Excerpts (highlights) from the Testimony of Sir James Goldsmith, European Parliament Member, before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee as it reviewed GATT: the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, November, 1994:
(Sir James Goldsmith): "What you heard today [from Felix Rohatyn] is the view from Big Business, of which I was a part. And I believe the view from society in general is totally different. I believe it to be so different that I came out of retirement to start a political party in Europe, to become chairman of one of the nine parliamentary groups in the European Parliament to fight against what I believe to be one of the most destructive issues/proposals [GATT] ever put before your assembly or any other assembly...And, then we heard Felix's testimony on the trillions of dollars (his words) that now move around in the economy...he rightly said, "The global financial marketplace is totally integrated..." In his testimony he talked about $500 billion dollars to be invested in China. And then what does he say? He says what America needs and no doubt this is true about Europe as well, is an increased rate of savings...what for?...to invest in China?...to invest among those trillions that have to go out? Why do you need them? You need them right here! Just like we need them right where we are. We can't afford a hemorrhage [financial], we can't increase our rates of savings just to invest them elsewhere [other than in our own nations]...and where we bleed to death in terms of capital...and we bleed to death in terms of jobs. And this is the big point, Mr. Chairman, what we are witnessing is the divorce of interests of the major corporations and the interests of society as a whole! It used to be said that what was good for General Motors...and we all believed it because it was true...was good for the United States...That is no longer true!...So if, as you've heard today, you have freedom of movement of capital; freedom of movement of technology; and you can employ people forty or fifty times cheaper who are skilled; and you can import their products back anywhere in the world (that's the basis of global free trade) how can those investments...how can these transnational companies, who have $4.8 trillion dollars of sales, invest anywhere other than where it's the cheapest? and where their return is the greatest?...because if they don't the system [GATT] that you and your colleagues would be voting for if you pass it forces them to do it otherwise they go bankrupt! So we have a system for the moment being proposed to you here, and we in Europe...it's the same system with the same effects on us...which will result in massive unemployment; massive hemorrhaging of jobs and capital but which will increase corporate profits...and it is believed by economists that you can measure the health of an economy by the size of corporate profits...and we have forgotten the purpose of the economy which is to enrich; to create a stable society and to include the population...in active life...Senator, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the World Trade Organization is a major diminution of [national] sovereignty...I've also read a lot about it. I'm on the Foreign Relations Committee in the European Parliament and I've tried to study the issues but the one thing which is certain; it's bottom line; this is giving up national sovereignty...it can't be otherwise, otherwise why would it exist? What is its purpose? Its only purpose is to impose discipline on all the nations to accept a trading system and that that discipline should be under the control of all the nations that participate on a one vote/one nation basis...full stop, that's diminution/dilution of sovereignty...
(Senator James Exxon; D-Nebraska): "Thank you. Let me, if you can explain to me why people in whom we've had a great deal of confidence in over the years--I start with President Carter, President Reagan, President Bush (Sr.) and now President Clinton and all of their key advisors--I mean that's a pretty impressive list of people who think this is a good proposition for the world and particularly America--how do you explain what I assume you think is the wrong opinion by all those individuals that I just mentioned?"
(Sir James Goldsmith): "Senator, the Uruguay round, the negotiations for the Uruguay round started eight years ago (1986)--[since then] the world has changed totally! GATT, of course, started after the War in '49 I think it was--the world has changed totally! Now what the reason which the Chairman mentioned, we haven't focused on--I think you did as well, Senator--which is the alternatives, and I think there was other conversation of the alternatives; the alternatives are not just closing the market; becoming protectionist; the alternatives are not saying, "We are now going into protection and we are going to isolate ourselves from the world," each one of them. The alternative is to have regional trading blocks which have similar economies so we're not trying to make our labor forces compete with people whose labor costs 2% of theirs--and thereby destroying them, and reducing their salaries and eliminating their jobs--but having negotiated, bilateral agreements between trading blocks so that each region, each nation imports those products that it needs and not those products that destroy its jobs.
Now that's what was the case eight or ten years ago. The regions we are talking about now--NAFTA or Europe--are vast areas; we've never experienced trading blocks of these sizes--free trade regions. Nobody thought when these negotiations started that Communism would collapse before the negotiations were signed; that China and Vietnam and all the Soviet nations would be a part of it; and all the other countries that were blocked with their Socialist ideas--it's all happened--you've had a massive, total, historic shift and you're [still] on the same track!?!--as though it never existed [happened]!?!--and you're being told, "Sign it now because if you [take the time to] read the document it will be too late!?! I mean this is the greatest--as your Senator Moynahan said--the most important piece of legislation--how can there be anything more important than creating a free trade area, not with [just] Mexico and Canada, which is already important, but creating a free trade area with China and India and Vietnam and Bangladesh and all the others; four billion new people--all this has suddenly happened and the negotiations are going on as though nothing has occurred!?! That is why, Senator, people who were entirely reputable and wise were for global free trade before--as I was--but who have to open their eyes to reality today and say what was global free trade in those days is regional free trade today."
