Back in the 1980s, I noticed something very odd. I was researching my somewhat seminal conspiracy book The Shadows of Power, published by Western Islands, book arm of the conservative John Birch Society. In doing so, I went through every issue of Foreign Affairs, flagship journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), then the highest connection between the federal government and what we now call “the Deep State.”
What was so odd? The CFR, chaired by David Rockefeller (later “honorary” chairman) consistently advocated “free trade.” So much so, in fact, that for many years, virtually every issue of Foreign Affairs carried a picture of a roller coaster on its rear cover, in an ad glorifying the benefits of free trade. By “free trade,” of course, we refer essentially to unrestricted trade between nations, unhampered by tariffs or quotas.
What bothered me was that at the John Birch Society, we also championed free trade. On other issues—like the UN, globalism in general, socialism, and Deep-State control of government—we were the CFR’s mortal enemies. Yet when it came to free trade, we were joined at the hip.
I asked people at Birch headquarters about the contradiction. No one seemed to have a good answer. I would hear something like, “Well, those CFR guys sometimes goof up,” but that didn’t satisfy me. I knew the Council members were shrewd strategists with devious, long-term plans for America.
Now I apologize for potentially boring my readers by paying tribute to the man who cleared up the enigma for me—not only the JBS/CFR mystery, but the realities of “free trade,” why tariffs are normally good, but why (under Trump) they will probably bring disaster.
That man was William J. Gill (1932-2008). A conservative journalist, Gill published his first book in 1970, when I was still a snot-nosed know-nothing hippie college freshman. I don’t exactly recall when I first met Gill, but since his personally inscribed copy to me of his book Trade Wars Against America is dated 1990, it couldn’t have been after that.
OK, let’s unravel the mystery of why the John Birch Society (and many other conservatives) formed this unholy “free trade” alliance with the anti-American Deep State.
First, the Conservative Outlook
The conservative perspective, while sincere, was based on a misunderstanding of the concept of free trade, which is generally acknowledged to have originated with Scottish economist Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations.
Smith reasoned that the world’s people should be allowed to freely trade, based on each country’s capacity to specialize and produce goods efficiently. Why should governments interfere with people’s right to engage in trade?
Free trade sounds good so far, right?
But unfortunately, world economic conditions drastically changed after Smith published his seminal work just under 250 years ago (uh, oh, better not get me going on that number again, especially with Klaus Schwab’s talk of an economic “Great Reset”).
New situations emerged that Smith had not foreseen: especially the advent of socialism and communism. Smith assumed that the cost of goods would be determined by the “efficiency” of whoever produced it. Under these new political systems, however, workers became slaves of the state. The government—not the market—dictated their wages. Of course, labor’s cost is among the most important factors in a product’s price.
But America was still essentially operating under free enterprise, with salaries determined largely by personal productivity, qualifications, market demand, and sometimes union negotiations. In the mid-20th century, American workers still earned a decent living wage. A middle-class dad on one salary could support a family, enjoy good benefits, own a home, and one or two cars.
Besides this, America had a number of safety and pollution requirements that many foreign nations, such as China, did not require themselves to abide by. This made their manufacturing costs—and goods—cheaper.
Furthermore, many of our trading partners began subsidizing their industries, while in America it was still mostly “you’re on your own.” Needless to say, subsidized products are cheaper than those that aren’t. Subsidies themselves have a cost, of course—the expense must be borne by the country’s taxpayers—but wiping out an American competitor could make it well worth it.
All of these dimensions—wages, benefits, protective laws, and subsidies—made American products more expensive than imports. And to keep U.S. enterprise alive and well, America required tariffs and quotas. For those who don’t know it, America first became a thriving productive nation thanks to the tariffs the Founding Fathers wisely instituted.
You see, Adam’s Smith’s vision of a world of “free trade” only worked if nations played by the same (or at least comparable) rules. When they didn’t, America had a perfect right to protect its own industry.
But conservatives and “freedom marketeers” didn’t see it that way. After all, shouldn’t consumers have the “freedom to choose” whatever goods were cheapest?
It was argued that tariffs and quotas were government interference in the marketplace—socialism. TO THE CONTRARY, true “socialism” was letting dirt-cheap slave-labor goods from socialist nations cause hard-working Americans to lose their jobs. Tariffs and quotas weren’t introducing socialism; they were protecting us from it.
Tariffs were also commonly disparaged as a “tax on Americans.” Again to the contrary, tariffs reduce taxes. How did the American government get by before income tax began in 1913? Mostly, through tariffs. But the Revenue Act of 1913, which introduced income tax, also significantly reduced tariff rates (something few people seem to know). The bankers pulled a classic switch—boosting foreigners while punishing Americans. Subsequently, income tax rates kept climbing while tariff rates continued to fall.
By the way, if you ain’t got a job, you can’t even afford those cheap tariff-free imports.
