Well, the President now has what he apparently wants most–bipartisan agreement. Only it’s against the bill he’s pushing. I wish someone had proofread the letter for typos though.

Of all the potential reasons to oppose the trade agreement (there’s nothing “free” about it), concern about the US having to abide by international agreements is the stupidest. By that logic, we should not comply with international conventions on torture, or against child labor or piracy. And the rational half of the US has always been strong supporters of international forums to adjudicate disagreements between nations. It’s an alternative to war. Good grief.

The problem isn’t these institutions. The problem, as always, is: what are the rules? Are they fair? Do the procedures give disagreeing parties a fair venue for resolution under just principles.

If I were fishing for right wing support I would, however, phrase it

as”Infringement on Merican Sovernighty”

However, as I understand it, some of those proposals in the bill that pertain to international tribunals trumping US law deal with US environmental and banking regulations which may now have to be more, err, “flexible.”

I applaud them both for their opposition. Some international agreements are terrible for everyone but a wealthy few.

I can hardly believe you’re saying this.

This agreement is going to give Korean corporations the status of nations to sue the US government in international courts for violations of NAFTA laws.

If we want to, say, regulate derivatives, and that’s against this treaty (and it is), corporations who want to assert that they have lost money they would have otherwise made can sue the US in WTO and UN courts.

If they win, US TAXPAYERS have to pay. We’ve already paid $400 million to companies in such cases. Our own courts have no authority over the judgments, and we’ve spent millions more defending those cases we’ve won. There are billions more in judgments pending.

Companies can also bring suit if we try to regulate land use for environmental purposes that causes them to “lose” money. Or if we try to encourage the adoption of green technologies in ways that make their products less profitable.

Who CAN’T bring suit? Labor unions. So the White House is currently withholding its support from the Steelworkers’ 301 petition to these tribunals, challenging the Chinese with NAFTA violations that are decimating the steel industry. Unless the US government brings the case, the Steelworkers don’t have the status to do so.

The reason banks like JP Morgan and Citi think it’s a good idea is because it restricts our ability to regulate them. George Bush worked hard to get that into the agreement in 2007, and Obama is adopting it whole hog in this one. We can’t bring back Glass-Steagel, for instance.

And it also creates a court above US courts, which the banks can control with a lot more ease than they can individual sovereign courts. Whose judgments we agree to submit to. So that it’s even beyond the ability of OUR justice system to get these monster banks under control.

You’re going to have to work for a very long time to convince me this isn’t just about the stupidest thing we could ever contemplate doing, Scarecrow.

Really! On both bipart. & typos.

Yeah, a really stupid letter. But waddaya expect from Paul.

The text of the letter is in the PDF, typos are mine, so if you’d like to point them out, I’ll be happy to fix them.

I agree wholeheartedly with every single thing said in the letter.

I think his argument is that “foreign tribunals” are a traditional reichwing bogeyman. I don’t think he was judging the merits of particular international institutions – just that they have to exist in some form, and you are right, this is structured to favor corporations, just like NAFTA was.

But Walter Jones has turned out to be a surprising ally on many issues.

I’m not disagreeing with the specifics of the letter. Just think he missed the forest for the trees, namely focusing on the legal aspects rather than on the influence of the agreement on the U.S. economy and U.S. workers. And therefore, his letter reads like a technical treatise that will convince no one.

But then, I’m sure Ron Paul doesn’t give a sh*t about losing 159,000 U.S. jobs.

eCAHNomics@12

Actually, Ron Paul cares a great deal about our economy and jobs. He just doesn’t equate jobs with unions and analyses it differently. He’d agree with every single thing Jane said, and has said similar things in the past about trade agreements we already have — the difference being that he might be thinking of different domestic laws that might be avoided. However, he did vote against the repeal of Glass-Steagel, because he thought the repeal would put a greater burden on tax payers, given the way the rest of the banking regulations were structured. You have a very two dimensional, not to mention incorrect, view of his positions.

Ron and Jane seem to have an ‘ignore where we disagree and work together where we agree’ type of attitude which seems productive. Personally, I endorse it.

This letter is a very important step in making sure that what’s happening with the tax deal on the right doesn’t happen on KORUS, i.e., the complete capitulation to corporate interests.

I’m delighted both Jones and Paul wrote it.

You have a very two dimensional, not to mention incorrect, view of his positions.

Gee, I musta come across sounding more favorable toward Paul than I intended. He seems a very one-dimensional kinda guy to me.

I have no problem working with those with whom I disagree on the intersections of areas of agreement & bow to Jane’s much greater knowledge of the politics of this than I have.

But if there’s a Ron Paul letter as a subject of a post to be commented on, do not expect me to withhold my opinion. As it is your option to school me if you wish.

The letter looks pretty straight forward to me. It gets to the point about the end-run-around our courts. Our sovereignty is impeded in this agreement. Quite a trade off to allow our manufacturers access to their market, in the future, with lesser fee’s.

This agreement is about “free” trade as much as our markets are “free” markets. The fact that I can go get a 3% down loan from the GSE”s after the largest real-estate bubble in history tells you something. I would argue that this bubble still exists. I think many would agree.

I will rant here but I find it ironic that in the push to make housing affordable for everyone, prices were pushed out of most people’s reach. I think the real relief for the American people now would be for government to pull all subsidy’s out of the real estate market. Prices would tumble! You would be able to afford a house on one income again! Everyone else, myself included, would eat their shirt though. The current homeowners get destroyed to allow for a new generation. Why should they pay for our mistakes? Housing used to be affordable. Homes should depreciate as they get older in most cases. Understandably land become more valuable but why the steady increase in value of very old houses? Inflation anyone? Wages go stale and costs go up. hard to miss in the past ten years. Now they say that the CPI is flat. Well I know that my bills are going up for food and energy. Must be because of the implosion of the real estate bubble that “costs” are down. Give me a break.

