To: IAHF LIST
Subject: Analysis of Bill That Gets USA OUT of WTO/CODEX!Call Congress Today: Urge Cosponsorship of HJR 90 (WTO GIVES CODEX TEETH- LETS PULL THE TEETH!)
From: John Hammell jham@iahf.com
Date: Sat, 03 Jun 2000 18:36:14 -0400

To: Congressman Boucher, Senator Warner,Senator Robb
From: John Hammell, President IAHF, POB 625 Floyd, VA 24091

Please cosponsor HJR 90 See my reasons plus detailed analysis of bill
below.

All Webmasters: Please post!

Everyone: If outside USA please forward to friends in the USA. Please distribute widely and call Congress today urging cosponsorship of HJR 90 which gets us out of the WTO. Forward the detailed analysis of the bill (below my comments) to them.

IAHF LIST: We have asked FDA attorney Melinda Plaisier for something she'll never give us: a detailed legal analysis of the loosely worded Federal Statute that implements the Uruguay Round of GATT, which gave us the pile of garbage known as the WTO, which provides CODEX with the TEETH to BITE any country that refuses to comply with the draconian vitamin "standards" they're in the process of sticking us with, then setting us up for forced harmonization to.

Plaisier will never respond to my letter, and my questions worry FDA so much they removed me from the US Codex Delegation to the CCNFSDU under false pretenses, libeling me all the while because they can't honestly answer my questions.

We BADLY NEED cosponsors on HJR 90 which gets the USA out of WTO. Please forward this analysis to your Congressman and Senators requesting that they cosponsor the bill and tell them WHY you want them to: you don't want to lose access to high potency vitamins due to CODEX, which the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body can force us to harmonize our laws to under threat of trade sanctions unless we pull out of the whole sick deal!

FDA Attorney Melinda Plaisier REFUSES to respond to our questions about the loosely written Federal Statute that implements GATT because she CAN'T! *If she DID honestly answer our questions calling for a detailed analysis of the scope and reach of that Federal Statute in light of our concerns, everyone would know she is LYING when she says that "Codex will NEVER impact American consumer's access to supplments." FDA is employing Hitler's Big Lie Technique: If you're going to lie, tell a HUGE Lie, and tell it often. After a while everyone will believe it. CRN and NNFA have joined FDA in telling this lie. Show this to the owner of your local health food store. If he belongs to NNFA, tell him you won't shop in his store any more unless he quits.

Analysis H.J.R. 90 (H.J.R. 89)

Withdrawing the Approval of the United States from the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization

I. Introduction

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established on January 1, 1995 under an agreement reached during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations. The Uruguay Round was the last of a series of periodic trade negotiations held under the auspices of the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). One of the most important changes that came from the Uruguay Round was its stronger dispute resolution and its creation as a permanent structure with "members" rather than "contracting parties." According to Congressional Research Service, "[a]s a member of the WTO, the United States does commit to act in accordance with the rules of the multilateral body. It is legally obligated to ensure national laws do not conflict with WTO rules."

Representative Ron Paul and four other members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced H.J.R. 90 on March 6, 2000 to withdraw the United States from the WTO. H.J.R. 90 was introduced pursuant to a clause in the legislation getting the U.S. into the WTO that was passed by Congress in 1994 during the lame duck session held after that year's elections. In order to gain approval of the initial WTO legislation, the sponsors agreed to add a provision allowing reconsideration of a positive vote to be designated as a privileged resolution. This means that H.J.R. 90 cannot be held up and allowed to die in committee. If requested by any member, there will be a floor vote during the 106th Congress.

II. Congress should act now to restore the original constitutional plan for regulating foreign commerce.

The United States was recently dealt a defeat in a tax dispute with the European Union by an unelected board of international bureaucrats. It seems that, according to the WTO, $2.2 billion of United States tax reductions for American businesses violates WTO's rules and must be eliminated by October 1 of this year. Questions of United States federal tax policy and regulation of foreign commerce are constitutionally-reserved to the United States Congress thus one must ask by what authority does the World Trade Organization assume jurisdiction over United States policy.

