The Wisconsin primary featured the first-ever presidential campaign competition of who opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) the most.
The candidates sparred on a daily basis to distance themselves from NAFTA and the United States' soaring trade deficits, loss of more than 3 million manufacturing jobs and flat median wages that have occurred since it and the World Trade Organization (WTO) took effect. Sen. Barack Obama has already sent a massive mailing throughout Ohio attacking Sen. Hillary Clinton's connections to her husband's passage of NAFTA and launched a large Ohio television ad buy on jobs that have been sent offshore. Clinton repeatedly bashed NAFTA, reiterating her pledge to take a time-out on new trade agreements. Both candidates made an array of commitments in a questionnaire fielded by the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition.
As America's anxiety grows, the economy not only is becoming a preeminent issue of the election, but the presidential candidates are responding to public anxiety about the current model of globalization. The Democratic candidates are reflecting back the public criticism of the status quo, but so far, they have avoided stating how an aspiring future president would restore the economic security of the American middle class in this era of globalization.
Among the questions the candidates would probably rather not answer:
1. How will they change existing trade agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA and the WTO to counter job offshoring and labor arbitrage that have reduced U.S. wages? Both Democratic presidential candidates have committed to review NAFTA and to add labor and environmental standards. Obama has committed to doing the same to all existing U.S. trade agreements, including the WTO. Strong labor standards are necessary, but they are not sufficient to alter trade agreements' damaging economic outcomes for Americans. Labor rights requirements in trade pacts will provide workers in trade partner countries with essential tools to organize for improved wages and conditions over many decades as part of creating a social contract that may take a century to establish, as it did in the United States. However, a future president has a duty to secure tangible gains for Americans who are losing their jobs and seeing their wages stagnate today, and who fear for their children's futures in the coming decades. That requires changing the status quo trade model by eliminating provisions that promote immediate offshoring of U.S. production and jobs. The foreign investor protections included in these agreements directly incentivize offshoring by removing the risks normally associated with relocating to low-wage developing countries. Will the candidates commit to renegotiate the existing trade agreements' foreign investor protections that directly promote offshoring?
2. How will a future president remedy the China trade imbalance? In November 2007, the U.S. reached a new record annual trade deficit with China -- without December's figures even being calculated. Ohio has lost more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. Ohio manufacturers are unable to compete when China grants enormous subsidies to foreign investors and misaligns its currency, which Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke calls "an effective subsidy." What specific actions will each candidate take in his or her first year to address the U.S.-China trade debacle?
3. How will they deliver on their promises to ensure imported food and product safety? Both Democratic presidential candidates have stated that as president, he or she would take urgent action to remedy the current flood of unsafe imported products and food into the U.S. market. However, to do so they must commit to renegotiate current U.S. trade agreements to remove the limits on such domestic consumer protections. Will the candidates commit to renegotiating the limits on imported product and food safety standards and on border inspection rates now included in WTO and NAFTA and change the WTO rules that require us to accept imports that do not meet U.S. safety standards?
4. How will proposals to create jobs by rebuilding America's infrastructure work in the face of trade agreement bans on "Buy America" and other domestic preference policies? The procurement provisions included in the WTO, NAFTA and the various Free Trade Agreements now in effect undermine the ability of federal and state governments to use tax dollars to create and maintain good jobs by banning "Buy America" and similar preferences. They also include provisions that limit the ability of federal and state governments to use procurement policy to achieve other important social goals, including safeguarding prevailing wages and increasing renewable energy and recycled content. Will the candidates renegotiate existing trade agreements to remove the limits on domestic procurement policies that could impact their existing proposals to create jobs, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and increase energy efficiency?
Most Americans still have no idea how NAFTA and the WTO hijacked the good name of trade to lavish market-distorting protections and subsidies on the corporations that helped write those deals and to impose limits on import safety standards and inspection. But increasingly, the candidates' advisors are delving into that question. Consider the speech recently given by Obama's top economic advisor -- avowed free market economics professor at the University of Chicago, Austan Goolsbee -- at a New America Foundation event titled, "As the Economy Screams: Perspectives and Proposals from the Presidential Campaigns":
"I do believe there's no one more in favor of open markets than me," Goolsbee said, "and that said, if you look at these 900-page [trade]agreements, they're two pages of what every economists says 'yeah, that's great' -- opening tariffs -- and then 898 pages of loopholes. It looks just like the tax code -- protect this company and make sure they're getting their money and these investor protections."
The relatively few interests benefiting from status quo globalization and trade policies have been hard at work spinning a line about how John Edwards' departure from the Democratic nomination race would mean the end for the trade issue in this presidential election cycle. The intensifying focus on the issue in Wisconsin and in Ohio puts an end to that line. Indeed, given that a majority of GOP voters now agree with the Democrats' more consistent critique of the current trade regime, during the general election, trade and offshoring may well become a priority wedge issue regardless of who wins each party's nomination.
Great questions with complex answers. Neither Democratic nor Republican candidates have the answers. The problems are deep and wide . . . some analysis and suggestions . . . >
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/02/americas-china-quandary.html
Eating at the table of free trade requires both balance and reason between those seated. That includes both the governments as well as the corporations partaking in the feast.
James Raider
I would like to see one more added to your list.
Let's end the legal fiction that corporations have the rights of persons. This is being used by corporations to run competing referenda in states where 2/3 majority is required to pass a referendum. Having three competing, intentionally confusing referenda on the ballot guarantees none pass and continues the status quo. Further, corporations are NOT people, and their agendas are only and simply the agendas of accountants, and the next quarterly report, which is no way to run our country, as it is the illogical opposite of the legendary Native American 'requirement' to take into account the 7th generation.