Led on by the legacy media, “protectionism” became a pejorative. No one criticized a businessman for protecting his factory from fire with insurance, or from crime with night watchmen. Yet, if he sought a tariff to protect it from wanton raiding by foreign socialists, “protection” suddenly became evil. In truth, tariffs have long protected something worthwhile–our economic base, and the American way of life depending on it.
Next, the CFR Outlook
OK, let’s switch gears and see why David Rockefeller and his CFR cronies lobbied so hard for free trade. Boiled down, two reasons:
(1) The CFR had been aiming for a world government since its incorporation in 1921.
The original globalist plan had been to empower the UN from “the top down,” widening its power gradually. However, that approach wasn’t working. So Richard N. Gardner, in his 1974 Foreign Affairs article “The Hard Road to World Order,” outlined a new strategy:
We are witnessing an outbreak of shortsighted nationalism that seems oblivious to the economic, political and moral implications of interdependence. . . . The ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down . . . .an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.
Instead of constructing global government in one stroke, it would be built by sections: regional alliances like the EU; the World Health Organization; environmental agreements like the Kyoto Protocol; global policy-making institutions like Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum; and in the case of trade: NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement—a stepping stone intended to transform America into a “North American Union,” just as the Common Market had morphed into the EU) and the GATT Treaty (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), which evolved into the World Trade Organization.
In short, to the CFR crowd, “free trade” was one of world government’s building blocks.
(2) However, there was a second, more vicious motive. A healthy, vibrant economy keeps a nation independent, and very difficult to incorporate into world government. Therefore the snakes at the top sought to derail American industry by flooding the country with cheap imports. And that required erasing our structure of tariffs and trade quotas.
The NAFTA Debate
Things started coming to a head with the 1992 Presidential debates, NAFTA then being a hot issue. The Republican candidate, incumbent President George H. W. Bush, fully supported NAFTA. So did the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton. So did the “conservative free market proponents” with whom I associated. Thus the road to NAFTA was virtually unobstructed.
Only two significant candidates opposed NAFTA: Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot. But while Perot was allowed to participate in the televised Presidential debates, the far more articulate Buchanan was not.
I distinctly remember a NAFTA debate hosted by CNN in 1993. It was between Al Gore (pro-NAFTA) and Ross Perot (anti-NAFTA). You can still see it here. Throughout the debate, Gore seemed calm and articulate. He made many predictions of how wonderful NAFTA would be for America—predictions now proven flagrantly false.
Perot was sincere and held his ground, but I remember being angry because he failed to use many arguments—ones I knew myself—that could have won viewers to his side. He began by showing photographs of the poor conditions of Mexicans working for American corporations South of the Border. But such images wouldn’t resonate with Americans, who wanted to know how NAFTA would affect them.
I still recall how, after the debate, mainstream news commentators laughed at Perot, and boasted of how Gore had annihilated him, “debunking” the arguments against NAFTA.
However, in re-watching the debate, something caught my eye that I hadn’t noticed first time around. Throughout the exchange, Gore wore an earpiece. And he wasn’t hard of hearing. Perot, however, had no earpiece. Gore was seated to Perot’s right, the earpiece situated where Perot was unlikely to see it.
Is this the real reason Gore appeared so “calm and articulate”? If answers and carefully scripted statements were secretly being transmitted to him, while Perot had to “wing it,” it would explain a lot. Evidently debate “dirty tricks” didn’t originate with Hillary Clinton.
President Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law in 1993. Perhaps for this very reason Clinton was selected to be the new Chief Executive after attending the 1991 Bilderberger conference. Of course, George H. W. Bush would have signed it too, but the Zionist Lobby had still not forgiven him for failing to utterly destroy Sadaam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War.
The GATT Debate
However, the CFR globalists weren’t content with exporting American jobs and factories to Canada and Mexico (especially Mexico) through NAFTA. They wanted to outsource U.S. industry globally through the GATT Treaty (World Trade Organization).
I was covering the GATT controversy for The New American magazine, and recorded the Senate Commerce Committee’s hearings on the treaty, as well as the very vigorous Congressional debate. In doing so, I witnessed the same unique “weird alliance” I had seen throughout the free trade flap.
Normally, on any issue, whether abortion, national defense, or school prayer, conservatives and liberals had clearly defined positions, aligned against each other like cats versus dogs. The GATT Treaty was totally different. A strange mix of liberals and conservatives were on both sides. Illinois Republican Phil Crane, then surveyed as the most conservative congressman in the House of Representatives, strongly favored GATT. But so did well-known liberal Democrats like Gore and Ted Kennedy. On the other hand, Jesse Helms, reputed as the Senate’s most conservative Republican, vigorously opposed the treaty. And so did diehard liberals such as Democrat Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, and consumer advocate Ralph Nader.
The explanation of the mysterious coalitions was the same as before: some Congressmen had awoken to the treaties’ true purposes—others were still slumbering in Adam Smith’s antiquated ideology.
