WTO aims for global governance: the December WTO agenda puts American jobs, food production, and immigration in the UN's world government cross hairs.(WTO)

When President Bush appointed former Ohio Congressman Rob Portman to be U.S. trade representative in 2005, he made it clear that one of his missions would be to help get Congress to approve the 34-nation Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) agreement. Another top mission for Mr. Portman would be to step up the push for the elimination of all tariffs and subsidies, the target of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The president put this program before the American people, asserting, "Millions of American jobs depend on exports ... and America's farmers and workers can compete with anybody, anytime, anywhere in the world so long as the rules are fair."

My observations of global meetings since 1995 have convinced me those global rules are never fair. And the president's professed confidence in American workers cannot overcome them. Besides, it is unconstitutional for the executive branch or a global body like the WTO to direct and regulate U.S. trade policies; instead, it is the responsibility of the U.S. Congress, the legislative branch. Likewise, it is the responsibility of Congress--not the White House or the WTO--to determine U.S. immigration policy. However, the WTO has presumed to designate this a "trade" issue also, under the rubric of regulating what it refers to as "the movement of natural persons."

America's presence at the WTO meeting in Hong Kong gave credibility to the wholly unaccountable UN that supervised the infamous "Iraqi oil-for-food" trade debacle. The WTO, which is a UN specialized agency, is actually the most powerful global body in the world, since it has the authority to sanction countries that fail to adhere to its trade rules.

Typical of UN and WTO conferences, the Hong Kong confab was a completely stage-managed affair, with WTO head Pascal Lamy and his corps of "facilitators" orchestrating a preordained outcome to give an appearance of global "consensus."

The chief aim of the Hong Kong meeting was to complete negotiations aimed at eliminating farm subsidies that hit an impasse in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. The WTO and World Bank have led the attacks on farm subsidies; they hope to see billions of dollars that now go to farmers in the U.S. and the European Union transferred instead to the world's "poor"--funneled through the offices of the World Bank and other UN agencies, of course.

World Bank Vice President Danny Leipziger complained that during the first three days of the Hong Kong meetings, "rich" countries gave $2 billion in subsidies to their farmers. During that same time period, Leipziger said, the "poor" countries in Africa collectively earned less than $1 billion in total income from all sources among them. The European Union joined the World Bank and WTO to demand that the U.S. give cash to starving people around the globe, instead of subsidized food to the hungry.

While there is no indication yet as to whether the administration will give in to the extortion demands for cash, the U.S. nonetheless committed to eliminate export subsidies on agricultural products, possibly by 2010. These WTO commitments and agreements turn out to be a form of international legislation, which WTO tribunals can later adjudicate and enforce. As a result, U.S. citizens lose their constitutional protections and the accountability of their elected officials.