Obama: NAFTA and trade deals are GOOD for the U.S.

[amborin]

Fact Check: Clinton, Obama and NAFTA
The Associated Press
Tuesday, February 26, 2008; 10:42 PM

WASHINGTON -- Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are paying a price for artful dodges on trade over the years, a burden on display in their debate Tuesday night.

Thanks to past equivocations, the Democratic presidential candidates have left themselves open to the criticisms and misrepresentations they are now using against each other as they scramble to dissociate themselves from a trade agreement they once praised _ with qualifications.
Their dispute over trade flared anew in their debate in Cleveland. Clinton contended that she avoided taking a public position on the North American Free Trade Agreement when she was first lady, and became a critic of it when she ran as a candidate in her own right _ in her 2000 Senate campaign.

In fact, she praised NAFTA while she was first lady and helped her husband lobby for its ratification. And she continued to praise it as a senator, while becoming more explicit in calling for improvements and citing its shortcomings.
Obama acknowledged in the debate that in his 2004 Illinois Senate campaign, he said _ as he put it now _ "NAFTA and other trade deals can be beneficial to the United States." His comments, as reported in 2004, were that NAFTA had brought enormous benefits to his state, but that trade deals needed to be made better for workers.
The root of their ambivalence is their shared

<snip>
Obama has been consistently ambivalent.

In his 2004 Senate campaign, he said the U.S. should pursue more deals such as NAFTA, and argued more broadly that his opponent's call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that Obama had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for U.S. workers.
"We need free trade but also fair trade," he said, taking the dodge.

Obama is correct that Clinton has praised NAFTA in various ways, but he leaves out the qualifications she's expressed along the way. And she did not say NAFTA was a "boon," as the mailer states on its ominous cover, depicting a locked factory gate. "Boon" was a newspaper's characterization of her position, which is reprinted inside the mailer.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. Obama is solidified his positions on these policies as convenient

in opposition to Hillary, including the Iraq war.

[Radical Activist]

2. Provide a direct quote and original source.

I'll wait but you won't come up with one and neither does the article.

[anamandujano]

4. Why should he bother since you won't be able to read it.

[skipos]

5. You mean a quote like this: "I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good

for New York state and America."

Oops. Hillary said that, not Obama.

[anamandujano]

6. You can find the info here--link

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4664208

[Radical Activist]

8. There's no direct quote in that link of what's in the OP.

So again, I guess there isn't one. But I was happy to see a fair trade quote like this in what you just linked:

"Obama will ensure that trade agreements include strong labor and environmental protections and that all Americans share the rewards of globalization."

Sounds good to me. That's what Bill Clinton promised in '92 and failed to deliver.

[anamandujano]

14. The thread provides documentation that BO was afraid that

his documented position on NAFTA would not serve him well in Ohio.

It was on his website and he removed it. DOCUMENTED.

[Radical Activist]

16. Then why haven't you pasted it here?

I read your link. Its a statement that is for fair trade but not protectionist. It DID NOT say he thought NAFTA was a good thing. So again, why don't you provide a direct cited quote where he praises NAFTA as the OP claimed? What you linked does not.

[babylonsister]

18. Fair trade sounds good to me also. The links on this thread are

definitely lacking. Par for the course?

[amborin]

7. huh?

Washington Post

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/26/AR2008022602423.html?tid=informbox>

[Radical Activist]

9. Likewise, that article cites no source with a direct qoute

of Obama praising NAFTA in the way the OP claims. The only direct cited sources are his anti-NAFTA statements. You have to take Obama's quotes out of context and give a heavy dose of spin to make it sound like he was ever a fan of NAFTA.

[babylonsister]

3. Thanks. You can 'snip', but not provide a link? nt

[amborin]

11. the link is provided

and it's not spin, it's facts

[babylonsister]

13. Where? nt

[Forkboy]

10. Not exactly a complimentary article for either of them.

You've already added the stuff about Obama, so here's some of the Hillary stuff.

Her implication that NAFTA was simply a spillover from the first President Bush and passively made law under President Clinton ignores the fierce lobbying Bill Clinton engaged in to get the deal ratified by Congress. Hillary Clinton helped him in that effort.

President Clinton used his faith in free trade as a core issue to distinguish himself from Democratic orthodoxy and establish a "third way" between politics of the left and right.

---

The Clinton mailer accurately quoted news stories from 2004 describing Obama's call for more NAFTA-like agreements and his belief that the deal has brought benefits to his state. But the mailer was strikingly selective, leaving out qualifications he emphasized at the time, and were closely linked in the news stories.

In one such example, he said: "The problem in a lot of our trade agreements is that the administration tends to negotiate on behalf of multinational companies instead of workers and communities."