One group, however, displayed no divisions on the issue—the Establishment. From David Rockefeller down, they universally favored GATT.
One man who wasn’t fooled: Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, who declared during the Senate debate:
They [multinational corporations and banks] have got the Trilateral Commission, and the foreign affairs association [CFR] up there in New York. If you ever run for President, they’ll invite you. And when you come at their invitation, what they’ll do is, they want you to swear, on the altar of free trade, almighty faith forever and ever. “Are you a free trader?” “Yeah, I’m for free trade.” That’s all they want. You can get out, you can get their contributions, you can get their support—I’ve been there, I know what we’re talking about! But that is what our “friend” David Rockefeller and his Trilateral Commission and all that got that steam together—it’s money, not jobs, money! . . . Well, they’re getting rich and we’re losing jobs! . . . They are debilitating and destroying us!1
But the GATT Treaty passed; President Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1994, flanked by Bob Dole, Minority Leader of the Senate’s Republicans. Although I can no longer find the quote, I recall Dole stating publicly that it seemed like 97 percent of communications he received from his native Kansans opposed the Treaty. Although I’m sure his estimate was highly imprecise, one must ask why a U.S. Senator would vote for something that his own constituents overwhelmingly opposed. When I reported the comment to William J. Gill, he referred to Dole as “Beltway Bob, the bankers’ bellhop.”
With the passage of NAFTA and GATT, “free trade” was a fait accompli. That marked the beginning of American industry’s wholesale destruction.
Michigan was once a thriving city, the hub of American car manufacturing. But after NAFTA and GATT were passed, the auto industry began moving its car factories overseas. I certainly wouldn’t call Detroit a slum, but it has been in serious economic decline, struggling with poverty and numerous abandoned properties.
Almost to his dying day, William J. Gill spent the last years of his life trying to save America’s economy. He was President of the American Coalition for Competetive Trade, and published a newsletter opposing free trade and the treaties. He pounded Washington’s pavement, spending countless hours with members of Congress, urging them to save America’s jobs. My wife and I were honored to have him as a guest in our home.
His seminal book was Trade Wars Against America (1990)—probably the greatest refutation of the “free trade” myth ever written. Had it reached the American public en masse, it could have changed our nation’s fate.
Mr. Gill lamented to me what the publisher—Praeger—had done. Although the book was not overly long (324 pages) they had set the sales price at an absurd $50. This would be like selling the book today for over $100. Praeger had made its own book virtually unbuyable. Mr. Gill would shake his head. He couldn’t figure it out.
It was only after Gill’s death that I learned that Praeger is largely controlled by the CIA. Gill had been double-crossed: given a fine cover and interior layout, only to discover that the publisher had no interest in actually selling the book.
Trump’s Tariffs
What about Trump’s tariff proposals? The President has stated that, under his tariffs, “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base.”
After all I’ve said, shouldn’t I—of all people—be jumping for joy over this? No, I’m not. It goes back to something William J. Gill said more than 30 years ago. The quote is not in Trade Wars Against America; I’m sure it must have been in one of his newsletters during the NAFTA-GATT debates. I no longer have those newsletters, so I ask the reader’s indulgence. I’m going to paraphrase the quote from memory. It was words to this effect: “It is vital that we stop these trade agreements now. If we don’t, then many years later it will be impossible to restart these destroyed industries from the ground up, even if we re-institute tariffs.”
Let me elaborate. I grew up in New England. In the 1960s, the region was teeming with shoe factories. They produced millions of shoes every year. But today, 99 percent of our shoes are imported.
Some Trump supporters might say, “Well, if we enact Trump’s tariffs, the shoe industry will be reborn in America. There will be jobs, jobs, jobs.”
TO THE CONTRARY. The shoe factories are long gone—torn down, or repurposed into shopping malls, housing space, etc. Furthermore, what about the managers and workers whom those factories employed? They’re long gone too. One might even call shoe-making a “lost art.” And just who is going to put up the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to restart a dead industry?
By the way, I’m just using “shoes” as an example. The same principles could be said of the other industries NAFTA and GATT destroyed.
And as Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz recently pointed out, even if factories were eventually rebuilt, product assembly would now be done by robotics, not people, so virtually no jobs would be created.
Trump’s tariff threats have already crashed the markets. Who is going to make the products Americans need while we wait for the “factories to be rebuilt”? How will economically stressed Americans pay even higher prices for foreign goods that we are now forced to depend on and that will be “revenge-tariffed”?
This—to me—looks like part of an overall setup to destroy the American economy and usher in Schwab’s “Great Reset”: plummeting markets, rising inflation, digital currency, massive unemployment, and (eventually) universal basic income and social credit scores.
Just so there is no confusion, let me restate: I am a “pro-tariff man.” But the time to retain those tariffs was 30 years ago, before so many of our industries lay in their graveyards.
NOTE
1. Author’s videotape of C-SPAN’s coverage.
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