Congress Screws America Again
by Jim Palmer of ALIPAC

Oman Free Trade Deal Passes
Friday July 21, 2006

Free trade with the Middle East sounds good in theory. The United States of America gains some much needed political support in the Middle East and they in return get to buy more American Products and we get to sell more American products. The tariffs are lifted and all is happy.

That would be a simple and utopian ideal of a Fair Trade Agreement but the Oman not to be confused with Omen which sounds eerily close and may not have much of a difference in definition when you consider the problems with the Oman Free Trade Agreement (OFTA).

A little research on the net and it is easy to find some of the problems with OFTA. According to Democracy for New HampshireOFTA has the following problems:

OFTA is worse than NAFTA and CAFTA in two ways. First, it restricts access to medicines for national health emergencies, such as HIV/AIDS, even more severely than CAFTA does.

Additionally, it goes even further than NAFTA and CAFTA in explicitly giving foreign investors the right to challenge virtually any U.S. government decision about a federal contract, lease or concession agreement. Areas covered include natural resource contracts (including exploration, extraction, refining, transportation, distribution, or sale); services contracts (including power generation or distribution, water treatment or distribution, or telecommunication); and infrastructure projects (including construction of roads, bridges, canals, dams, or pipelines).

Under such rules, the United States would have had to pay Dubai Ports World millions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars for cancelling that company’s contract to run U.S. ports.

That’s right your members of Congress voted to make you pay for wanting to have secure ports and not have potential terrorists running them. They have in essence given control of our nation’s infrastructure to foreign entities.

The New American goes even further in explaining some of the problems with OFTA:
• The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens American jobs. For example, AMTAC (American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition) states that the agreement includes a ridiculously large tariff preference level (TPL) of 50 million square meters of textiles annually for 10 years, which will mean that Chinese yarns and fabrics will be shipped to Oman, cut and sewn into garments and then exported duty-free to the U.S.

• The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens national security. . As reported on the Lou Dobbs Tonight show of June 28, "Under the Oman free trade agreement, foreign port operators would have a right, an absolute trade agreement right, to establish operations, to acquire, to operate, to run port facilities within the U.S." Under the "Cross Border Trade in Services" chapter of the U.S.-Oman FTA, a Dubai Ports World-type enterprise could acquire a company in Oman, and then operate U.S. ports through that company.

• The U.S.-Oman FTA threatens our national independence. . Just as a European-wide free trade agreement has led to the loss of sovereignty of European nations to the European Union, and just as NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area) is now being converted into a sovereignty-destroying North American Union through the creation last year of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America, the U.S.-Oman FTA is designed to help bring about a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA), which would be another sovereignty-destroying, supranational organization to which the U.S. would belong.

OFTA is also said not to be much help in the regulation of labor, meaning that those who do the work to produce the products can be mistreated and underpaid and be refused access to medications. It is reminiscent of slavery or perhaps the medieval times when the Kings, Lords and Barons controlled the wealth while the peasants worked to pay their taxes and a meager portion food while living on land they could not own.

Of course we don’t have to worry about that here; this is The United States of America. Oh but wait, we just signed away more of our Authority, our Sovereignty and our National Security.

Not surprisingly most of those who supported the Central Free trade Agreement (CAFTA) also supported the Oman FTA even further back most of those who supported CAFTA also supported North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). You can see how your Congressional Representative voted at www.Congress.gov

We have yet to see all the damage done by CAFTA, but I can tell you that since it has passed, it has been very difficult to find any textiles in the local Wal-Mart that doesn’t come from a CAFTA Country. Funny, how fast it has seemed to have taken place almost like everything was already in place before the deal even passed.

I was happy to find some socks there made by Hanes that are Made in the USA, but even many of Hanes Products are made outside of the USA. The facts of NAFTA speak for themselves; between 1994 & 2004 the United StatesTextile and Garment Industry lost nearly 1 million jobs.

The hardest pill for me to swallow is the logic of those who passed OFTA, CAFTA knowing what damage NAFTA had done and is still doing to our nation. At the same time those very people are all up in arms about the Illegal alien (immigration) debate.

They say that we need to protect our borders, create stronger laws to prevent illegal alien criminals from crossing our borders; we need to impose and enforce penalties against employers who hire them, yet at the same time they give up our national sovereignty through Free Trade Agreements.

These agreements will allow them to bring workers from their respective countries instead of hiring American Citizens. These agreements legalize the importation of more foreigners. It circumvents any immigration laws that are passed and basically erases our borders.

It’s not all doom and gloom. We have some hope. The elections are in November. Be sure to see how your representative voted and then vote for them accordingly. Call them and email them and tell them to repeal this legislation and stop voting for more Trade Agreements until they can have balance. Tell them to stop destroying the United States of America.