World government may be GATT result

Sovereignty threatened under current international treaty

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OPINION

GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, is an international treaty which, by means of periodic modification, is designed to remove barriers to trade across national boundaries.

This sounds like a laudable goal, except that it is not always clear that it is good to have such barriers removed in every case. For example, a country such as Haiti (where workers may reportedly earn as little as fourteen cents an hour stitching up baseballs) may not be a good trading partner for workers or manufacturers located in industrialized countries such as the United States.

The newest modification of GATT, if approved by the U.S. Congress, will result in the setting up of what some have termed a world government, the World Trade Organization, a bureaucratic agency which will have incredible power over the signatories to the treaty.

The WTO will ultimately be able to set aside laws adopted by cities, counties, tribes, states or provinces, and even nations, if they serve to restrict trade.

The WTO will be "a world government with teeth," that is, with real authority

over member states, not simply a weak sister like the United Nations (which has no real enforcement power unless backed up in the Security Council by the U.S., Russia and all other permanent members).

GATT poses immense constitutional problems for peoples of the United States, Canada, and other "Federal" (decentralized) systems of government. GATT is based upon the assumption that all signatories are unitary states in which the central government has the absolute power to agree to a treaty which commits all of its divisions to strict adherence.

But such is not the case with the United States and Canada, where states, provinces, territories and Native reservations or reserves have inherent powers and residual sovereignty.

The United States and Canada are both federal systems, with power dispersed among many levels of government. GATT will do away with that historic balance of power altogether in relation to any laws affecting trade, commerce, or the movement

of goods and products (including intangibles) across any and all boundaries. All environmental and pesticide control laws, for example, may be swept aside eventually.

But GATT also threatens the constitution of the United States in another very serious way. GATT is treaty and the constitution absolutely requires (no exceptions) that any international agreement which becomes part of U.S. law be ratified by a two-thirds majority of United States senators. The Clinton administration may be going to try to cram GATT down our throats by a simple majority vote, however, pretending that an international trade agreement is somehow not a "real" treaty.

It is very significant that the White House always holds that every agreement designed to protect the rights of ordinary citizens (such as the international agreement guaranteeing human rights) are treaties requiring a two-thirds majority of senators. Why then are trade agreements to be treated differently?

The constitution of the United States gives to the federal government only limited enumerated powers. The rest are left to the states, to the Indian tribes and to the people.

But that democratic system is gradually being done away with by unwise agreements which consolidate the power of international bureaucratic governments whose leaders are never elected.

Free trade may, on occasion, be a good thing but protecting our constitutional rights may be even more important. This is especially vital for Native tribes whose struggle for self-government will be severely threatened if the republics to which they adhere (i.e. the U.S., Canada, etc.) surrender vast areas of authority to GATT and its World Trade Organization. It is most important that the reservations and reserves object to GATT unless the latter is amended so as to protect Indigenous sovereignty.

Fundamentally, GATT is designe to work in the interests of the richest, most aggressive corporations. There is very little, if any, desire to prevent the mass dislocation of peasants, farmers, workers, and small business people or the destruction of regional and local cultures and languages.

The goal is to facilitate the sale of the products of huge corporations in every market everywhere regardless of the consequences. Thus, under GATT small governments lose control over their own economies and cultures and are placed at the mercy of the economic giants and of uncaring economic forces.

(Jack D. Forbes, Powhatan-Delaware, is a professor and Director of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of Columbus and Other Cannibals, Africans and Native Americans and other books.)