Just checking because I checked Wikipedia and a map and they still seem to be separate countries, and China doesn’t appear to be located on North America.

So why this statement from Barack Obama:

“In Youngstown, Ohio, I talked to workers who have seen their plants shipped overseas as a consequence of bad trade deals like NAFTA, literally seeing equipment unbolted from the floors of factories and shipped to China, resulting in devastating job losses and communities completely falling apart,” Democratic front-runner Barack Obama said at a Texas debate last week, making sure that all the woes of China trade got wrapped in the word NAFTA.

or this one by Hillary Clinton:

“I would immediately have a trade timeout, and I would take that timeout to try to fix NAFTA by making it clear that we’ll have core labor and environmental standards in the agreement,” said Obama’s rival, Hillary Clinton. Likewise, Obama spoke of using the “hammer” of withdrawal to enforce compliance.

Probably because as Investor’s Business Daily points out they are pandering for votes without considering the meaning of their words:

That’s because trade pacts these days are about more than just trade — they represent long-term strategic partnerships.

…

Casting NAFTA nations as villains sends a chilling message to the dozen other nations that have since signed NAFTA-like agreements — countries as friendly and diverse as Singapore, Jordan, El Salvador, Australia, Morocco and Chile.

They must be wondering when their moment will come to be blamed for poisoned toys, sick pets, bad dumplings, factory shutdowns, outsourcing and all the broader problems of globalization that have nothing to do with their pacts.

Worse still, the irresponsible talk could have a chilling effect on strategic allies waiting for free trade pacts they’ve already signed to be approved — Colombia, Panama and South Korea. We’ve left them hanging. What a fine way to win and keep allies.

The demagoguery is particularly objectionable because it’s dishonest. First, the NAFTA pact wasn’t shoved through by fiat. It was negotiated over years by the Clinton administration, with major input from both Republican and Democratic Congresses.

Everyone got his or her say at the time, and after many debates, the agreement passed both houses in late 1993.

Unlike our trade with China, which is subject to tariffs but contains no major labor or environmental demands, NAFTA did include labor and environmental standards, with the trade-off for Mexico and Canada being the permanence of the treaty.

Subsequent ones, such as 2007’s Peru free trade agreement, and the nearly identical pending Colombia pact, required even tougher labor and environmental standards to ensure passage.

Nations give up a lot to sign free trade pacts with the U.S. And some, such as Mexico, endure considerable internal opposition.

But they do it not because selling cheap toys here is such a big deal, but because embracing the trade pact’s legal infrastructure comforts investors and helps lure foreign investment.

For these countries, those investments are their future.

Threatening to renege on a permanent treaty — as Clinton and Obama are doing through their identical vows to “opt out” of the deal — signals loudly that America’s word is no longer its bond. A permanent pact with the U.S., it turns out, isn’t so permanent.

An approach like that toward our treaty partners sends a chilling signal to our friends. It’s Obama and Clinton who need to cool it.

At least I hope it’s pandering, I mean I guess that’s preferable to the alternative – That they don’t know what NAFTA entails or what countries belong to it.

Election 2008, NAFTA, China, Free Trade, Clinton, Obama

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 6:49 am by Chad and is filed under Election 2008 Live Team Coverage!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.