Last November, Republicans grew their strength in Congress to levels unseen since 1946. What united the party and rallied the nation was the GOP's declared resolve to stand up to an imperious president.

So what is the first order of business in the Ways and Means Committee of Paul Ryan and Senate Finance Committee of Orrin Hatch?

“The first thing we ought to do,” says Ryan, “is pass trade promotion authority.” Trade promotion authority, or “fast track,” is a synonym for Congress' surrender of all rights to amend trade treaties and a commitment to confine itself to a yes or no vote on whatever deal President Obama brings home.

With the huge Trans-Pacific Partnership in negotiations, Obama wants Congress to agree in advance not to tamper with it. If the GOP agrees to this, it will, in its first great decision, be engaging in an act of self-castration.

Why would the GOP do this?

Everywhere we hear that the issue of our time is the wage stagnation of the middle class. But what has caused U.S. wages to stop rising for longer than any period in our history? The answer is right in front of us.

Wages are the price of labor, and price is determined by supply and demand. Wages have fallen because the supply of labor has exploded.

Following the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, we threw open America's doors to a flood of immigrants, legal and illegal. Some 40 million to 50 million have poured in, an unprecedented expansion of the labor force.

As these immigrants — many uneducated, unskilled, unable to speak English well — entered the labor pool, they were willing to work for less than native-born Americans, who need higher wages to sustain their standard of living. In the service industries, manufacturing and construction, U.S. employers found themselves in a buyers' market for workers right here in the USA.

Thus, “free-trade” Republicans and their collaborators in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce decided to drop the U.S. labor force into a worldwide labor pool, where the average wage was but a tiny fraction of an American living wage.

Like Dr. King, our transnational corporations had a dream — a dream of bypassing all U.S. regulations on wages and hours, health and safety — a dream of getting rid of all those high-wage U.S. workers and their unions.

How to realize this dream?

Move production out of the United States, out from under the jurisdiction of U.S. law, into the Third World, and then bring products back free of charge. To these folks, America is the best market to sell into, but, as a place to produce, give us China!

Like NAFTA and GATT, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is an enabling act for multinationals to move freely to where it is cheapest to produce while securing access to where it is most profitable to sell.

For scores of millions, the American dream is gone, sacrificed to the gods of the global economy — a new world economic order created by and for an elite whose 1,700 corporate jets were parked wingtip to wingtip last week while they partied in Davos.

Pat Buchanan is the author of “The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.”

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