mr. speaker , the economic disaster wrought by a radical free trade policy on the working people of america is well documented , but i am going to focus on another aspect of this wto agreement that the previous gentleman spoke about . 
he said that the secretive dispute resolution panel , which has no conflict-of-interest rules , does not allow outside interveners , only allows the two representative governments into the room , and deliberates secretly and comes up with a binding , a binding , decision and can not change u.s. laws . 
now , i raised this issue with the clinton administration when they negotiated this misbegotten agreement ; and i said , how can you enter us into an agreement where secretive panels can preempt our laws ? 
they said , oh , you do not understand , you are wrong , just like the gentleman before me . 
yes , it is technically true , they can not reach into the united states and change a law . 
we can , if they find our rule to be non-wto compliant , which they have more than 90 percent of the time when complaints are brought against the united states of america , we have an option . 
we can repeal the law , or we can pay a fine to keep it , a huge fine , in many cases . 
so environmental protection , consumer protection , buy america , buy oregon , buy your state , all of those things , we can have those laws . 
that is right . 
he is technically right . 
we just have to pay massive penalties to foreign governments to keep them . 
this is an extraordinary undermining of the sovereignty of the united states of america and the interests of the american people . 
this is not about free trade ; this is about corporate-managed trade through a secretive body which is dominated by those very same corporations and many dictatorial governments around the world ; and the u.s. is bound by their secretive decisions . 
this is absolutely outrageous . 
to date , the wto has ruled u.s. policies illegal 42 out of 48 cases , 85.7 percent that has been brought against us . 
they ruled illegal regulation issued under the clean air act ; the united states tax code ; laws to protect companies from unfair dumping or subsidized foreign products , among others . 
and it is true . 
we can keep those laws if we are willing to pay massive fines to keep them . 
now , what kind of sovereignty is that ? 
next in their sights are buy america laws , those referenced by the gentleman from the carolinas . 
what he said is he does not want to see a social security program administered from china . 
now , people would have thought that was a weird thing to say . 
no . 
the wto requires we can not discriminate in terms of who the vendors will be . 
in fact , homeland security can be provided by the chinese , or maybe even by iran , under the rules of the wto . 
will that not be just peachy ? 
this is an extraordinarily radical agreement which we do not need . 
the u.s. did just fine as the greatest trading nation in the world with bilateral agreements . 
we can go back to that system , and we can do better than we are doing under this so-called rules-based system . 