(Senator Exxon): "My last question has to do with a key statement that you made in your opening statement and that is in regard to potential massive unemployment in the United States...What will the GATT agreement do to those families barely getting on by both mom and dad working full time in relatively low skilled jobs or medium skilled jobs that I suspect will be even of more effect on what we generally refer to as middle [class] America--aren't they at grave risk?"
(Sir James Goldsmith): "Well, Senator, when I was young I was taught, as we all were, that if we managed to create extraordinary material prosperity we would solve our problems. And we were brought up in the belief that there was an inevitability of progress: progress of wealth, progress of stability, progress of civilization. Well, during the last fifty years, since I've been more or less an adult, we've had the greatest period of economic prosperity/economic growth in history. We have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The economy of the United States has soared, in real terms four or five times up and throughout the Western World in England a bit less but still fantastic, in France just as much...and what has happened? Have we solved our problems? Are our towns more stable? Are our families more stable? Is there less crime...less people in prisons? Are there more people in permanent and noble employment? What have we done? We have profoundly destabilized our communities! We have done everything that was wrong is social terms. We've derascinated; we've uprooted people from the countrysides; we've shoved them into towns; we haven't given them jobs; we've created ghettos and underclasses; we've increased crime and drug addiction and family breakdown...all this in a period of maximum prosperity...why? Because we were only interested in economic indices. We forgot that the purpose of the economy is not just to improve the index, it is to improve prosperity along with social stability and social contentment. And GATT is typical of the economic instrument whose purpose is to increase corporate profits; whose purpose is to increase gross national activity; and whose result will be the destruction of the stability of our society; a continued breakdown in family life; a continued increase in crime, impoverishment and all the other ills that we are now suffering...Senator, I think you had a debate, of course, on NAFTA...NAFTA's small, tiny, trivial. It was part of your regional policy and, if you like, within our European context, it's not unlike being in Portugal, parts of Italy, Greece, [i.e.] other countries which are also less developed. And it's within a context which brings in all the problems that occur between neighbors. But it was understandable. The average person could understand what a Free Trade Region with Mexico and Canada meant. It was human in size...GATT is worldwide, it's so big that people can't grapple with it...it is just massive...it is the biggest single economic act we could take!...
...there is a, as I mentioned before, deep conflict of interest. Business wants it! Business has access to almost give-away labor! This is the greatest change in the sharing of the value added between capital and labor that has occurred. Every agreement that has been reached...throughout history by strikes, lock-outs, political battle as to how to share that value added, the difference between the raw material cost and the finished product cost...who does it go to, capital or labor? We worked it out in each of our communities in a way in which we could live...that's shattered...all of a sudden it all goes to capital!...I don't think we have enough [opposition to GATT in Europe]. Because the European Commission and the European...the European Commission is the equivalent of (it shouldn't be, by the way, but it is) it acts like a government...it has the monopoly of initiative and it's dominated by religious Free Traders, they consider it a religion...So what I am saying, what I have said to you today would be largely repulsive to the economic/political powers in Europe...but largely, I mean massively acceptable to the public who are the ones who are suffering from it...And [once you've joined GATT] the question will be, "Can you get out?" because that's going to happen because countries are going to want to get out; they're going to have so many social problems when unemployment grows to the level that will be intolerable to society; where the fundamental conditions which sustain democracy will be in jeopardy they'll have to get out and then we're going to see a whole new ball game; how is it going to work? I don't know. That hasn't been discussed...[as it concerns joining the GATT as its stands right now]...it's for life..."
In accordance with Clinton/Gore's fastrack presentation of this bill to Congress, i.e. no amendments/pass as is; and despite the suspicious "advice" of, "If you take the time to read it, it will be too late"--
--the House of Representatives voted on and passed GATT on Nov. 30, 1994. The Senate voted on and passed GATT on Dec. 1, 1994??...
...and we witnessed The Birth of the Beast; a global system of political control established at the behest of financial Babylon...
...almost fifteen years after-the-fact--welcome to the real Reality...
The full transcript of Sir James Goldsmith's testimony before the US Senate Commerce Committee is a 35 page text and can be provided if requested...
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Published: Friday, December 19, 2008
Last modified: Friday, December 19, 2008
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