SURPRISE FOR OBAMA'S NORTH AMERICAN AGENDA
SURPRISE FOR OBAMA'S NORTH AMERICAN AGENDA
Now even Democrats question what president seeks
02/23/2014
JEROME R. CORSI
NEW YORK – President Obama’s own Democratic Party has impeded the globalist agenda at this week’s North American Leaders’ Summit Meeting at Tuloca, Mexico, the successor to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America that was launched by President George W. Bush.
The Los Angeles Times reported Obama and his two North American counterparts “made little progress Wednesday in boosting their ambitions plans to ease borders and expand into new frontiers.”
Forces within the Democratic Party seeking to protect jobs held back Obama in his daylong meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The setback came as congressional Democrats representing the interests of big labor succeeded in blocking a Democratic-controlled Senate in cohorts with GOP congressional leaders seeking to serve multi-national business interests from granting the Obama administration fast-track authority to push through Congress without debate or amendment the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The TPP is a massive new 12-nation global trade pact that WND has reported was designed to supersede NAFTA.
Additionally, environmental groups generally supportive of Democratic Party political interests have delayed an Obama administration decision on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline the Canadian government is seeking. It would transport to the United States increased exports of oil synthetically developed from the oil sands in Canada’s western Alberta Province.
This year, the trilateral summit in Mexico was further overshadowed by foreign policy crises involving political unrest and violence in Ukraine and Venezuela, and by political protests from the political left in Mexico objecting that the nation has been a “big loser” economically under NAFTA.
The position was articulated by Organización No Gubernamental, a Washington-based think tank with ties to the United Nations endorsed by Mexico’s leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PDR, and widely published in Mexico as the trilateral summit was taking placed.
In a dialogue unexpectedly abbreviated by Obama arriving in the afternoon and departing for Washington that evening, this year’s North American Leaders’ Summit Meeting was perhaps best characterized by the typical “promoting continental trade” rhetoric espoused by the three leaders at the joint press conference.
Even the press gaggle on the trip to Mexico held aboard Air Force One by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was dominated not by the North American Leaders’ Summit meeting but by reporters peppering Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes with questions about the Obama administration’s response to the Ukrainian political violence.
The major substantive advance at the Tuloca meeting appeared be through an executive order Obama signed at the White House before leaving for Mexico that streamlined import-export regulations with Mexico and Canada in the spirit of the “Year of Action” Obama declared in his 2014 State of the Union Address to Congress.
In his prepared remarks at the joint press conference, Obama emphasized not the trilateral milestones reached at Tuloca, but the importance of the TPP.
“We’ve agreed to keep working to complete negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, including strong protections for our workers and the environment, so that we can compete in the fast-growing markets of the Asia-Pacific,” Obama said.
“And because it will grow the U.S. economy and make the United States more attractive to investment, and because we have to do right by our families and our values, I’ve reiterated that immigration reform remains one of my highest priorities.”
The extent of the TPP setback can be measured by comparing Obama’s comments in Mexico with comments Secretary of State John Kerry made before the trilateral summit began.
In a joint press conference held in Washington Jan. 17 at the conclusion of a ministerial meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and Mexican Foreign Secretary Jose Antonio Meade, a reporter asked Kerry if the U.S. planned to reopen NAFTA to include direct negotiations with Mexico and Canada to avoid future conflicts between the TPP currently before Congress and the forthcoming Atlantic counterpart, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, still being negotiated with the Europeans.
Kerry’s surprising answer suggested that with the ratification by Congress of the TPP, the Obama administration already considers the United States, Mexico and Canada to be in a “post-NAFTA” world.
“I think that stepping up, all of us, to the TPP, is a very critical component of sort of moving to the next tier, post-NAFTA,” Kerry answered. “So I don’t think you have to open up NAFTA, per se, in order to achieve what we’re trying to achieve.”
While congressional Democrats concerned about labor unions losing jobs to free trade organizing to oppose TPP, WND has reported Republicans in the House are preparing to follow the lead of the White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to rubber-stamp the TPP.
On Jan. 27, WND reported an impressive group of 564 political analysts from labor, environmental, family-farm and community organizations sent Obama a strongly worded letter to the White House arguing that pushing the TPP, undermines the president’s message on income inequality.
In 2013, 151 House Democrats opposed to the TPP, led by Reps. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and George Miller, D-Calif., wrote a letter to President Obama stating their opposition to voting fast track authority.
GOP congressional leaders, in supporting the Obama administration on TPP, have ignored conservative objections to the massive new trade pact.
On Jan. 29, WND reported fully 68 percent of GOP respondents nationwide and an overwhelming 74 percent of GOP conservatives said they were “less likely” to vote for a member of Congress who supported giving President Obama fast-track negotiating authority on the TTP.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/surprise-for-obamas-north-american-agenda/#U4CxhTXA9F6UMBx0.99
