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Loss of thousands of jobs blamed on nafta { January 2008 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/306551http://www.thestar.com/World/Columnist/article/306551
Democrats battle over trade pact
Feb 25, 2008 04:30 AM
Tim Harper
WASHINGTON BUREAU
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio–Fourteen years after Canada, the U.S. and Mexico hailed the formation of the world's largest trading bloc, the North American Free Trade Agreement has come back to bite Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama is aggressively using Clinton's past praise of NAFTA and the efforts of her husband, former president Bill Clinton, to push the agreement through the U.S. Congress to try to deliver a knockout blow to the former first lady in this economically-ravaged state.
Ohio and Texas could push Clinton to the sidelines and give the Democratic presidential nomination to Obama if he can prevail next Tuesday when the two states, with 334 delegates at stake, join two smaller states in the biggest primary day since Super Tuesday.
Both contenders have said they would like to amend or review NAFTA to protect U.S. interests and improve labour and environment standards, but Obama has essentially accused Clinton of rewriting history in her criticism of the deal here, where it is blamed for the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs.
"Ten years after NAFTA passed, Senator Clinton said it was good for America," Obama said in Lorain, Ohio yesterday. "Well, I don't think NAFTA has been good for America – and I never have."
Clinton has accused Obama of misrepresenting her position on NAFTA, but while the trade deal has become the latest flashpoint between the two, neither has specified how they'd amend the pact.
Before changes could be made, Ottawa and Mexico City would have to agree to reopen NAFTA.
"Senator Clinton's premise in her candidacy throughout this campaign has been 35 years of experience, including eight years in the White House, right?" Obama told supporters. "She has essentially presented herself as co-president during the Clinton years.
"So the notion that you can selectively pick what you take credit for and then run away from what isn't politically convenient, that doesn't make sense."
During a campaign stop in this state, Clinton accused Obama of using "Karl Rove tactics" in distributing a flyer purporting to show her support of NAFTA, a reference to the former political guru of U.S. President George W. Bush and the man Democrats love to demonize.
Ohio has shed more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, but despite the popular perception of businesses taking advantage of lax standards elsewhere to send jobs out of the state, it is not clear how much NAFTA is responsible for the economic malaise.
When NAFTA came into force, Ohio's biggest private employer was General Motors. Today, it is Wal-Mart. The state unemployment rate has risen to 6 per cent today from about 4 per cent in 2000.
But as The Columbus Dispatch pointed out yesterday, even as it lost jobs, Ohio's manufacturing output has risen 12 per cent since 2000, indicating companies are more adept at production with fewer workers.
The steady decline in manufacturing jobs here also coincides with China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
Clinton's campaign circulated a quote from her from 2000 in which she said NAFTA was "flawed," but she has sought to explain to voters here that the deal, an extension of the free trade accord negotiated by Canada's Brian Mulroney, was handled on the U.S. side by president George H.W. Bush.
However, it was her husband, Bill Clinton, who enthusiastically shepherded the deal through Congress.
At a rally yesterday, Bill Clinton extolled his wife's economic policies, but never mentioned NAFTA.
Thirty-five kilometres up the road in Toledo, at almost exactly the same moment, Obama was telling a rally Bill Clinton had "championed" the unpopular trade deal.
Bill Clinton said Ohio created jobs when he was president, but lost them under the Bush administration. "This is not rocket science," he said. "You've got to get the economy going again."
Obama said he has always opposed NAFTA and, unlike Clinton, didn't just begin to do so after deciding to run for president.
He asserted 1 million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including 50,000 in Ohio.
Obama also acknowledged that repealing the deal would likely cost more U.S. jobs than the existing deal and he said Ohioans have to understand that in a global economy some of the lost jobs are not coming back.
In her 2003 autobiography Living History, Clinton applauded her husband for pushing NAFTA through Congress and said it "would create a free-trade zone in North America – the largest free-trade zone in the world – would expand U.S. exports, create jobs and ensure that our economy was reaping the benefits, not the burdens, of globalization."
Today, she is calling for a moratorium on new trade pacts and is promising to improve labour and environmental standards under NAFTA.
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