America has to answer to people.  Not the people that hate us and are watching our every move, or the loudmouth liberals that shove their views down our throats, but we have a real obligation to abide by the rules of other entities not of our country.  We did not vote for these, nor do we benefit; in fact, rarely is it in our interest to follow the guidelines of their policies.  We have global organizations that tell us what we can and can not do. Sounds like a conspiracy theory about the global enslavement by the elite, unfortunately it is less intriguing and even worse.

We have a big issue with China pegging their currency, they do not allow their currency to float like the rest of the world. This is a violation.  A violation to whom, you may ask.  The World Trade Organization, the same organization that prevents us from raising tariffs on not only on China, but on every other country as well.  Why are we a member of such an organization?  Excellent question, we shouldn’t be.  America, and China, should be able to act in the best interest of our country with out having to answer for our decisions.  In fact there are many others as well: IMF, UN, G8, NATO, and even NAFTA, just to name a few.  I am not saying these are all bad,  I happen to be a fan of NAFTA, but a simple fact remains: supranational institutions reduce autonomy of national governments.

If the U.S. Government wants to contract Boeing to manufacture military jets, they should have every right to do so without worrying about EADS and AirBus (Boeing’s European competition) going to the WTO about our government paying Boeing to produce their 777 to the world at a lower price.  Why should we care what a European company says about our military contracts?  Yet, we do. We do because the WTO will come down on us with fees, trade penalties, and other legal action.  The fact that China pegs their currency is nobody’s business but China and their trading partners. If we would like to raise tariffs or supplement the manufacture of jumbo jets, that is only between us and our partners, or Boeing and their customers.  If a country like China wants to sell a product here for less money than it costs to produce, which is called dumping, it is up to our government to step in and create the necessary disincentives to combat that issue. Our entire federal government used to be paid in full by these fees before Woodrow Wilson introduced Income Tax.  (Just imagine how efficient our country ran then.) We have import quotas, and other mechanisms, we used on the Japanese car companies in the eighties.  Not that I am for all of these, but we should all agree trade should be fair.

Free trade is great, but what we have is not free trade, what we have is a half-formed mutant, Quasimodo version of it; and the fact that we belong to these organizations limits our ability to deal with it.  Strangely, as the leader of the free world, we have given up much of our sovereignty.  We have enough limitations to our ability to conduct business fairly and remain competitive around the globe with self imposed limitations: enter the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  No other country does as much to restrain domestic companies to give the rest of the world a shot.  We have more unilateral trade agreements (i.e. we give you a break because your economy is small and insignificant) than any other country on the globe. That is great as long as we are the ones calling the shots.  It is time for our leaders to do what is best for our country, not what is best for Zimbabwe.  The WTO does not own us, and we should not let them govern our trade policies.  How can we vote them out?