Why did the US allow trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT which put corporations interests above the US's?

Glynda Darrin: Corporation: n. "that inglorious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, Neale Publishing Co: 1911Greed: n. "excessive, inordinate or rapacious desire, esp. for wealth . .. . when unqualified, suggests a craving for food; it may, however, be applied to all avid desires ..." - The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (Unabridged Edition), Random House: 1967...Show more

Jestine Osumi: ask bill clinton the so called greatest president our country has ever seen. hahaha. my question is how do they keep getting votes?

Inell Riesgo: Bush is the dictator of a war torn nation.Ask him

Caterina Yeargan: No, clinton did not start this. It's been shaping up for the last half century.The accurate answer to your question is two fold:1. American government is entirely directed by Big Business. Ever heard about lobbying?2. While people in various countries still cling ! to the idea of Nationalism, in the real world, people are becoming one entity because of international business. I predict that if we survive the next fifty years, we will end up with a single world government. Like it or lump it, that's the logical evolution of our world.________________I knew you wouldn't like the answer.For the historical record: Bush Senior first enlisted our country into Nafta. Sorry if that upsets your little anti-Clinton spin, but truth is truth.... even in Republicanville.And just to really annoy you, here's the history from an encyclopedia:The North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA called for immediately eliminating duties on the majority of tariffs between products traded among the United States, Canada and Mexico, and gradually phasing out other tariffs over a 15-year period. Restrictions were to be removed from many categories, including motor vehicles and automotive parts, computers, textiles, and agriculture. The treaty also protected intel! lectual property rights (patents, copyrights, and trademarks),! and outlined the removal of investment restrictions among the three countries. The agreement is trilateral in nature (that is, the stipulations apply equally to all three countries) in all areas except agriculture, in which stipulation, tariff reduction phase-out periods and protection of selected industries, were negotiated bilaterally. Provisions regarding worker and environmental protection were added later as a result of supplemental agreements signed in 1993.This agreement was an expansion of the earlier Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1988. Unlike the European Union, NAFTA does not create a set of supranational governmental bodies, nor does it create a body of law superior to national law. NAFTA is a treaty under international law. Under United States law it is classed as a congressional-executive agreement rather than a treaty, reflecting a peculiar sense of the term "treaty" in United States constitutional law that is not followed by international law or the la! ws of other nations.Read it and weep my brainwashed friend.......Show more

Catheryn Small: Ask the Honorable William Jefferson Clinton who got the ball rolling on this one, he would know the answer.

Virgilio Echter: I think that NAFTA is great for the little people in America. Only because of the NAFTA agreement are we able to see prices on many commodities stablize at affordable levels. All kinds of .99 cent and one-dollars stores have cropped-up throughout the nation soley because NAFTA enables them to buy wholesale items so cheaply abroad, that it enables them to pass the savings on to underclass, and working class Americans. While the Corporate oil and computer barrons (etc) don't need lower prices, many of the rest of us, really appreciate being able to stock our cupboards with quality ninty-nine cents items and other cost saving items from forward-thinking merchants like WalMart. I say, thank God for NAFTA. Otherwise, we'd see prices on commodities we use ! daily, increase in cost, just like the price of fuel. This type of comp! etition is not only good for America and it's citizens, but it is essential!...Show more

Giovanni Malool: Corporations are transnational, with no real allegiance to their country of origin. All they care about is the bottom line. So of course they'll buy politicians to give them the trade agreements that benefit THEM, even if they're to the detriment of the American people and to our economy.

Karey Dunken: Because big business is manipulating politics and trying to turn not only America, but the entire world, into one big corporate capitalist tyranny, also known as a "plutocracy." In my mind it's not "corporations versus national interest," but "capitalist elites versus the worldwide working class, whether American, European, Latin American, African, Asian, or whatever.Workers of the world unite!...Show more

Rocio Karvis: I guess this depends on your point of view. NAFTA is a piece of legislation that I wholeheartedly support. Free trade (that actually! is free, unlike with China that uses slave labor to produce goods) is great for America and the worldwide economy. For example, Pirates of the Caribbean series will make more money off of its franchise worldwide then it will pull in domestically. Which in turn helps put the domestic stockholders that own shares in the company that produces the movies. It appears that the asker has a set point of view and is looking for people that support his point of view or wish to expound upon it. I suppose he likes the fact that we as a country charge ridiculous amounts in the form of a tariff on Steel from Japan that is not only cheaper, it is of a higher quality. This is to protect the US Steel Industry (namely US corporations who have failed to modernize their steel mills like the Japanese had the foresight to do)....Show more

Blaine Connett: because money talks, especially when it flows from corporations into the coiffers of re-election campaigns... with strings attached, ! of course.

