The World Trade Organization: Yielding US Sovereignty

Imagine an international organization having the right to decide which U.S. laws should be eliminated or not enforced. Imagine that organization imposing massive fines if the United States refuses to comply with its decisions. Imagine the United States having no veto over the operations of that organization. Imagine the President urging Congress to allow this to happen.

None of this imaginary. President Bill Clinton sent Congress legislation ratifying the Uruguay Round GATT trade agreement between the United States and 116 other nations creating a powerful new international body called the World Trade Organization (WTO). Today, only a handful of Senators and Members of Congress are even aware or have read the terms of the WTO, yet, the WTO charter is exceedingly clear about the sovereign powers the United States has surrendered.

For instance, the United States agreed to "ensure the conformity of its laws, regulations, and administrative procedures with its obligations as provided in the annexed Agreements."

This is a powerful commitment. It allows the WTO to review any federal, state or local law for compliance with international trade agreements. It also allows the WTO to demand that these laws be changed or not enforced. German auto companies, for example, have challenged U.S. fuel efficiency standards as violations of international trade agreements. If the Germans win at the WTO, the United States must either change its regulations or pay Germany up to $250 million a year.

The WTO can also challenge virtually any state law or program, including those that provide tax breaks, grants and incentives to companies that create new local jobs. Other nations consider these job programs to be an unfair trade practice. And once the WTO decides against the states, the federal government is obligated to enforce its ruling.

WTO rulings are decided by voting. The charter provides that each nation will have only one vote and none will have a veto. Thus, the vote of small countries, such as island nation of St. Kitts, will carry the same weight at the WTO as the United States.

This guarantees that WTO decision-making will be dominated by small and developing countries, which are more than 80 percent of the membership. A strong indicator of how these nations will vote in the WTO is how they vote in the UN -- 70 percent of them vote against the United States at least half the time.

The WTO charter also creates a global supreme court of trade that will adjudicate trade disputes between nations. This court will operate very differently from those in the United States. WTO judges, for example, shall be appointed by the WTO's Director General without the advice and consent of member nations. Many of these judges will come from WTO signatories such as Cuba, the Congo and Rwanda that operate under third world economic and political philosophies. Put another way, does anyone seriously believe that a judge from Cuba would ever rule in the favor of the United States?

The WTO charter, moreover, explicitly mandates that, all judicial proceedings shall be secret, all documents used in those proceedings shall be secret, all opinions expressed in any ruling shall be kept secret, and all votes by the individual judges shall also be secret. Most important, all WTO judicial decisions are final. This is not the due process and open justice that Americans expect.

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