Recently, Obama/Hillary have been pushing dumping NAFTA. They're shoving the protectionist meme when it comes to labor - and in speeches to factory workers, they push the idea that NAFTA stole their jobs.
So dump NAFTA, and they'll come back. Well, this has some of the folks in the Democratic Party worried - because if you're trying to 'repair' America's image in the world - the last thing you want to do is kick your neighbors hard.
Potomac Watch - WSJ.comBut it could be argued that Hil/Oba haven't any intention of changing things once in office. Heck, I've argued that myself. However - if you were a businessman in a country the US had a trade agreement with, wouldn't you be just a bit concerned if someone started dumping trade agreements and treaties in the dumpster?Other Democrats are likewise worried this bout of anti-trade fervor risks undercutting the party's key foreign policy plank: that it will do more on the diplomatic front. When asked about the wisdom of reopening Nafta at the university event, Rep. Artur Davis (an Alabama Democrat who happened to be the first congressman outside of Illinois to endorse Mr. Obama) replied: "I'm not a fan for reopening agreements we have negotiated because the rest of the world thinks that we don't keep our word enough as it is."
In other words, it's hard to make nicey-nice with the global community when you are stiffing it on trade. Ask Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who clearly tuned into the Ohio Democratic debate long enough to catch Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton threatening to withdraw from Nafta unless his country rolled over for their new demands. "[They] should recognize that Nafta benefits the U.S. tremendously. Those who speak of it as helpful to [just the] Canadian and Mexican economies are missing the point," he responded, and not lovingly.
I don't think either of them are ready for Prime Time. They're trying to make sound-bite rhetoric their policy planks - and they're not terribly sturdy...
J.
Comments (1)
They are playing rhetoric, yes.
There are problems with NAFTA in one of the three Nations involved is *not* holding up to its agreements. And by the wonders of free trade the campesinos of Mexico were outcompeted by large agribusiness in the US, they had to pull up roots and try to find work... namely northwards and then, at the present time, the cheap foodstuffs from the US are drying up because *ethanol producers* are willing to pay a higher price then the folks in Mexico can... this *after* their farm economy has gotten uprooted by cheap US crops. Mexico has not: kept to their labor agreements, kept to their human rights agreements and did not, which they swore up and down they would do, export their unemployment problem to the US.
As a set of three 2-way agreements, I have problems with one of the parties to it not holding up to their end of things. Would we do the same with North Korea if they did not hold up to their nuclear agreements? Oh, wait, they didn't and we actually killed the agreement... hmmmmm... what was that about 'consistency' in treaty enforcement? Or do we actually have treaties that are meaningless because we will not enforce them? And, with the rising of organized crime as an insurgency in northern Mexico, fuelled by unemployment, and death tolls starting to get up past Iraq, exactly how long will it be before we will need troops on the border to 'contain' that insurgency? Why has free trade not worked its magic in Mexico? And trade, itself all on its lonesome, was supposed to do wonders for Yugoslavia... China... the Middle East. So why is Yugoslavia *gone*, China building on a pile of bad debt that makes the 'bubble economies' of Japan and the other Asian Tigers of the 1980's seem puny... and the great efficacy of 'trade' with the Ottoman Empire to create liberty only being done with US troops involved? We seem to be forgetting some things, like supporting liberty and freedom and using trade to sustain them. Not try to *create them* which it has not done. And when sustaining it, we must pay attention to the size, capabilities and efficiencies of the economies involved or we may outcompete our trade parterns to their detriment, like Mexico, or suffer a de-industrialization because we cannot be bothered to have heavy industry anymore.
We have made the mistake of applying the good of free trade within a Nation and thinking it can work just that way between Nations. It may do our economy some good, yes, and make us prosperous. Great for us. Now, what about our trading partner that was so unwise as to expose their traditional ladder out of poverty to the quicksand of free trade and watch it disappear? We have a problem right over our border, in case anyone has missed it. Look at the last couple years of increasing organized crime attacks in Mexico and the wonders of having extremely poor and out of work people with very few skills may just dawn upon us... because we will not be stopping the automatic weapons and such forever with such a wide-open border. And at the rate its been ramping up, that day may come sooner than any of us expect.
Posted by ajacksonian | March 5, 2008 7:34 PM
Posted on March 5, 2008 19:34