Torrie Weissenbach: People died in New Orleans because! local, state and federal agencies responsible for disaster planning and execution failed miserably. As for property damage, if the Corps could not build levees that withstood the high water, do you really think the far more expensive flood gates would have done the trick? As for the WTC, those 2700 people died at the hands of terrorists, not environmentalists. 43,000 Americans have died since 1979 due to asbestosis. Virtually all exposed before then. Continued use of asbestos in construction would have continued the cycle of this miserable disease. Say a blessing to the environmentalists who likely saved your children and grandchildren from disability and death, and put your outrage where it belongs - on terrorists who kill people....Show more

Mee Blumenfeld: You are quite wrong. Do you want American families to have to pay more for goods and services? Do you want American industries to be uncompetitive in the export market because they have to pay high tariffs (ta! xes) to buy inputs for their goods.Sam Rayburn - a Democrat - and the longest serving Speaker of the US House of Representatives knew how stupid the tariff was. He grew up dirt poor in Texas. He opposed the Republicans for, among other things, protectionism - "the robber tariff, the most indefensible system that the world has ever known." He said the Republican Party tricked farmers into supporting the tariff, so that the rich "fatten their already swollen purses with more ill-gotten gains wrung from the horny hands of the toiling masses".Protectionist tariffs - before the Great Depression was accelerated from bad to worse by the Hawley-Smoot Tariff - were a central commitment of the Republicans. Sam Rayburn understood the evil of the tariff well, and he understood that it was a central cause of the Great Depression and that it enriched the rich at the expense of the poor and he stuck to his guns even when President Hoover pointed out that Rayburn's views meant that Ame! ricans had to compete with cheap foreign labor. Rayburn did not buy th! at because he knew how talented and productive the American worker was and indeed, is.The Democrats saw that the best way to crush “trusts and combinations which, while unduly enriching the few that combine, rob the body of our citizens by depriving them of the benefits of natural competition” was to support free trade to widen the range of competitors.President Grover Cleveland understood the central need to discipline the corporations through free trade.America has done well in international competition. The American consumer has done extraordinarily well.So I completely disagree with you. It is only if you want Americans to be at work as blacksmiths and buggy makers that you would want to have an uncompetitive economy. It is what they had in the old Soviet Union. See the brilliant German movie - "The Lives of Others"....Show more

Chris Rosenkranz: Guess you would have to ask Slick Willy for the logic on this one. He sold out the country when he signed the N! AFTA agreement.

Bell Pasco: The idea behind things like these is to bring prosperity to our country. However as always greed gets in the way and only a few people are enjoying the benefits of these deals. Just imagine if these huge corporations actually tried to help their employees and country instead of worrying where on the Forbes list they will end up at the next year. The problem with these situations...Oil, free trade, etc... is the greed of the people making the deals. I have no problem with them making tons of money off these deals, but to the extent that they are greedly taking the money is absurd. It almost makes communisim sound like a good idea. I went back and looked at the Forbes list from 10 years ago...there were 2 billionaires..now I think the first 35 or 40 are billionaires and the rest are right behind. How much is too much...what do these people need ALL this money for? Bill Gates, worth 56 billion and he gave 9.5 million to some charity..! ..am I suppose to think he did a great thing? That isnt even pocket ch! ange for him...that is what he puts in his penny bank at the end of the day after he sorts out the real change. Give a Billion and I will be impressed. Its all greed and I have said it since day one on here and for years prior... Greed will bring the end to this great land and most likely the world....Show more

Adam Momaya: Haven't you noticed yet that the benefit of the citizens of the U.S. is no longer an issue? That is why all of the political crap people come up with about "libs" and "cons" is so ridiculously laughable on both sides. That is also why you hear so much about liberals being socialists. Instead of trying to keep our manufacturing plants on our soil, they can only come up with social programs to equalize the wealth. That is why the conservatives are considered fascists. Instead of even talking about the fallicy of the trickle down economy, they promote corporate welfare and encourage the dependence of the U.S. citizens on foriegn goods to our o! wn detriment. Instead of improving our lives, they are downgrading us. Both parties....Show more