Free Republic

The leaders of the NAFTA nations -- President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Felipe Calderon -- will hardly be meeting as "Three Amigos" at their summit in Guadalajara tomorrow and Monday. Canada and Mexico have been particularly rattled not merely by the U. S. financial crisis but by the policies hatched to deal with it. Their economies were already being damaged by the United States' obsessive, if understandable, concerns with border security. Now even further damage is threatened by perverse climate-change and energy policies. The range of NAFTA concerns was expressed in a statement yesterday from the...

Those who seek to understand what's behind the chatter about President George W. Bush's Security and Prosperity Partnership as a possible prelude to a North American Union, similar to the European Union, should read the 35-page White Paper published recently by the Hudson Institute called "Negotiating North America: The Security and Prosperity Partnership." The Washington, D.C., think tank is blunt and detailed in describing where the Security and Prosperity Partnership is heading. Here's how Hudson defines the Security and Prosperity Partnership's goal: "The SPP process is the vehicle for the discussion of future arrangements for economic integration to create a...

With virtually no mention in the mainstream media, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez convened on June 15, the first meeting of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), an apparently extra-constitutional advisory group organized by the Department of Commerce (DOC) under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). A March 31 press release on the White House website, under the title “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America: Progress,” announced the formation of the NACC. The press release noted that the NACC would meet annually “with security and prosperity Ministers and will engage with senior government officials on an...