Free Trade is the Weapon of Mass Destruction being used to crush the American Middle Class.  Our government officials have sold out the American people through the trade agreements that they've signed.  The multinational corporations are making staggering profits by exporting knowledge jobs and production to where they can pay the lowest wages and they are importing their products and services to sell at developed world prices.  The net effect is to drain the U.S. economy, shifting the wealth of our nation to the multinationals corporations and to the foreign countries who are the beneficiaries of the 'meat' of economic activity - jobs.  

Free Trade in theory sounds good except for one thing - what's being promoted as 'Free Trade' isn't free trade at all.  It is managed trade with the trade negotiators choosing the winners and losers.  In giving Trade Promotion Authority to the past several presidents, the Congress has provided the means for America to be sold out from under us.  In each Trade Round, sovereignty over our nation, our economy and our lives is being given over to the United Nations and the multinational corporations.  In exchange for the sovereignty of our nation, the multinational corporations are allowed market access to the third world countries - especially China for our manufacturing sector and India for our knowledge economy.  Our national economic assets are being sold to allow the multinational corporations market access to countries where they can obtain the cheapest labor in the world.  Cheap goods from Walmart don't make up for the loss of manufacturing and the loss of knowledge jobs.  All it does is make us dependent on China and India - while creating poverty in our country.

The proponents of managed trade (I'm not going to call it free trade - because it isn't) claim that it is good for our economy.  But cheap imported goods don't make up for the loss in our standard of living.  The infrastructure and the cost of living in developed nations is much greater than in the un- and underdeveloped nations.   Since the population of unused labor in countries like China and India is greater than our ENTIRE population, there is no way for Americans to compete on wages other than to drop them to the same level or lower than in those countries..  That is why jobs are leaving this country.  The only way to compete in this rigged game of 'free trade' will be to drop our standard of living down to the levels of the third world.  That means dismantling our infrastructure because we won't have the tax base to pay for it.  As we dismantle our infrastructure, we will become even less able to compete.  

You might ask, "but aren't the corporations killing their own customer base?  American employees are also American customers".  The answer is yes, but the greed that drives each corporation to make their individual business decisions does not allow them to look at the big picture.  They look only at their bottom line.  So as one corporation reduces costs by exporting jobs, their competitors must follow suit.  The net effect is to cannibalize the U.S. economy in waves of layoffs and exports of jobs.  It is a race to the bottom.

To facilitate the process of driving wages down - to help corporations 'compete', Congress has effectively turned immigration control over to corporations.  In fact, George Bush is going to implement a government website to aid corporations in finding foreign workers to import to the U.S.  Obviously, every foreign worker in this country is displacing an American worker and each new wave of foreigners drives wages down even further.

Corporations, trade associations and our government are waging a propaganda campaign that puts Hitler's Big Lie to shame.  We have population of over 300 million but we are told on a daily basis that we have shortages in every profession and occupation from dishwashers and maids; to scientists and teachers; to ski patrol experts and construction workers.  We are told that the American people are lazy and won't work.  We are told that Americans are uneducated and stupid.  Name the occupation and there will be news articles somewhere that says we have a shortage of 'qualified' people.  The propaganda by the Treason Lobbies attempt to justify the massive invasion of our country by illegal aliens and to provide cover for the corporations who are importing foreigners on Visa to replace American Citizens in the labor market.  It is government sponsored labor arbitrage.

In the past, it was the treason lobby on the left that promoted and supported the illegal invasion of our country from the south while the treason lobby on the right pushed for visas for imported foreign workers but George Bush has changed all that.  George Bush supports both treason lobbies.
 

Why?

The obvious reason seems to be that because corporations control our political process, they buy the votes of politicians with campaign contributions.  Often they contribute to both parties - but they give one party more than the other, or one politician more than the other.  The most powerful members in Congress get the most money.  Any politicians who do not play the game, feel the wrath of corporations at election time, when the money that would have gone to them, is used against them. In that way, politicians are locked into a system (throw me in the briar patch says briar rabbit) in which they must be responsive only to their corporate contributors which by definition is against the interests of citizens.  

But that's not the reason.  That has only been a means to accomplish the real goal which is Pan America through the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement ( FTAA).  The FTAA is the dissolution of the United States of America.  It is integration of the economies, security and legal structure with other countries on the North American Continent.   It is the Can-American-O version of the European Union.