All in all, we need to end our association with the WTO.
Life will go on. Companies world wide will still want to sell us products. But we dont have to allow companies to wag the dog. We can insist on appropriate tariffs for products made under conditions now illegal in the US.
RIght now, there is no logical reason for a company to produce products here if they can be produced for half in the Congo or Thailand.
We presently require the permission of the WTO to use the 'facilities', excuse my accurate metaphor.
We see the spectacle of companies using the British Cayman islands as HQ, and avoiding taxation.
We need to eliminate income taxes for companies and persons, and go to a sales/transfer tax. Simple and way more income, because it would be relatively inclusive. No laborer working for cash can slide under a federal tax on all goods sold/tranferred. At least barter would be the only way under a sales/transfer tax.
They say that Sen Clinton has taken a new, populist tack. She is not able to answer your questions, because she would have to offend Wall Street's point of view.
A coward, fearful of the Fox spin doctors, her populism only extends to the borders of Ohio.
I thank you for bringing your questions up.
Aloha. OBB
Do you want higher prices with jobs for American made products or ever higher prices for foreign made products with fewer and fewer American jobs ?
Damned if you do, really damned if you don't.
What we need are tariffs. Let's be clear, if the US continues to have a 6% trade deficit the dollar will continue to fall causing ever more inflation.
These trade deficits are structural not incidental, that is, we are not importing products to produce or make us more efficient, we are importing products to consume.
Without tariffs to protect and expand manufacturing here in the US we will be devastated by inflation and a falling dollar anyway.
So, take your pick, higher prices and American jobs or ever higher prices and foreign jobs.
Your questions are evidence that you have deep concern for your country and are applying common sense to the current democratic exercise we are all witnessing perhaps too intimately without real insight into any candidate running.
The race for the White House will, in this election, be decided by emotional fervor fuelled by earnest and legitimate discontent with the evaporation of “opportunity”. pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-social-phenomenon.html . . . . It is not likely that even Obama fully comprehends what is happening around him and to him.
James Raider
just remember, whether they have answers for the economy or not, anyone is better than another sleazy ass repuglican in office.
They have to beat McCain who likewise doesn't know a thing about globalization
Do it any possible way. As of now, McCain is a shoo-in and what a tragedy that is
Keep your eye on the ball
Further, he was not confident of support when he began his campaign, so he asked for federal funding at the outset. Now he wishes he didnt, but it is too late, and he wont get federal funding until September and the legal limit on his further spending in the meanwhile is only six million, for the next several months. His only media exposure will be on Fox and Leno.
Remember it was Ross Perot that warned everyone of that "Giant sucking sound"? Mitt Romney said those jobs will come back. Don't count on that.
The question I would like to ask of McCain and Obama/Clinton is will you allow Nader or any Independant to participate in debates this Summer? Or are they too terrified to debate issues of concern to those of who are not lock-step Republicans or Democrats.
The most important issue facing America today is the impeachment of the criminals Bush and Cheney.
All other issues are secondary.
It is imperative that we opt out of those agreements and place tariffs on finished goods entering our country. This should encourage the manufacturers of these goods to make them here, giving American workers good paying jobs and sustaining our economy.
If I were running for president, I would want those tariffs in place during my first week in office, right after the law mandating federally funded elections.
The next Democratic government will likely get just two years to turn our country around. If it doesn’t get done by then, our majority in the house could be lost in 2010! I’m sorry to have to build a fire under you guys; but I believe that swift action is necessary.
and other free trade agreements should be examined closely.
Amnesty International has focused on the horrors of border-towns in Mexico. Since 1993, more than 400 women have been murdered in Juarez, Mexico, a factory town that is home to people who toil away at “maquiladoras” (border factories) making cheap consumer goods for the US market. If you haven't seen it yet, go out and rent the movie Bordertown - it is a shocking and incredibly disturbing look into what has emerged. Shame on corporations that overlook the safety of those who work to provide the products that consumers gobble up. Do we value our toys more than human rights?
What scares me is there is currently no incentive for any of the candidates to adress these issues in a serious way.
The electorate seems to be content with horserace, personalities, and identity politics:......which the "dumbed-down tarted-up" media is happy to provide.
The real question regarding the thorny trade/economic issues so eloquently delineated by Ms. Wallach here (as well as many others not mentioned in the post) seems to me to be:
Will any candidate adress these issues ON THEIR OWN if not forced to by a media much more enamored of pep rallies and photo-ops: an electorate with chronic Attention Deficit Disorder: and political opponents equally vested in the status quo?
I'm afraid the odds are very long on the answer to THAT question being anywhere near as pleasing as mindlessly chanting "Yes we Can!!"..........................................tm
Particularly dealing with labor and environmental issues. These are the two main reasons why capital elects to criss-cross political boundaries.
No serious economist will tell you that these trade deficits are either sustainable or reversible.
We are bleeding 6% of GDP and hundreds of thousands of jobs a year wrecking our dollar and our manufacturing sector.
These trade deficits are intractable. The products we are importing we don't make here anymore and won't until tariffs are enacted to protect domestic production.
Let's be clear, those cheap imports won't be cheap once our dollar collapses.
Particularly dealing with labor and environmental issues. These are the two main reasons why capital elects to criss-cross political boundaries.