[uncitizen]

Where did you get the idea that protectionism is good and free trade is socialism? Have you completed Econ 1A yet?

[hedgetrimmer]

Have you read the thread? The WTO and the FTAA(free trade agreement of the americas) set up trade agreements to "eradicate poverty" through tax money giveaways like the Millenium Challenge fund and USAID.

They build into their agreements that the US and other "rich countries" will give money to the "least developed countries" and build up their roads, power supply systems, water supply and delivery systems, and develop infrastructure technologies like cellular phones and communications so the "least developed countries" can compete with us in the technology sector.

They say there can be no free trade, if the US doesn't bring the wealth level and standard of living up in the foreign countries to match ours. That is the reason you see "downward harmonization" of wages, labor,manufacturing and food safety laws in this country. That is also why you see these massive giveaway programs to foreign countries that don't go through Constitutional channels like Congress passing them.

The Millenium Challenge fund, in case you haven't heard about it was announced in Mexico in Monterrey at an International Finance summit in 2001. It was not announced to the American people so most people don't know it exists. Its sole purpose is to give our tax dollars away outside of Congressional foreign aid programs so that the money cannot be regulated by Congress or its use tracked by taxpayers. The money is a complete giveaway, not even a loan because the poor "least developed countries" want grants not loans because that would make them responsible to pay them.

Multinational corporations like this taxpayer giveaway because then they can use the infrastructure we build to hire foreign workers to take jobs that would be done in the US.

The words in quotes come frome their documentation and definitions, I did not make them up.



If that isn't socialism, I don't know what is.

One more thing, did you know the manufacturing powerhouse China is considered a "least developed countrY" They are surpassing the United States in every way in manufacturing, yet we still give them foreign aid and we allow business to trade with their closed market communist economy. Go figure.