White House defends NAFTA: 'There's nothing broken'

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: AP

The White House on Friday vigorously defended the 14-year-old free-trade agreement among the United States, Mexico and Canada against sharp criticism from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"There's nothing broken. Why fix it?" said Dan Fisk, senior director of Western hemisphere affairs for National Security Council. He acknowledged the administration must do a better job of explaining the benefits of the agreement.

Both Clinton and Obama have threatened to pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement to pressure Canada and Mexico to negotiate more protections for workers and the environment in the agreement. The accord has removed most barriers to trade and investment among the three countries.

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/White_House_defends_NAFTA_There_s_n_04182008.html

[paparush]

1. Any word on the AMERO currency?

[Deja Q]

24. Check out snopes

:shrug:

[sutz12]

2. "Me 'n' my homies is skinnin' the Benjimins. Whats the problem?"

:shrug:
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:sarcasm: (Of course)

[VP505]

3. zackly

:mad:

[fascisthunter]

4. Yuh Head is Broken... broken in By Ya Nazi Parents

yuh just too clueless and corrupt to realize it.

[OKthatsIT]

8. I hope your reply was directed at Bush

[fascisthunter]

10. Sorry You Might Have Doubted Me

Yes, it was towards Bush... why would it be any one else? :shrug:

[sasquatch]

11. Well it's not his fault that his mother dealt with pregnancy issues by drinking scotch

:D

[fascisthunter]

12. Could You Imagine What He'd Be Like If She Didn't Drink

while pregnant? He probably wouldn't look like this guy:

[Maccagirl]

5. Oh, never mind...

it's just too easy with these cretinous liars.

[OKthatsIT]

6. I can't believe more people aren't screaming "FOUL!"

There has been a systematic destruction of our economic base...trade deficits, manufacturing gone, local 'REPUBLICAN' govt officials privatizing and selling off their local infrastructures to avoid 'no more taxes'.

Southern Republicans are partners with the fuedal lords of Mexico.

Before the Republicans lost their majority in Congress, they pushed through federal immigrations 'incarceration laws'. Allowing the Feds to hold illegal immigrant families for 180 days...6 mos! They can delay their trials/appeals and contain them in camps or prisons without any explanation. The US tax payer pays for those 6 mos, too. This was designed to feed the prison industrial complex. Republican business.

Blackwater is Republican business.
Security is Republican business.
Security training is Republican business.
Prison Industrial Complex is owned by Southern Republicans.
Monsanto is a Republican business.
Mexican trucking companies are owned by oligarchies of both Southern Republicans and Mexicans.
The PORTS/docks in MEXICO were built and owned by MExican/Chinese(WALMART-Southern Republicans) business.
The Media makes fun of people who try to bring this to your attention(Lou Dobbs)

[Tempest]

7. And no jobs have been lost because of it

And Santa Claus really does exist.

[tanyev]

9. "It's working exactly as planned. Excellent."

[stillcool]

13. There sure isn't...

cheap labor, no employee protection, no need to worry about health care for the peons, no environmental protection, record profits..NAFTA works really good!

[Javaman]

14. of the thousand of trucks that come across the border daily...

less than one percent is actually inspected for drugs or other contraban.

Nice, huh?

someone is making a boat load of money on this...

it ain't me.

[NM Independent]

15. You've got to be kidding me.

You'd have to be a disgusting piece of evil trash that gives not one rats ass about the poor or middle class, to say such a thing.

[nbcouch]

16. Right, it's working perfectly

The American working class is being undermined, slowly but surely. This effort continues apace, as planned.

You've got wake up, people, and recognize that the vast majority of the bad shit that's happened over the last seven years was by design. The fact that we're still stuck in Iraq? The fact that the economic expansion of the last few years has been incredibly skewed toward the uppermost income segment of the population? The gargantuan budget and trade deficits and the rapid erosion of the value of the dollar relative to other currencies? All part of the plan, my friends.

