In the Spring 2024 issue of Free Society, a magazine published by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, they introduced their Defending Globalization Project. Scott Lincicome is Vice President of General Economics at Herbert A. Stiefel Trade Policy Center. As the magazine says, “Scott Lincicome is leading this Institute-wide effort to make the case for the free movement of goods, money, ideas, and workers across borders and to make it convincing for every kind of audience across all generations and ideological leanings. This project is designed to move public opinion and renew the policymaking consensus in Washington that global interdependence isn’t just a matter of good economics- it’s good morals.” This is a position that has been commonly held amongst libertarian minded individuals, as well as other conservatives right of center. The idea is that international free trade is always the best in all situations, and it always leads to the betterment of all parties involved.
Dr. Lewis Lloyd originally felt the same way about free trade. After taking some time to think things through he changed his mind. In 1955 he wrote the book “Tariffs the Case for Protectionism.” He realized that in order for all countries of the world to have free trade, eight principles must be in place: Taxes must be comparable, a single monetary system must be in use, there must be uniform business laws, similar business ethics, uniform wage rates, maximum labor mobility across national borders, freedom from the threat of war, and lastly, all of these rules would need to be enforced by a world government. Individuals who are devoted to the cause of free trade might defend these principles as desirable, but when taking the best interests of the United States into account, the opposite is actually true!
The debate over free trade is nothing new to the United States. In fact, this debate has been going on since shortly after our founding. Thomas Jefferson originally was a strong supporter of free trade, but he quickly became a protectionist after seeing the realities of the world leading up to the War of 1812. Alexander Hamilton also had similar feelings. In his book, Dr. Lloyd states, “But it is important to realize that many of the staunchest supporters of free trade, including Hamilton, appreciated the practical limitations of the theory. They saw that free trade can succeed only when applied within the boundaries of a community ruled by substantially the same laws. In his famous “Report on Manufacturers”, presented to congress in 1790, Hamilton strongly urged protective tariffs on manufactured products in contrast to his endorsement of free trade at home. He was apparently convinced that the free-trade area set up within the United States could develop its full potential only if protective tariffs were used to defend it against economic exploitation by other nations. Thus, he proposed tariffs to defend free trade within our own free markets. Hamilton argued that the United Stated could attain a better balanced, more stable, more sustaining economy, better balanced for defense and national security, under a system of protective tariffs. He was concerned with the fact that the United States might remain a raw material supply area for Great Britain, as the colonies had been, making them fully dependent on the mother country for all manufactured goods. He wanted diversification for the nation, just as many private enterprises today seek stability through diversification.”
As we can see, free trade is not always the most beneficial option to the parties involved, especially if there is a threat of war as was mentioned previously. He goes on to state:
“The War of 1812 taught the new country many costly and bitter lessons. The war was the culmination of an attempt by Great Britain to drive American shipping from the seas and make the young republic entirely dependent on Europe for manufactured products in exchange for raw materials. Because trade was interrupted during the war, it was necessary to establish manufacturing essential to the war effort and to civilian needs. This convinced the majority of the American people of the soundness of Hamilton’s tariff principles which stimulated domestic growth of industry. Even Jefferson, who earlier had dreamed of world-wide reform in the name of free trade, changed his views.”
The same principle held true regarding the time of our civil war. Dr. Lloyd later says, “In spite of the South’s devotion to free trade- a position which was emphasized by the Confederate Constitution- there were many who felt that development of industry should be encouraged. The events of war proved them right. Their dependence on foreign sources proved disastrous.”
Other reasons that international trade is not always the most beneficial option is that the economies of countries with different value sets will inevitably be competing, not complimentary. Tariffs are actually a less severe barrier to trade compared to things like import licensing, embargoes, quotas, and exchange controls, which competing countries could use to give them an advantage over another. Dr. Lloyd points out that throughout history as the United States has lowered their tariffs and bargained with other countries to do the same, this exact thing is what has happened. Keeping in mind the year in which his book was written, he goes on to say, “There are no compelling economic reasons why two highly industrialized nations should have extensive balanced trade. Their economies are competitive, not complimentary. To propose that the United States greatly increase its trade with industrial countries like England, France, and Germany is like suggesting that Gimbles and Macy’s increase their sales volume by selling more to each other.”
At the time, competition between domestic producers had allowed the U.S. to still have competitive pricing and wages, which shows that the tariff can be used appropriately, without causing wages and prices to become unreasonably high.
As stated previously, in a free trade system, there would have to be maximum labor mobility across international borders. This would require the cost of moving households and all their possessions and other similar expenses to be made much simpler or eliminated altogether. This is not even taking into account the cultural barriers of moving to another country. This issue, as well as the fact that wage and tax rates are not set in an international free market, but within the market of individual countries, is what may cause capital and jobs to move internationally, but not labor. Dr. Lloyd goes onto state, “We shall find here a case where, because wages and taxes differed between New England and the South, the application of free trade brought about redistribution of income, not a higher living standard for all.” This is why often, the individuals and corporations who support international free trade are the people who benefit from higher unemployment in the United States in exchange for lower wage in other countries.
Supporters of free trade have for a long time claimed that trading with other countries creates understanding and mutual respect, and the result will be that the governments that we trade with will adopt freedom-oriented policies that respect individual rights. Taking this into account, we must ask; Has decades of trying to set a good example by trading with countries like China actually led to policies that are any less authoritarian and tyrannical? Obviously, the answer is a resounding no! In reality, China has been strategically using the free-trade agenda to further the subversive anti-freedom goals of communism.
The Chinese have gradually been attempting to buy out companies that are critical to the U.S. in wartime, such as Lattice Semiconductor in 2017. We are already dependent on countries like Russia and China for parts that are needed for our space and aircraft programs. On top of that China has subsidized its steel industry to undermine the steel industries in the U.S. and the rest of the world. They are enabled to do this because of the dollars they receive from trading with the United States.
The more products that are produced in China, the more businesses are forced to relocate from the U.S. to China. This means that more money is being spend on Chinese goods, and China can then leverage that to have more influence on countries like the United States. China takes the money they make from selling cheap goods to the U.S., and they invest it in property right here in the United States. Local governments may like how this is good for local economic expansion, but this greatly increases Chinese influence on local communities. It is not realized that the Chinese businessmen that make these economic investments are actually controlled by the Chinese government. This is exactly what happened in the case of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest producer of pork. They were bought up by Shuanghui International Holdings, which is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. As Art Thompson states in his book China: The Deep State Trojan Horse in America “All Chinese businesses of any appreciable size have a political officer from the People’s Liberation Army stationed at the enterprise to make sure that the company stays politically correct. This is even true of American-owned businesses in China.”
The Chinese have also been strategically purchasing majority stock in American radio and television companies and have also been working with major production companies in Hollywood. This shows that as China buys up more and more American businesses, they are able to further their agenda of destroying the American system which was itself created by free enterprise.
This subversive agenda is not just limited to America. It is notable that the leading financier of international development projects is now the China Development Bank. China is using the money they get from American purchases to buy up the world supply of strategic minerals. If they cannot buy the minerals directly, they use loans to “buy” the government. It has gotten to the point where firms controlled by China effectively run the Panama Canal, and China is not likely to stop there.
Given how China has a track record of mass murder, religious persecution, suppressing, free speech, tyrannical surveillance, as well as many other authoritarian actions, and as documented previously are attempting to use trade to bring the United States down the same road, why should the United States even want to engage in trade with them in the first place? Even free market economist Milton Friedman argued against propping up communism through engaging in trade with communist countries. In his book Capitalism and Freedom he states, “…barring only such deliberate interference as may be justified on strictly political and military grounds; for example, banning the sale of strategic goods to communist countries. So long as we are firmly committed to the straightjacket of fixed exchange rates, we cannot move definitively to free trade. The possibility of tariffs or direct controls must be retained as an escape valve in case of necessity.”
It is notable that in their constitution, the Communist Party USA supports strengthening the United Nations. This is in line with the ultimate goal of communism, which is to take control of the entire world. In fact, China has strategically placed their people in control of the following UN agencies: UN International Telecommunication Union, UN International Civil Aviation Organization, UN Food and Agricultural Organization, International Union of Conservation of Nature, and Interpol. China is strategically using its positions in the United Nations to accomplish the goals that it was designed to achieve in the first place.
The founders of the United Nations clearly did not have the same view of rights that the framers of our constitution had. Our constitution protects our God-given rights that no government can take away. The UN believes the opposite. The UN International Covenant, Article 18 states: Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. But it also goes onto state: Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law. So, you are free to have your own thoughts, act according to your own conscience, and practice your religion, but only in the way that the United Nations approves of.
The United Nations was founded in San Fransisco on April 25, 1945. There were over 850 members from fifty countries on the founding committee. Over forty individuals from the US delegation were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Alger Hiss was one of the most prominent of those men on the committee, as he served as acting secretary-general of the conference, as well as on the steering and executive committees which put the finishing touches on the UN charter. Later he was imprisoned after it was found out that he was a spy for Joseph Stalin! It is easy to see the direct influence of communism on the UN and how it was set up to accomplish communist objectives.
In 1948 the young United Nations created the International Trade Organization, which later was renamed the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose main architect was none other than the director of the State Department’s Office of Special Political Affairs, the aforementioned Soviet spy Alger Hiss! The WTO has its own judicial body whose decisions are final unless they are rejected unanimously by all participating countries. The WTO is cited in international free trade agreements like the United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), as having regulatory authority over the nations which are participating. This is in direct violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the US Constitution which states, “The Congress shall have the power…. to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations…”, as well as Article 3, Section 2, Clause 1 which states, “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority…”. The World Trade Organization is clearly a threat to our constitution, and our sovereignty as a country!
The USMCA was seen by many as a great replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but the reality is that the American people were fooled into accepting something much worse. Besides the fact that it unconstitutionally subordinates the United States to the UN and the WTO, which is mentioned almost 90 times in the agreement, it also subordinates the US to treaties that were originally rejected by the US like the Law of the Seas Treaty (LOST), which gives the UN control over US coasts, oceans, and inland waterways. The madness doesn’t stop there! The USMCA and other international agreements are setting the stage for the integration of police, armed forces, banking, environmental regulations, as well as health care. Since these treaties have set up an international court system, this has led to foreign lawyers practicing in the US who are not subject to the state bar systems that US-based lawyers are subject to. If all this is not bad enough, the Free Trade Commission created by the USMCA was (unconstitutionally) given the ability to alter the agreement at any time, without the consent of congress!
This falls in line with what Council on Foreign Relations president Richard N. Hass stated when he said that the USMCA is really just NAFTA with added agreements. The USMCA is just continuing what NAFTA started. Former Secretary of State and Council on Foreign Relations member Henry Kissinger said the following in an article in The Los Angeles Times on July 18, 1993, speaking in favor of NAFTA, “It will represent the most creative step toward a New World Order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War…. It is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system.”
In reality, every time the US gets set up in more international political and economic entanglements, the closer they come to the end goals of Communism. As stated in “The Invisible Government” by Dan Smoot, “In 1936 the Communist International formally presented its three stage plan for achieving world government. Stage 1: Socialize the economies of all nations, particularly the Western “capitalist democracies” (most particularly the United States). Stage 2: Bring about federal unions of various groupings of these socialized nations. Stage 3: Amalgamate all of the federal unions into one world-wide union of socialist states.” The picture below from the March 9, 2020 issue of The New American Magazine illustrates how free trade agreements are being used to accomplish just that.
In 2005 the Council on Foreign Relations published Building a North American Community, which is a blueprint to transforming NAFTA into a North American Union (NAU). Also in 2005, President George W. Bush as well as the leaders of Mexico and Canada announced the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), which would accomplish that objective! Before he participated in forging the SPP, in 2002, President Fox of Mexico stated, “Eventually our long-range objective is to establish with the United States… an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union.”
It is notable that the European Union (EU) was started as the European Coal and Steel Commission (ECSC). The idea of using free trade to unite Europe was nothing new, as Hitler’s idea of how to unify all of Europe was championed by his economic minister Albert Speer as far back as 1942. It was called the European Economic Community.
Today the European Union has a constitution proclaiming it to have authority over its member states. In turn, this document explicitly states the EU’s subservience to the United Nations. Europe, as well as the rest of the world, is already well down the path of being merged into a one-world socialist system.
Socializing the economies of all nations and then merging them into a one-world system was the objective of Colonel Edward M. House, when he co-founded the Council on Foreign Relations with Cecil Rhoads in 1917. The Council on Foreign Relations can be described as the Deep State headquarters in America. Their membership includes the most prominent people and organizations in business, banking, government, media, education, and non-profits.
AS of June 10, 2024, the list of corporate sponsors of the CFR in the Founders category are Amazon, Bank of America, Black Rock, Chevron, Citi, Clayton Dubilier and Rice, Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hess, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Mastercard, Meta, Morgan Stanley, Nasdaq, and Visa.