[babylonsister]

19. Dust that stuff-can't have that, Forkboy!

:hi:

[babylonsister]

12. Dupe. nt

[amborin]

15. another article showing Obama's fake attacks on NAFTA

The New York Times

February 28, 2008 Thursday
Late Edition - Final

Despite Nafta Attacks, Clinton and Obama Enhanced Coverage LinkingClinton and Obama Haven't Been Free Trade Foes

BYLINE: By MICHAEL LUO; Patrick Healy contributed reporting.

As they have tussled for votes in economically beleaguered Ohio, Senators Barack Obama
have both excoriated the North American Free Trade Agreement while lobbing accusations against their opponent on the issue.

Lost amid the posturing, however, is that both have staked out nuanced positions in the past on Nafta and have supported similar trade deals. Although their language has become much more hostile to free trade as they have exchanged charges and countercharges, neither of them would have been mistaken in the past for an ardent protectionist or a die-hard free trader.

Instead, both appear to have been part of the conflicted middle ground within the Democratic Party that is groping for a proper balance between being friendly to free trade agreements, believing they are beneficial to the economy, but also seeking to level the playing field for the United States when it comes to labor and environmental standards and addressing job losses that come with globalization.

''The bottom line,'' said Lori Wallach, director of the Global Trade Watch division of Public Citizen and a fierce free trade foe, ''is neither of the current Democratic candidates were in the category of leaders fighting for improving U.S. trade policy to try to come up with different terms for globalization, but in the course of their campaign they have come to see both the political necessity and the substantive problems, pushing them to some interesting new thinking.''

There is clearly a large dose of politics behind the vigor with which the Democratic contenders are attacking each other on Nafta, full of parsed quotations and misrepresentations. Mr. Obama has accused Mrs. Clinton of full-throated support for Nafta in the past, while Mrs. Clinton has leveled the same charge against Mr. Obama.

In the minds of hard-core opponents of free trade, both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have checkered records in the Senate on trade agreements. Both voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement but supported a trade pact with Peru last year, citing the inclusion of labor and environmental provisions that were not part of Nafta.

Opponents, however, said crucial provisions in Nafta that led to jobs being shipped overseas were also part of the Peru agreement. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama were also among only a dozen Senate Democrats who voted for a trade agreement with Oman in 2006.

''They're hedging their bets,'' said Representative Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat whose district in the northern part of the state has been decimated by job losses. ''They're trying to have it both ways, and you can't.''

[amborin]

17. "the U.S. benefitted enormously" said Obama in 2004

States News Service

February 24, 2008 Sunday

FACT CHECK: OBAMA CONTINUES TO MISLEAD ON HILLARY AND NAFTA

BYLINE: States News Service

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

"Senator Obama's insistence on repeating attacks that have been demonstrated to be false by independent entities proves once and for all that his speeches about the new politics are just words. That's not change you can believe in."

-Clinton spokesman Phil Singer

Today, Sen. Obama said the following:

And yesterday, Senator Clinton also said I'm wrong to point out that she once supported NAFTA. But the fact is, she was saying great things about NAFTA until she started running for President.

This is false. Hillary criticized Sen. Obama for sending out a mailer that claimed she said NAFTA was a "boon to the economy" when she never did. Today, the University of Pennsylvania's FactCheck.org concluded "We do judge that the Obama campaign is wrong to quote Clinton as using words she never uttered, and it has produced little evidence that she ever had strong praise of any sort for NAFTA's economic benefits."

Also, Hillary has been critical of NAFTA long before she started running for President. For example, here's Hillary in March 2000:

What happened to NAFTA I think was we inherited an agreement that we didn't get everything we should have got out of it in my opinion. I think the NAFTA agreement was flawed. The problem is we have to go back and figure out how we are going to fix that.

Sen. Obama touts his consistent opposition to NAFTA. But speaking in Illinois in 2004 Obama said the United States "benefited enormously" from exports under NAFTA and talked about the need to continue to pursue trade agreement like NAFTA that support "a system of free trade in this nation that allows us to move our products overseas."

[Life Long Dem]

20. "can be beneficial" AND "are GOOD " are two different comments

:shrug: Don't waste people's time and my time by posting your own headlines the way you feel.:thumbsdown:

[amborin]

21. "the U.S. benefited enormously from exports under Nafta"

said Obama

[gravity]

22. Free trade is generally a good thing

Protectionism is bad and is going to hurt our nation in the long run. We need to have trade, but just make sure that we have fair deals in the process.

As an Obama supporter, I don't like how he is playing with this issue, but at the same time, I don't like everything Hillary is doing with her campaign.

[amborin]

23. agree

free trade *is* good

and both of them are potentially boxing themselves into a corner where they'll have to retract once elected

point remains, however: it's not cool that Obama keeps trying to bash Clinton on this when their views are quite similar