End rant. Sorry for the off topic response everyone. I enjoyed it though!

Ron Paul? I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

The implementation of a genuine free trade agreement is the simplest thing imaginable. All that it requires is that the government does nothing. Even the most incompetent government should be able to do nothing, right? All that is needed is a one paragraph pledge not to interfere with the efforts of your citizens to do business with one another. That’s it. A 1000 page free trade agreement just has to be a scam — 1000 pages of unfree trade agreements.

Jane, thank you for being the voice of reason, as usual. People really would do well to get over this ideological blindness about individuals and their ideas. Ron Paul has a lot of good ideas. Like being against our imperial ambitions abroad, like limiting the power of the federal government. The left does not have a lock on good ideas or principles. This is how the power elite divides us, by enabling us to demonize one another and turn people into cartoon characters. Like the Greens and Blues in Byzantium. It’s not productive. I agree with everything said in the letter and what does that make me, fellow lefties? All these kinds of agreements do is take more jobs away from Americans and help emerging nations and our own rapine ruling class destroy our economy so we can all go back to the Dark Ages and live like serfs, which we are, to a large extent doing now. Globalization is the new enclosure, a plan designed to make the rich richer and the rest of us on an equal level of poverty and powerlessness. ‘Free’ trade is not free at all, it’s a lie, designed to help the rich get richer, well you get the picture. Politicians talk about how it is making a middle class in China and other emerging nations. No it’s not. What it is doing is creating a few billionaires. There are riots in China because most people are getting poorer, not richer. It is all a lie. Notice how our leaders can’t predict when jobs are coming back, because they know they are not. Notice how people are losing their homes, their hard earned benefits and livelihoods? Don’t get fooled again.

Rep. Ron Paul & Rep. Walter Jones are absolutely right on this. Supreme law of the land for whatever commerce happens on the United States shores is US Constitution. Absolutely not some foreign corporation.

I hope we are not trying to create by mistake a feudal system of corporations controlled by wall street transcending democratic nation states. This is what Rep Ron Paul and Rep Walter Jones are trying to object to.

Typo corrections (line numbers refer to the main text of the online version only):

Line 5: This act => This pact

Line 9: United States mst => United States must

Line 10: directly ue => directly sue

Line 11: Those provisions => These provisions

Line 12: Such forms => Such firms

I also agree with the letter. Paul and Jones appear to be well aware that their views on economics are, to put it mildly, outside the mainstream (so are mine, although in a different direction!). So, in this letter, they never actually assert the truth or moral validity of those views. Instead, they concentrate on exposing the Orwellian deceit involved in the Obama Administration’s description of their proposed KORUS agreement as a “free trade” pact.

Their first paragraph denies that KORUS meets any definition of free trade that can be derived from the works of the classical theorists of free trade, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Their second and third paragraphs emphasize that KORUS would undermine US sovereignty, and would do so in ways that:

1. Have been intentionally obfuscated;

2. Would violate safeguards against such preemption in the US Constitution;

3. Would violate guarantees of the rights of both individuals and states in the US Constitution;

4. Would subvert and bypass the power of US courts in favor of foreign tribunals;

5. Have been intentionally designed to favor foreign corporations, investors, and governments, giving them privileges they do not presently possess, and creating new legal processes for transfer of US government funds to them.

Does anyone on Firedoglake really disagree with any part of Paul and Jones’s characterization of the true nature and effect of KORUS, or with my paraphrase thereof? You can agree with every word they say in this letter without subscribing to any of their far-out libertarian economic beliefs.

Your argument makes some good points of a kind that might not strike Paul and Jones as important, but are consistent with the points they do make. The leftwing spin is that KORUS will not merely privilege foreign corporations, investors, and governments; it will also, and by the same mechanisms, impair the ability of our government to use its sovereign powers to work for economic justice and environmental protection within the United States.

I’m a one-worlder, a world federalist. I believe it will ultimately be necessary for the United States to cede its sovereignty substantially to a world government, just as the governments of our original thirteen states found it necessary to cede sovereignty substantially (although, in theory, not totally) to the government of the United States, by adoption of the Constitution. The founders of our republic had to defend themselves against the charge that the Constitutional Convention had exceeded its authority; they did so essentially by admitting the truth of the charge, but pleading exigent necessity. Someday, the United States delegates to a World Constitutional Convention will likely need to present such a defense to the government in Washington.

Even today, without a comprehensive world government, there are important cases where existing international law can be a powerful force for good. I believe it would be a step forward for George W. Bush to be tried abroad for war crimes, or for Judge Soud (of “rocket docket” fame) to be tried abroad for human rights violations pertaining to judicial complicity in foreclosure fraud.

Even these very strong internationalist views, however – which probably go much further than the statistical norm even on Firedoglake – do not imply that any and every expansion of international authority is a good thing. The use of foreign tribunals under KORUS to play off the people of Korea and the United States against each other, and to allow corporations and foreign governments enhanced looting privileges vis-a-vis the people of the United States, would be a travesty of international law. The moral authority of a legal instition is lost when it regularly acts as extortionist muscle to facilitate corporate shakedowns; and even more so when it is designed from the start principally or solely for that purpose. Until we have a functioning world government, the sovereignty of the United States plays an important role in the protection of our people from oppression, and any international agreements that might limit that sovereignty must be examined carefully to determine what interests they serve.