The President’s Circle is made up of Bayer, Blackstone, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Bridgewater Associates LP, Dell Technologies, Deutsche Bank AG, General Atlantic, GoldenTree Asset Management, KPMG, LLP, Lazard, Luksic Group, Lutron Electronics Co., Inc, McKinsey & Company, Moody’s Corporation, PayPal, Reliance Industries Limited, Royalty Pharma, S&P Global, Sequoia Capital, Shell, Snap Inc., Standard Chartered Bank, Terna, Thomson Reuters, Veritas Capital Fund Management LLC, and Warburg Pincus.
Affiliate members are American International Group, Amgen, Inc., Apple, Inc., BNY Mellon, Booking Holdings, Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., BP p.l.c., Centerview Partners, Chiomenti, Chubb Limited, Circle, CoBank, ConocoPhillips Company, Covington & Burling LLP, Deere & Company, Deloitte., DXC Technology, Eni, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc., EY Geostrategic, Business Group, FedEx Corporation, Fidia Holding s.p.a., Fitch Ratings, Freeport-McMoRan Inc., Hellman & Friedman, Hitachi, Ltd., HMTX Industries, Houlihan Lokey, Hyundai Motor Company, IBM Corporation, Investcorp International, Inc., The Invus Group, LLC, Jacobs Asset Management, Johnson & Johnson, KKR & Co., Kyndryl, LionTree LLC, Lockheed Martin Corporation, ManpowerGroup, Merck & Co., Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas), Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc., Moore Capital Management, LP, MUFG Securities Americas Inc., Nike, Inc., Northrop Grumman, Nvidia, The Olayan Group, PepsiCo, Inc., Pfizer Inc., PwC, Salesforce, Inc., Silver Lake Partners, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, Suntory Holdings Limited, Tata Sons Private Limited, TikTok, Tishman Speyer Properties, Inc., TotalEnergies Washington DC Representative Office, LLC, Toyota Motor North America, Inc., Unipol Gruppo S.p.A., Wells Fargo, and White & Case LLP.
With their sister organizations around the globe, they work together to use free trade agreements to merge countries into regional unions, and then merge the regional unions into a New World Order. Their desire to build a New World Order is anything but a secret. CFR member Henry Kissinger wrote a book titled “World Order”, in which he states, “The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of world order within the various regions and to relate theses regional orders to one another.” On April 1, 1974, The Council on Foreign Relations Published the article “Hard Road to World Order” by longtime member and US diplomat Richard N. Gardner, in their journal Foreign Affairs. Former FBI agent Dan Smoot had this to say about the CFR, “I am convinced that the Council on Foreign Relations, together with a great number of other associated tax-exempt organizations, constitutes the invisible government which sets the major policies of the federal government; exercises controlling influence on government officials who implement the policies; and, through massive and skillful propaganda, influences Congress and the public to support these policies.”
Other internationalists and communists have also called for a New World Order. This includes author H.G. Wells, Mikhail Gorbachev, Fidel Castro, David Rockefeller, Joe Biden, and even George H.W. Bush. In August 1991, he made creating a New World Order an official policy of the US in a State Department document titled National Strategy of the United States. In 2009 George Soros said the following to the Financial Times, “I think you really need to bring China into the creation of a New World Order,” apparently not bothered by the fact that the Chinese government has murdered more people than any other government in history, “I think you need a New World Order, that China has to be a part of the process of creating it and they have to buy in, they have to own it in the same way as the United States owns… the current order.”
The fact that Communists and capitalists are working together through the Council on Foreign Relations is very telling about its’ true objective. In a speech in Brussels Belgium on January 9, 1848, Karl Marx said, “But generally speaking, the protective system in these days in conservative, while the free trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoise to the uttermost point. In a word, the free trade system hastens social revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, I am in favor of free trade.”
