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Quotes about Free Trade from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"Before the 1994 crisis, under the Salinas government, with the advent of the North American free trade Agreement and with Mexico's admission into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, there seems to have been an exaggerated "new era" sense of invulnerability and of a great future ahead for Mexico, which faded after the crisis. The Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 was also much more than a stock market crisis. It included exchange rate and banking crises, and again these tended to attract the attention of analysts. But, as can be seen from Table 7." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"Rampant smuggling of fruits between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been countered with a zero-tariff free trade agreement. In July 2005, the Bangladesh Independent reported that vast quantities of mangoes, apples and grapes were being smuggled in by corrupt Bangladesh Rifles, a paramilitary force. In the United States, stiff new penalties are acting as a deterrent. The Fruit, Vegetable and Plant Smuggling Act of2001 has resulted in felony sentences of up to five years incarceration and fines of 25,000 dollars." - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.) "Even though free trade agreements have eliminated many tariffs and other trade obstacles, unfounded phytosanitary concerns are often cited as a carte blanche to bar the import of foreign products. For cases when fruits genuinely harbor pests that could endanger domestic crops, these measures are vitally important. But in countless other instances, they are merely a way of blocking import from developing nations. The Millennium Development Goals of the World Trade Organization are intended to allow an easier flow of goods into developed nations." - Adam Leith Gollne, The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession (Get the book.)

"As in the US, the British government had no stomach for restricting the free trade in medical thought—or commodities. Both homeopathy and mesmerism presented themselves initially as radical innovations within established medicine. Only as they were squeezed out by orthodox hostility did these systems reposition themselves as 'alternatives'—as challengers to the medical system they had intended to reform. The two systems shared not only a belief in imponderable forces or energies that could be turned to the task of curing; they also shared certain aspects of practice." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.)

"By analogy, most of the thrust of our national policies to deal with speculative bubbles should take the form of facilitating more free trade, as well as greater opportunities for people to take positions in more and freer markets. A good outcome can be achieved by designing better forms of social insurance and creating better financial institutions to allow the real risks to be managed more effectively. The most important thing to keep in mind as we are experiencing the tumult in the stock markets and real estate markets today is that we should not let it distract us from such important tasks." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"One well-known medical convert to mesmerism, James Esdaile (see Chapter 4) bitterly protested the lack of a 'Free Trade in medical knowledge', after a paper describing his mesmeric practice in India, initially solicited by a respectable medical journal, was suddenly rejected.2 Denied the freedom of the medical press, Esdaile stubbornly published his article himself as a pamphlet." - Roberta Bivins, Alternative Medicine?: A History (Get the book.)

"Can we turn free trade into fair trade? Can the system of global trade work for the very poor as well as for the very rich? Or does achieving justice and sus-tainability involve turning away from the systems we've used for the past sixty years? If so, what do we turn to? ez Why China Wins mmm China is rapidly becoming the world's factory. By one measure, China is responsible for 13 percent of global economic output, making its economy twice the size of Japan's, and third only in size to the United States and the European Union." - Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century (Get the book.)

"Many people who protest against global institutions (such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization) are protesting not against free trade but against transnational corporations' use of such institutions to control once-sovereign governments—and further diminish the power of communities. A major way to create and maintain community is through how we spend our money." - Bruce E. Levine, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Get the book.)

"The nature and scope of problems with the free trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is fully explained on this website: http://www.stoptheftaa.org/default.html 18. Their own writing explains that the Council on Foreign Relations is actively trying to build a North American country composed of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Building a North American Community, http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/ building_a_north_american_community.html 19. This is the official statement by our government announcing the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" with Canada and Mexico, http ://usinfo.state." - Byron J. Richards, Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America (Get the book.)

"In the past, companies might send out information kits to medical journals, trying to drum up some free trade coverage. But only physicians who actually flipped through their weekly periodicals saw those. Lilly's Oraflex team decided to expand the concept: why not send the kits out to thousands of mainstream press outlets, including TV and radio, perhaps pushing the notion (albeit technically unproven) that Oraflex actually healed tissues and hence might "cure" arthritis?" - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.) "Canada free trade Agreement. In the capital, he was considered a player, and a skilled one at that. Charming, courtly, low-key — on his wall hangs Lincoln's admonition that "persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted" — Holmer came to the trade organization in 1996, near the eclipse of the noisy but brief Gingrich revolution. Brief, but enduring: the Gingrichian conservatives left Holmer with one lasting earful — PhRMA and its members would have to change their old practice of giving money to both political parties if it were to count on the GOP's aid in the future." - Greg Critser, Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies (Get the book.)

