsibility of instituting the
conversion to the metric system, which is now known as the International System. Federal law
now mandates that all products must list both metric and non-metric measurements. One world–
with one form of measurement.
The economy of the United States, which has been allowed to erode for years, began to
experience what may have been the beginning of the final assault, when the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was adopted. This two-volume document, nearly 1,100 pages
in length, which incorporates most of the provisions of the 1988 Canadian Free Trade Agreement
(CFTA), makes the United States, Canada, and Mexico unequal partners in trade. On December
31, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order #12662 which said, that regardless of
the constitutionality of decisions made by the bi-national committees of the CFTA, the United
States had to accept it.
When NAFTA was approved by Congress, more of our national sovereignty was given up to
Mexico. Since Mexican workers do not have minimum wage protection and do not have the right
to bargain collectively, the agreement has made Mexico fertile territory for American companies
to relocate, thus creating a huge loss of American jobs, and the exploitation of the Mexican
workforce. That is only part of the inequities that are contained in this agreement.
Since the inception of NAFTA (January 1, 1994), some of the initial results, were that net
exports to Mexico had fallen by nearly $500 million, our trade surplus with Mexico had been cut
in half, more than 230 companies had moved to Mexico, and there had been a tremendous
increase in America’s investment in Mexico. Mattel, the toy manufacturing giant, said that
NAFTA would create more American jobs, yet the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch reported
that they laid off 520 workers at their Medina, New York facility. The report further stated that
“As of mid-August 1995, the Department of Labor had certified 38,148 workers as having lost
their jobs to NAFTA.” Months later, the Clinton Administration reported that 127,000 jobs were
created by NAFTA (as of 2001, according to Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, research director of the North
American Integration & Development Center at University of California at Los Angeles, only
about 100,000 new jobs have been added), but what they didn’t reveal, was that a report by the
Joint Economic Committee of Congress indicated that the nation had lost 137,000 jobs (this total
had risen to 316,000 by 2001).
During the first nine months of 1994, our trade surplus with Mexico shrunk by 27 percent.
This report further said that this was “only the tip of the job displacement iceberg.” According to
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), NAFTA promoters said that 60,000 American manufactured cars
would be exported to Mexico in 1994, but only 28,000 were. Not only that, we ended up
importing 278,000 cars from Mexico.
The highly skilled, well-paying positions have gone to Mexico, while low-paying, lowskilled
jobs have been created in the United States. This stems from the fact that the raw
materials and parts are exported to Mexico, assembled, then imported back into the country at a
far greater value. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) said: “There’s also a conspiracy of silence on the
part of the Republican leadership in Congress who provided the votes needed to pass this
turkey.”
In 1848, Karl Marx said: “Free trade breaks up old nationalities ... in a word, the free trade
system hastens social revolution.” Henry Kissinger said that NAFTA represented “the most
creative step toward a New World Order.”
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) came into existence in 1947 as the