The Constitution requires that all appropriation bills originate in the House, and specified that only Congress have the power to lay and collect taxes. Taxation without representation was a predominant reason for America's fight for independence during the American Revolution. Yet, now we face an unconstitutional delegation of taxing authority to an unelected body of international bureaucrats.

Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution reserves to Congress alone the authority for regulating foreign commerce. According to Article II, section 2, it reserves to the Senate the sole power to ratify agreements, namely, treaties, between the United States government and other governments.

Instead, it is an egregious attack upon our national sovereignty, and this is the reason why we must vigorously oppose it. No nation can maintain its sovereignty if it surrenders its authority to an international collective. Since sovereignty and smaller rather than larger units of government are inextricably linked so closely to freedom, our very notion of American liberty is at stake in this issue.

The World Trade Organization is nothing other than a vehicle for managed trade whereby the politically connected get the benefits of exercising their position as a preferred group; preferred, that is, by the Washington and international political and bureaucratic establishments.

When the founding fathers of our country drafted the Constitution, they placed the treaty-making authority with the president and the Senate, but the authority to regulate commerce was placed with the House and Senate. The effects of this are obvious. As governmental units cannot "treaty away" authorities they don't have (for example, those reserved to the states) our constitution left us with a system that made no room for agreements regarding international trade.

Moreover, the authority to appropriate taxpayer funding for dues to such an international authority are far removed from the enumerated powers and itemized in Article I, Section 8.

The Constitution clearly allows for international agreements and clearly specifies the means by which they are to be accomplished. Treaties, quite clearly are to be negotiated by the president with advice and consent of the Senate and can only become effective upon being ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate. The Constitution, however, does not expressly confer authority to make international agreements other than by treaties and, of course, the tenth amendment specifies "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people." To ignore or allow the one branch of the federal government to delegate its powers to others destroys the liberty-protecting ability inherent to the constitutional separation of powers.

Congress does have, amongst its enumerated powers, regulation of commerce with foreign nations. Imposing import tariffs, quotas, and embargoes, however economically detrimental to the macro economy of the United States, are, at least, amongst powers delegated to Congress by Article I of the Constitution. Regulating commerce, of course, refers to enacting domestic laws that affect voluntary exchanges between trading partners who happen to be citizens of different governments. International agreements between the governments of those trading partners cannot be construed to escape the stringent treaty ratification process established by the document's framers just by suggesting Congress has the power to enact domestic regulation regarding foreign commerce. If this were an allowable justification for bypassing the constitutionally-mandated treaty process, Article I congressional powers would almost completely undermine the necessity for the constitutionally-mandated treaty process. Treaties regarding everything from international monetary policy to military policy would suddenly become "ripe" for the "treaty-making" power of the president and Congress. Instead, a bright line process exists whereby entering into agreements with foreign nations under which the U.S. government will do "X" if the government of Ruritania does "Y" must be understood to constitute an international agreement and, as such, require the more restrictive treaty process. Moreover, because international courts regard "treaties" and "agreements" as equally binding on signatory governments, a stronger case is made that they must be made subject to the same constitutional process.

III. H.J.R. 90 withdraws the United States from the World Trade Organization.

The text of the bill is statutory (as prescribed in the enacting legislation) and simply reads:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in congress assembled, That the Congress withdraws its approval, provided under section 101(a) of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, of the WTO Agreement as defined in section 2(9) of that Act.

IV. Conclusion

The arguments about the innocent nature and usefulness of WTO entanglements echo those foisted on the public at the time of the miscalculated attempt to launch the League of Nations and the decades- later launch of the United Nations. Is the additional layer of bureaucracy created by our membership in the WTO entirely benign and good for us? No.

Is our membership in the WTO a surrender of American sovereignty? Yes. It is an incremental surrender of our sovereignty and that is the worst kind – the kind that many people fail to recognize.