I still am supporting Obama (what’s my option? McCain…no), but my enthusiasm is waning considerably with this constant negative talk about NAFTA. I am a free trade advocate completely and I am concerned that Obama is a protectionist at heart, masquerading behind the mask of “fair” trade.
Can somebody convince me otherwise?
Is his problem with NAFTA of is it trade in general? I don’t know but you should if it’s the reason you are turning slightly off him because of it.
Well…
He’s a national Presidential candidate. When he’s trying to win Ohio, he’s going to talk about NAFTA because people there hate it and he will try to hang it around Hillary’s neck. If you want to see what he cares about then go by his website positions. That’s really all you can do.
You think he gave a damn about Yucca mountain in Nevada? Of course not. Obama wouldn’t have made it this far without pandering of some kind.
I am a free trade absolutist, and I think that we need to take a serious look at NAFTA. I believe it diverts trade rather than liberates it.
Furthermore, if people are willing to pay a premium for “fair” trade, then that’s free, too.
b If NAFTA were fair trade it would be a discussion. NAFTA needs fixing. It is not free trade.
You can count on almost any democrat to be critical of NAFTA, because of the competition it forces on American businesses.
Personally, I think there’s nothing “free trade” about NAFTA. American businesses have to compete with an arm tied behind their back, considering minimum wage and providing health care and environmental restrictions and litigation and on and on. If the government is going to impose these restrictions on American businesses, they’ve already abandoned the idea of “free trade”, and should take at least some steps to protect American business from foreign competitors that don’t have to follow the same rules.
I’m glad you’re all losing your religion. That shit was getting annoying.
Honestly, we’re having an election, not a canonization.
Go onto his website, read his positions on it, and above all - UNPLUG for a little while. I’m as jazzed about Obama as the next guy, and I am even a fervent campaigner for him. But I am getting very annoyed, as I know many people are, that this whole primary circus is continuing on as long as it is.
Point is, NAFTA needs an overhaul. Clinton needs to come clean on her support of it, and Obama needs to outline how he will reorganize it. Obama by most accounts is going to take this nomination, unless he steps on his meat which I highly doubt.
But seriously Gangster - unplug for a while, and try and take a little time to see what Obama really want s to do with NAFTA.
I’ll remind you of that the next time we have a discussion about Ronald Reagan.
Please do. You’ll find numerous posts here where I criticize Reagan for something or other.
If Obama was truly committed to “fair” trade, he’d be discussing lowering American subsidies on products that are unfair to the developing world, such as our agricultural subsidies. Really, the notion that international trade as it now stands needs to be corrected so that it becomes “fair” for America is the kind of pandering nonsense that the Obama campaign claims to be trying to change.
Agreed. But this kind of thing so far has only come from - McCain.
Um, okay.
Last year the US government provided more than $8 billion in agricultural subsidies. Obama’s plan would reduce that by an estimated $100 million, or 1.25%. I’m not impressed, especially given that the caps are presented as part of a protectionist effort.
Compare it with McCain:
Obama’s not just against NAFTA. He also opposed CAFTA, and says he wants ‘fair trade’ everywhere. He’s strongly pro-labor, and labor is protectionist.
We could just take a look at their records
He voted up Oman FTA and Bahrain FTA. He only differed from McCain on CAFTA (along with HRC) and the Chinese Currency Act. I guess authorizing “appropriate action” against another sovereign nation and trading partner counts as support of free trade.
Whereas Senator McCain doesn’t know as much about economics as he should.
That fills me with confidence.
Whereas Greg Mankiw, that infamous communist and chief economic advisor to George W Bush (and the author of my very first intro to economics text) discussed Obama’s response to an economic question in a January debate:
By which you mean solely Mexico. NAFTA involved three countries, one of which has generally higher standards of minimum wage and health care coverage, so obviously it can’t be that country that’s the problem.
There’s four problems with htis, though. Well, there’s a dozen problemns with this line of thinking, really, but I’ll concentrate on four
If it’s true that the problem is that one NAFTA partner has low minimum wages and such, then why is it that the other one, Canada, ALSO has a significant trading surplus with the USA? If the business simply migrates to where there are low employment standards, there should not be any business left in Canada, which has higher minimum wages, no “at will” employment rules, year-long maternity leave, and tax-supported universal medicare. Yet over the course of FTA/NAFTA, Canada’s net exports to the USA have grown, not shrunk. That directly contradicts the theory that business just goes wherever employment rules are more lax.
Given #1, there must be factors at play besides employment rules that would motivate a business to stay somewhere. An obvious one would be that workers are not all created equal. A country with better educated and better trained workers will offer the employer to chance to get more out of their workers. American workjers are, in fact, among the most productive workers in the world. They’re much likelier than Mexican workers to be healthy, literate, and technically educated (that’s not a shot against Mexicans, it’s just the prevailing conditions.)
American workers are more expensive than Mexican workers because they’re worth more. The prevailing wage and benefit rates are not some sort of accident; they reflect worth. You get what you pay for.
Mexicans are coming across the border and finding jobs in the States. Which doesn’t really compute with the notion that the jobs are moving to Mexico.
The “we need to stop our businesses from moving work elsewhere” mantra ignores the fact that it’s American companies who benefit from owning businesses there. The profits flow into American coffers and are turned into economic activity in the USA. Lower prices benefit American firms and consumers. You can’t pull the jobs back and ignore the loss of all the benefits. Here in Canada we have people arguing against both sides; they bitch that free trade costs jobs, and then they bitch when other countries move jobs here, claiming that foreign ownership existing in Canada is bad because the profits go to other countries. So the exact same thing is bad when it goes one way, and it’s bad when it goes the other, as if the two phenomena inhabited totally different universes with reversed laws of economics. It’s amazing to watch.
I’ve pointed this out before and never really gotten a coherent response, but just ask yourself what would happen if American states engaged in the same level of protectionism among themselves as sovereign nation-states do. Imagine if you lived in Virginia and were not allowed to move to Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania or South Carolina without going through an arduous immigration process, and your company could not export anything to any other state without paying tariffs, and all the goods you wanted to buy that were produced elsewhere were 30% more expensive due to tariffs imposed by the Commonwealth of Virginia. But, hey, Virginia companies won’t move to Baltimore now. Does that strike anyone as being a good idea?
Now, as to the Barack Obama issue, he’s going to do what every politician does on this issue, which is campaign against it and then act differently when he gets into the White House. Sam, remember when Jean Chretien opposed NAFTA? Remember how his opposition magically vanished once he was the PM? Obama will do the same and I’ll bet money on it.
I’m curious, do you think Obama is actively lying, or just that once he fully understands the economic situation (perhaps through many sit-down chats with the Fed chairman), he’ll change his tune?
Neither. I do not believe he will have the wherewithal to drive this change, even if he wanted to. He has more fundamental battles to fight.
It’s just human nature if elected two years down the road half the people standing in line to blow him now will be annoyed at him for one thing or another. 