U.S. Dairy Industry May Pull Support for Trans-Pacific Partnership
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On June 3, American dairy farmers and milk processors promised to work to thwart passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) if trade representatives from Japan and Canada do not agree to significantly increase the amount of dairy imported from the United States.

In a letter addressed to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) and the Department of Agriculture, a substantial consortium of U.S. dairy farmer cooperatives and dairy processing companies, all of which are members of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) or the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), “threatened to withdraw support” from the pending purported trade agreement if the two TPP partners “refuse to follow through on pledges to provide comprehensive market access for U.S. dairy products.”

Far from opposing the sovereignty surrender masquerading as a “free trade agreement,” the dairy industry brags in its letter of its work to make sure the treaty is passed and put into force.

“USDEC has been one of the most vocal champions of the importance of including Japan and Canada in TPP since these markets offer strong opportunities for our members to expand U.S. dairy exports,” stated Tom Suber, president of USDEC. 

“However, it is critical that their participation in TPP be meaningful and comprehensive across all dairy products. It is entirely unacceptable to have such sizable, sophisticated economies refusing to undertake the necessary openness that they agreed to upon entering TPP.” 

Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF, noted in a press release that, “As we have made clear in our letter to Ambassador Froman and Secretary Vilsack, we want to see very strong outcomes on market access with Japan and Canada, and our industry remains prepared to match the level of ambition of those countries. To be successful, any eventual TPP agreement must result in more open dairy markets in Japan and Canada.”

Given the frightening assault on American sovereignty and lawmaking power, it is surprising that domestic industry would work so hard to hand over control of regulatory authority to an international body of bureaucrats, all of whom will be unaccountable to the American people ostensibly served by the dairy industry.

While congressmen have been repeatedly stiff-armed by the USTR when they have tried to exercise some TPP oversight, there are over 600 industry lobbyists and “advisors,” as well as unelected trade representatives, seated at the negotiating table.

Each of the “partners” to the pact, including foreign corporations, would be exempted from abiding by American laws governing trade disputes. Moreover, the sovereignty of the United States and the Constitution’s enumeration of powers would once again be sacrificed on the altar of global government by subordinating U.S. laws passed by duly elected representatives of the people to a code of regulations created by a team of transnational bureaucrats.

Americans are right to worry about the dairy and milk-producing industry’s united call to demand their sector of the economy be artificially propped up by the passage of an overtly unconstitutional international agreement. 

President Obama must really like milk because the White House has made completion of the TPP one of the administration’s top priorities.

The “Fast Track” to Tyranny

Forbes reports, for example, that only President Obama can close the deal on the TPP. Part of that includes persuading Congress to “fast track” negotiation of the TPP, in the form of a Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill.

The TPA is a tool that the president demands be in the U.S. trade representative’s bag when he sits down with his colleagues from the other TPP participants. Again, from Forbes:

TPA or “fast track” is essential for the President to complete negotiations. Negotiators for our trading partners would be foolish to sign off on a treaty unless they knew that the Congress could not amend it.

And:

A TPA bill would allow the Trans Pacific Partnership Treaty, said to be in its final stages, to be completed and ratified. In addition to its trade and economic benefits, TPP is the most prominent piece of the Obama “pivot to Asia,” his attempt to exercise more leadership in the area.

Secret Surrender of Sovereignty

Despite the thick shroud of secrecy that has covered the TPP from the beginning, small glimpses of the gargantuan scope of the agreement have begun emerging.

In November 2013, portions of the TPP draft agreement published by WikiLeaks contained sketches of President Obama’s plans to surrender American sovereignty to international tribunals. 

Another WikiLeaks disclosure in January revealed that the president was attempting to surrender sovereignty over U.S. environmental policy to international bureaucrats interested in lowering those standards to mirror those of our TPP partner nations.

U.S. copyright laws, Internet freedom, and web-based publishing would also be obliterated by the TPP, and, although it hasn’t been widely reported, the TPP would give the global government sweeping surveillance powers, as well.

As with the multitude of similar trade pacts the United States has formed, the ultimate aim of the TPP is the creation of a regional supergovernment, thus the stonewalling of federal lawmakers who dare seek to assert some sort of oversight. 

Economic and Political Integration as a Step Toward Global Government

In the case of the TPP, the zone would be called the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). Members of the proposed “free trade” bloc include all the current TPP participants: Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Mexico, Chile, Canada, and the United States. The regional trading partnership is intended to establish “a comprehensive free trade agreement across the region.”

The ultimate goal of the TPP isn’t just the creation of an FTAAP, though. Supporters of the deal insist that the TPP is a “trade agreement designed to achieve broad liberalization and a high degree of economic integration among the parties.”

Integration is a word that is painful to the ears of constitutionalists and those unwilling to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a committee of globalists who are unelected by the American people and unaccountable to them. Integration is an internationalist tool for subordinating American law to the globalist bureaucracy at the United Nations. 

Economic and political integration will push the once independent United States of America into yet another collectivist bloc that will facilitate the complete dissolution of our country and our states into no more than subordinate outposts of a one-world government.

In another article examining the devastating effects of the TPP, The New American identified the end game for these globalists and their secretly planned trade pacts:

The architects and promoters of the TPP and FTAAP frequently point with admiration to the “integration” process of the European Union (EU) as the model they would like to see implemented for the Asia-Pacific rim nations. As with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been designed to follow the EU example of relentless widening and deepening, constantly eroding national sovereignty, while building “transnational governance” that is not restrained by the checks and balances of national constitutions.

Americans who study the subject realize that the redrawing of national boundaries and domestic legal processes being carried out in secret by the globalists sitting around the TPP negotiating table is an attack on American laws, American courts, American freedom of expression, American sovereignty, and the American Constitution.

The good men and women who toil long hours to provide Americans with milk and dairy products we all enjoy should immediately communicate with the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council that represent them and demand these industry lobbyists withdraw their support for the TPP and the eventual larceny of liberty it will commit.

Joe A. Wolverton, II, J.D. is a correspondent for The New American and travels nationwide speaking on nullification, the Second Amendment, the surveillance state, and other constitutional issues.  Follow him on Twitter @TNAJoeWolverton and he can be reached at [email protected].