WTO, EU defining U.S. tax policy. (Insider Report).

Amid the welter of controversies that culminated in the American War for Independence, one principle was understood and supported throughout the colonies: "No taxation without representation." Decisions about taxing Americans, the colonists insisted, were not to be made overseas by officials unaccountable to taxpayers and hostile to American interests. This principle survived the test of arms in our Revolution and was a foundation stone in our constitutional republic. But our nation's involvement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has effectively reversed that principle, as it applies to tax incentives for U.S. exporters.

On August 30th, reported Reuters, "The European Union won approval ... to slap a record $4 billion in sanctions on the United States over illegal U.S. export tax breaks The award was granted by a special WTO panel of arbitrators, who ruled that "the amount of $4.043 billion ... can be considered to be a reasonable approximation of the actual value of the subsidy" supposedly created by tax concessions to large exporters such as Boeing and Microsoft.

Only those whose minds are shackled by Marxist assumptions would equate a "tax break" -- meaning an amount not taken by the government -- with a "subsidy" -- meaning an amount given by government to a specific beneficiary. Applying this Marxist illogic to U.S. export policy, the WTO's arbitrators ruled that the U.S. had provided a "huge illegal export subsidy" by failing to impose a tax burden as onerous as that imposed on European competitors by their socialist governments. Accordingly, reported Reuters, the Bush administration has been "working with Congress to comply with WTO rules" -- that is, to harmonize our nation's tax laws with decrees issued by a collection of unelected foreign socialist officials in Geneva.

Bush administration trade representative Robert Zoellick had urged the WTO panel to revise its estimate of the "subsidy" down to approximately $1.1 billion. "I'm disappointed the [WTO] arbitrator did not accept the lower figure put forward by the United States," stated Zoellick following the decision. "I believe that today's findings will ultimately be rendered moot by U.S. compliance with the WTO's ... rulings in this dispute." If we comply with such rulings, and re-write our tax laws accordingly, in what sense could the United States still be considered a sovereign nation?