"Some of the Central American free trade Agreement (CAFTA), which comes under the World Trade Organization (WTO), may be restricting or even banning dietary supplements in the United States very soon as they already have in Australia and some European countries. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, a law that preserves our right to safe, natural nutritional supplements, passed Congress only because of 2.5 million letters congressmen received from people like you and me who know how important nutritional products are in our country today." - Gregory, A. Gore, Defeat Cancer (Get the book.)

"It allows Cargill to dump crops into a country and undermine their farming economy, all in the name of free trade. In effect, this creates a "peaceful" tool that threatens the self-sustaining population in any country. Mexico is one of the countries on the Kissinger list. It took only two years of NAFTA to wipe out nine thousand years of food security in Mexico. American farmers can produce twice as much corn as Mexican farmers, on the same amount of land. When Mexico is forced to take Cargill's corn imports, it undermines the economy of indigenous farmers." - Byron J. Richards, Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America (Get the book.)

"Peruvian government's earliest flirtation with free trade. Innovative American companies such as Chappel, Kettlewell & Davison (in 1849) knew that the Peruvian deposits would eventually run out. They began copying the Englishman J. B. Lawes (1847), who saturated low-grade guanos, phosphorus, and ground Ir 167. LBS.1 GUANO JJ.ALIEN'SS?fmhaoclpwa FARM JOURNAL. f|o. i Peruvian Q u ano Imported direct from Pern and sold in original bag? &g unloaded from aaip_. The heMjaujenfer*±li^ JWATER ST. HLLADELniU, PA." - Will Allen, The War on Bugs (Get the book.)

"Then I said, "I believe we have to speak out for the people who can't afford drugs, in favor of free trade and against a closed market." The WHO has the numbers that prove our failure: Americans have shorter life expectancies, higher infant-mortality rates, and higher child-mortality rates than virtually all countries in Western Europe. I added, "But let me comfort you: We did beat them all in one area! Our healthcare costs are twice as high as theirs. And our costs for individual drugs are sometimes twice as high, even ten times as high." - Peter Rost, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Get the book.)

"I hope that President Oscar Arias Sanchez will resist free trade with America and insist on fair trade with good intentions for both nations. Costa Rica is where I came up with the title of this book. It is a land Tom Newmark fell in love with, Brian Hall fell in love with, I fell in love with, and Herb Lewis and Peter Schulick. Everybody who loves the Earth ought to visit this Eden. Indeed, according to the World Bank, the benefits to the nation have been enormous." - David Steinman, Safe Trip to Eden: Ten Steps to Save Planet Earth from the Global Warming Meltdown (Get the book.)

"Then she quoted me, "We have to speak out for the people who can't afford drugs, in favor of free trade and against a closed market."3 The Washington Post Makes a Difference The same day, Michael Albano suggested that I come with him to Montgomery County, Maryland, where the FDA is located, to do a press conference the following Monday. There, television cameras waited and so did a much larger number of reporters. The biggest newspaper to cover the event was the Washington Post." - Peter Rost, The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman (Get the book.)

"To return the favor, he worked hard to push through Congress the first major regional trade agreement, called NAFTA (North American free trade Alliance), involving the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It was signed into law by Clinton in the beginning of 1994. This is the agreement that damaged Mexican family farmers. It was a major victory for the Rockefellers. Later that year, in a lame-duck session of Congress, a power play occurred to secure U.S. participation in a new type of worldwide government that would regulate trade." - Byron J. Richards, Fight for Your Health: Exposing the FDA's Betrayal of America (Get the book.)

