Congress approves U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement.

Unlike the dramatic 217-215 CAFTA vote in 2005, the House approved the U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement (FTA) by the relatively large margin of 221-205 on July 20. Although the Senate had already approved identical legislation by 60-34 on June 29, the Senate still must clear the House bill before it can go to the president for signing.

Although many organizations and citizens opposed the Oman FTA because it threatens American jobs and national security, the overriding problem with this FTA is that it is the latest in a long row of steppingstones toward regional governance marketed to the U.S. public as a "free trade" agenda. According to the Bush administration, the U.S.-Oman FTA is designed as one of the building blocks for its proposed Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA), scheduled for completion in 2013. However, the "free trade" areas created by previous multilateral FTAs have a track record of morphing into political unions also known as regional governments, such as the European Union and the emerging North American Union. Once the hundreds of formerly sovereign nations of the world are politically enmeshed in various regional entities--the European Union, a North American Union, a Middle East Union, etc.--it would be relatively easy for our internationalist political elites to incorporate these various regional governments into a world government under the United Nations.