Georgetown Professor Carroll Quigley served as the historian for the Council on Foreign Relations. In his book “Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time”, he said the following, “There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies,… but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known… The American branch of this organization (sometimes called the “Eastern Establishment”) has played a very significant role in the history of the United States in the last generation… In New York it was known as the Council on Foreign Relations… In fact, the original plans for the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations were drawn up at Paris…”
International banker David Rockefeller was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1941 until his death in 2017, and he served as chairman of the Board of Directors of the CFR from 1970 to 1985. In 1973, him and Zbigniew Brzezinski, helped form the Trilateral Commission (TC) with diplomats from North America, Europe, and Japan. The goal of the Trilateral Commission was to use free trade and economic integration to unite the three areas under a regional government. Most of the members of the Trilateral Commission were already CFR members. Rockefeller, a proud internationalist had this to say in his book Memoirs, “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Since the days of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, capitalists and Communists have been working together to achieve their shared end goal of a New World Order. Some believe that the supposed collapse of Communism in the USSR was just a charade that was used to bring western investment into an unsustainable system. Major American corporations with close ties to the CFR have brought in mega profits by playing prominent roles investing in socialist countries. Historian Antony Sutton of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution details this in his books Western Technology and Soviet Development, and Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. In Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution he states, “We suggest that the Morgan Firm infiltrated not only the domestic left, as noted by Quigley, but also the foreign left- that is, the Bolshevik movement and the Third International. Even further, through friends in the U.S. State Department, Morgan and allied financial interests, particularly the Rockefeller family, have exerted a powerful influence on U.S.-Russian relations from World War I to the present. The evidence presented in this chapter will suggest that two of the operational vehicles for infiltrating or influencing foreign revolutionary movements were located at 120 Broadway: the first, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, heavily laced with Morgan appointees; the second, the Morgan-controlled American International Corporation. Further, there was an important interlock between the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the American International Corporation- C.A. Stone, the president of American International, was also director of the Federal Reserve Bank.”
Dr. Bella Dodd, a lawyer from New York City, served on the National Committee of the Communist Party in 1944. She was also secretariat of the New York State Communist Party and was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Political Association. In 1950 she defected and eventually became an anti-communist activist. She spoke about how the people that the top Communist Party officials told her to take her orders from, were actually some of the biggest capitalists in New York City! The full story is told in the book “The Naked Capitalist” by W. Cleon Skousen.
The strategy of capitalist/ Communist collusion has not changed, and it continues to the present day! The capitalist and Marxist members of Council on Foreign Relations still openly promote globalism at the expense of American sovereignty. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela, the Director General of the World Trade Organization said the following in her article “Why the World Still Needs Trade”, published in the July/ August 2023 edition of the CFR mouthpiece Foreign Affairs. “Moreover, international cooperation, including on trade, is necessary to meet challenges to the global commons, such as climate change, inequality and pandemics. Globalization is not over, nor should anyone wish it to be. But it needs to be improved and reimagined for the age ahead…What critics miss is that the world cannot decarbonize without trade…The WTO is at work on potential approaches that could inform this kind of global carbon pricing framework, as are the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank.” She goes on to promote regional international free trade agreements as the solution. “Regional initiatives to lower trade barriers and build connective infrastructure, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, are also useful… One prerequisite for reglobalization is a broadly open and predictable global economy, anchored in a strong, rules-based multilateral trading system… Today the multilateral trading system is part of the solution to major global challenges, from climate change to conflict to pandemic preparedness.”
Globalists like to endlessly repeat how globalization is economically beneficial to countless people, but at the same time not explain how propping up Communist governments is beneficial to the people who are actually living under those Communist governments! The Cato Institute interviewed Ngozi Okonjo-Iwela on February 6, 2024, where she continued to defend globalization and economic integration. The Cato Institute is proudly showing their true colors. They are on the same side as the capitalist/ Marxist Council on Foreign Relations, working to use free trade to erase our national borders and therefore destroy our constitutional republic and usher in a global government under the World Trade Organization and the United Nations! They are actually helping fulfill the Marxist revolutionary vision of a New World Order. In the Holy Family, Marx and Engels said this: “The revolutionary movement which began in 1789 in the Cercle Social… gave rise to the communist idea…re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This… is the idea of the new world order.” I am positive that the Cato Institute is made up of intelligent, well-meaning people. But when it comes to free trade, in their naivete and ignorance, they completely dropped the ball on this one!
Author bio: Brandon is a freelance journalist based in the metro-Milwaukee area. He has worked full-time in politics for five years. This includes leading successful campaigns for legislatures at the state and congressional levels, and successful deployments to get bills passed in Kentucky and Texas. He is currently working as a carpenter. On his spare time, he enjoys weightlifting, running, hiking, and listening to classic rock.