"This phenomenon is being triggered, unexpectedly enough, by the mechanisms of free trade. Globalization unleashed new sources of power with centripetal force; from Europe to emerging economies like China, Brazil, and India, trade flows are shifting and new forms of leverage emerging that the architects of a harmonized global economy may never have anticipated. During the cold war, power lay in the finger that held the trigger. In today's multipolar world, driven in the long run more by economic than military imperatives, the finger that writes the rules is the one with real power." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

"The World Bank was forcing governments to cut back social services under the sterile name of "Structural Adjustment." free trade was flooding Central and South America with cheap, subsidized corn from the United States, taking away local markets and jobs. By hundreds of thousands the farmers left or were thrown off their coffee farms and migrated to the bloated cities. Yet, unlike in the perfect world of economics, there were no jobs in the cities either." - Dean Cycon, Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Get the book.) "As long as the free trade" systems of coffee and other commerce continue to deny people a sound, locally based economy, the Death Trains will not lack for human cargo. The farmers of Mut Vitz and other declared Autonomous Organizations continue their struggle for dignity and the resources to live a decent life. They continue to be harassed by the government and increasingly by paramilitary organizations. They also continue to be supported by their international friends in both commerce and social development." - Dean Cycon, Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee (Get the book.)

"In order to control the market and restrict free trade, it urged the FDA to start issuing warnings about the safety of drugs from Canada. Thus, the FDA invented a totally fictitious campaign warning Americans about dangerous drugs from Canada. Of course, it couldn't produce a single person actually harmed by Canadian drugs, nor were there a bunch of dead Canadians to be found (which would have shown that these drugs were dangerous). Rather, the FDA just started inventing different excuses as to why these drugs might be dangerous." - Mike Adams, Spam Filters for Your Brain (Get the book.)

"With the United States losing its place at the head of the economic table, the energizing force that has long led the charge for open markets and free trade will itself retreat into isolation and protectionism. In fact, the American public, spurred by feelings of anxiety, fear, distrust, and paranoia, will likely raise a growing clamor for barbwire and poured concrete as well as legal barriers." - Michael J. Panzner, Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future from Four Impending Catastrophes (Get the book.)

"They also blamed free trade, which they saw as a threat to America's developed industries. It took many years to achieve, but year after year, all the world's leading industrialized nations added laws, regulations, and taxes designed to make things better. And all these Wilsonian improvements cost money, reduced investment, or merely slowed down the economic machinery. Taxes took resources out of the productive economy and moved them into government spending—which was essentially current consumption, with little future payoff." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.) "Joined by Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader, Sharpton believed the United States should disavow free trade altogether. As long as we are members of the World Trade Organization, explained Kucinich in a debate, we cannot "protect the jobs . . . this is the reason why we have outsourcing going on right now. We can't tax it. We can't put tariffs on it."2 To be nonpartisan about it, all the candidates' positions on outsourcing were preposterous or scurrilous. There were those who want to stop it. And those who saw no problem with it. Every opinion was fraudulent, delusional, or dumb." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.) "And thus comes an even more remarkable curiosity: "In an era of free trade," began a complaint from Treasury Secretary John Snow, "we should not have to confront the issue of countries distorting their currencies to gain unfair trade advantages." The specific country to which Snow referred was China. The trade advantage the latter enjoyed was that it sold much more to the United States than the United States sold to it, by a ratio of 5 to 1. And the unfair distortion was that China pegged its own currency to the dollar." - William Bonner, Addison Wiggin, Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis (Get the book.)

"The concept of "free trade" became an important objective for the Clinton administration. It actively solicited the support of Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress in order to pass the North American free trade Agreement with Mexico. This removed obstacles for corporate capital and goods to move back and forth across the Mexican-U.S. border without restrictions." - Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (Get the book.)

"Until now, the primary impact of free trade principles has been to drive protective standards downward toward the lowest common denominator. That system rests on a sequence of critical precedents expressing the principle that environmental protection in one country constitutes discrimination against another. It is a highly selective supermarket of goods and ideas." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.) "Now someone else is writing them; the EU is flipping the switch on free trade. This is what Penelope Naas, formerly of the Commerce Department (who we met in chapter 1) was referring to when she commented that "things are going to get tough" for U.S. manufacturers.10 By sculpting their laws to conform to the nondiscriminatory requirements of the WTO —applying the same standards to European and foreign producers —the European Union is showing how standards for environmental and other protections may be leveraged upward rather than down." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.) "Those were the essential ingredients of what is now the European Union, which began with a 1952 pact between France and Germany to permit free trade in the two commodities most critical to postwar reconstruction. Jean Monnet, the postwar French diplomat and visionary behind the "Coal and Steel Pact," saw early on that tying together the fates of Europe's antagonistic powers through economic links was the most effective way to ensure peace, and to navigate the rebuilding of a continent shattered by six years of war." - Mark Schapiro, Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power (Get the book.)

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