Reckless Pandering
Even the Washington Post is appalled at the anti-NAFTA rhetoric issuing forth from The Great Left Hope and Her inevitableness. They slam the promises of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as pandering at best, reckless at worst.
NEVER illuminating, the Democratic presidential primary debate over trade policy took an especially dim turn this week. In their final head-to-head meeting before Tuesday's Ohio and Texas primaries, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) declared that they would opt out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico unless those two countries renegotiated the pact's labor and environmental provisions to the United States' liking. For two candidates who pledge to repair U.S. standing in the world, it was an odd swipe at our next-door neighbors. Not surprisingly, Mexican and Canadian officials recoiled at the prospect of overturning settled political and economic expectations in their countries.
What could the Democrats mean? Labor and the environment are covered by "side agreements" to NAFTA, negotiated by President Bill Clinton, that call on all three countries to make and enforce good laws. The more recent U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement went further, requiring Peru to change its labor laws to meet International Labor Organization standards. Both Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton, who supported the Peru deal, see it as a model for a NAFTA renegotiation with Mexico, according to their advisers. But if that's all the candidates have in mind, they are wildly overpromising: The Peru pact's labor and environmental standards are only incrementally stronger than the NAFTA side agreements. Meanwhile, the risks of renegotiation are huge. NAFTA is controversial in Mexico, too; farmers there are outraged by American agricultural imports. If the Mexican side asked that tariffs be reimposed on U.S. grain as part of a renegotiation, would President Obama or President Clinton sacrifice American farmers whose votes they were seeking only yesterday in Iowa? Or would he or she pull out of NAFTA? If the latter, the tariffs on both sides would revert to the levels of 14 years ago.
So the two candidates who pledge to "restore" America's place in the world are both promising to unilaterally impose their will on our two closest sovereign neighbors and undo 14 years of progress for all three nations. That is a pretty funny way to accomplish their stated goals. Both Canada and Mexico are very unhappy with this kind of talk. And the voters being pandered to are in for a rude shock when they finally figure out that neither one of these to can deliver on such promises. Gutting, abandoning or even "renegotiating" NAFTA would be an enormous hit on the credibility of the United States as a reliable partner.
Politics, World news | Gaius Saturday, 1 March , 2008
By Sam, Saturday, 1 March , 2008 @ 8:40 pm
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players".