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Bush backs free trade Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=040311000820&query=heartland&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Formhttp://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=040311000820&query=heartland&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Form
THE AMERICAS: Bush backs free trade after Democrats raise fear of vanishing jobs
By James Harding in Cleveland, Ohio
Financial Times; Mar 11, 2004
President George W. Bush came to Ohio yesterday to make an ideological and optimistic case for globalisation, 10 days after Democratic challengers for the presidency sought to harness anxiety about outsourcing and unemployment in the industrial heartland by attacking free trade.
"Instead of building barriers to trade, we must break down those barriers," Mr Bush told women entrepreneurs. "I want the world to buy America."
After making a swipe on Tuesday at "economic isolationists" in Washington, Mr Bush came to one of the most keenly watched battleground states of the 2004 election to deliver a comprehensive case in favour of free trade.
"The old policy of economic isolationism is a recipe for economic disaster," Mr Bush said. "America has moved beyond that old defeatist mindset."
The president pointed out that Honda, the Japanese car manufacturer, employed 16,000 people in Ohio, and another 6.4m Americans "draw their pay cheques" from foreign companies. He said that since the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1996, Ohio's exports to Mexico had tripled.
Mr Bush won Ohio by a 3.5 percentage point margin in 2000 and no Republican has made a successful bid for the White House without winning the state. But unemployment in Ohio has risen from 3.9 per cent when Mr Bush took office to 6.2 per cent in January.
John Edwards, the North Carolina senator, sought to win the support of the industrial heartland by blaming free trade for the exodus of manufacturing jobs.
His protectionist stump speech generated a lot of attention, but did not win voters in Ohio. Mr Edwards dropped out of the Democratic race after failing to win a state on "Super Tuesday" this month.
John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, was forced by Mr Edwards' protectionist rhetoric to defend his votes during 18 years in the Senate for trade liberalisation with China and many other free trade agreements.
But Mr Kerry has also toyed with a strand of protectionism, regularly denouncing on the campaign trail those "Benedict Arnold" chief executives - economic traitors - who ship their operations offshore.
The Kerry camp has grown concerned in recent days that the White House has seized on the trade issue and sought to recast the Democrats as isolationists.
A senior Kerry aide denied the Democratic challenger was a protectionist, but said the economic climate in America would not allow Washington to sign "future trade agreements without decent labour and environmental standards".
While not mentioning Mr Kerry by name, Mr Bush yesterday referred darkly to "politicians in Washington" who wanted to raise taxes as well as "build a wall around this country and isolate America".
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