[BeHereNow]

20. Welcome to DU- nice to know there are newbies who KNOW this is by design.

Courtesy of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

BHN

[nbcouch]

21. Courtesy of the PNAC

I cringe every time someone talks about the "incompetent" Bush administration. Bush can't tie his own shoelaces, but the people who are running things know exactly what they're doing. History will judge us, as a society, quite harshly for letting them get away with it.

[midnight]

17. Ya, and these people don't follow the law anyways so what can

we expect them to say. Except that all is great, and the mission is occomplished.

[OhioChick]

18. Nothing Broken??

:rofl:

[mac2]

19. Ya like we are winning the war?

A parallel universe trade union success. Why is the trade debt so high George?

[bluerum]

22. if I went to work kicked back and said "it's all good let it be" I'd be fired

faster than,,, well,,, faster than something that's pretty fast. This butt-fuck thinks his job is to stay busy explaining how good things are instead of trying to make things work better. Someone give these bUsh clown appointees the hook - ASAP!

[Deja Q]

23. Clinton signed it, therefore it must be bad in the eyes of any Republican?

More importantly, as a number of Republicans*, who normally don't like taxes, have said offshored work should be taxed higher...

:shrug:

* People I know. I don't play "Don't date ____ person".

[lovuian]

25. the Jobs loss has been tremendous ever since enacted

America's status in the world has diminished

[Zorro]

26. I beg to differ

U.S. employment rose from 112.2 million in December 1993 to 137.2 million in December 2006, an increase of 25 million jobs, or 22 percent. The average unemployment rate was 5.1 percent in the period 1994-2006, compared to 7.1 percent during the period 1981-1993.

Of course all the job increases can not be directly attributed to NAFTA, but the implication that NAFTA created tremendous job losses is dubious at best.

I do agree that America's status has been diminished, but that's because of the insulting arrogance of this administration.

[BreweryYardRat]

27. And how many of those jobs are retail jobs that don't pay a living wage anymore, hmm?

I'd bet a lot of those are retail or other low-paying work. A lot of skilled-labor positions went out of the country post-NAFTA.

[Zorro]

28. Beats me how many jobs in retail have been created

But here are a couple of reported facts:

U.S. manufacturing output rose by 63 percent between 1993 and 2006, exceeding the 37 percent increase achieved between 1980 and 1993. Average real compensation for manufacturing workers grew at an average annual rate of 1.6 percent from 1993 to 2006, compared to just 0.9 percent annually between 1980 and 1993.

What were the skilled-labor positions that went out of the country post-NAFTA? Did they go to Mexico, Canada, or somewhere else?

[BreweryYardRat]

30. Before I say anything, where are you getting those statistics?

I'd like to look at them.

[Zorro]

31. Here you go

http://www.ustr.gov/assets/Trade_Agreements/Regional/NAFTA/Fact_Sheets/asset_upload_file366_13495.pdf

I have not heard of anyone challenging these reported statistics.

[brentspeak]

33. That's an interesting line of argument you're using

First, in an earlier post above, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3273748&mesg_id=3275404">you asserted your anti-Bush street cred for all to see. Then, however, to buttress your defense of NAFTA, you link to none other than a Bush White House summary "fact sheet". Finally, you assume that what's written in the fact sheet is necessarily true simply on the basis that you "have not heard of anyone challenging" it.

As it so happens, there was at least one prominent challenge to Bush's NAFTA fact sheet, easily found on the Web, from the well-known Public Citizen site:

http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/articles.cfm?ID=17640

And, for several years now, there have been many other fact-checks of both Bush's and the various conservative think tank's regularly-spammed NAFTA apologetics press releases, such as, http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/issuebriefs_ib158.

These challenges to the pro-NAFTA releases are nothing new, and it's kind of strange how you've apparently "never heard of" them.

[PittPoliSci]

29. par for the course.

should we really expect anything less from those morons?

[alarimer]

32. And the Democrats ar both in favor of free trade

Well they might give lip service to "reform" but they are corporate tools. Expect more of the same from either of them.

[shanti]

34. up is down, black is white

:eyes: