Obama vs. Clinton on trade (their policies and records, not flyers and doughnuts)

To start:

1) Both favored NAFTA expansion in the form of Peru trade (fair trader Edwards opposed it http://www.art-us.org/node/282 but did you hear that scary bad man got a haircut? Good riddance to him!) just three months ago before they were in Wisconsin and Ohio.

2) Both voted against CAFTA, but so did almost every Democrat, including most of the DLC. Don't be fooled. Them opposing CAFTA is not a sign of them being against "free" trade.

3) Both believe globalization is beneficial

4) Clinton wants to review all trade agreements to see if they are working for American workers. Obama will review only NAFTA.

5) Clinton wants a trade agreement "time-out", something long sought by labor unions. Obama hasn't made the same commitment.

We need a candidate for president who not only understands this, but is ready and willing to work for real reform and an America First Attitude. Hillary Clinton's record on this is spotty at best, and John McCain will stick with the Bush tax cuts and the GOP company line. In my opinion, Barack Obama is the candidate who get's it, and we can't afford a president who does not.

http://ronbeas2.blogspot.com/2008/02/fair-trade-trounci...

He hasn't seen the light. He's seen the polls for Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. His current rhetoric on trade doesn't match his record. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4585898

who gives a shit about his opinion that isn't based on facts?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/hillary-clinton-pretends-_b_86747.html


Hillary Clinton Pretends She Never Praised NAFTA



Hillary Clinton has made statements unequivocally trumpeting NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Buffalo News reports that back in 1998, Clinton attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and thanked praised corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." Yes, you read that right: She traveled to Davos to thank corporate interests for their campaign ramming NAFTA through Congress.

On November 1, 1996, United Press International reported that on a trip to Brownsville, Texas, Clinton "touted the president's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying it would reap widespread benefits in the region."

The Associated Press followed up the next day noting that Hillary Clinton touted the fact that "the president would continue to support economic growth in South Texas through initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement."

I know both are "free" traders but since Democrats decided to boot Edwards we are stuck with two "free" traders. Which is the lesser of two evils on trade?

That's sad...My approach to free trade is mend it not end it...

....and they are big-time Obama supporters.

Report: Obama Campaign Wrong On Hillary And NAFTA
By Eric Kleefeld - February 14, 2008, 2:58PM

In recent weeks, the Obama camp has repeatedly charged that Hillary was pro-NAFTA during her husband's presidency, an allegation the Obama campaign has used to try to weaken her support among a critical constituency, working-class voters. The Hillary camp has responded by saying that Obama's sourcing for the charge was flimsy at best.

Well, a new report says that the Hillary camp is right on this one. The Huffington Post talked to biographers of the First Lady and former advisers to Bill Clinton, and they all said Hillary was against the trade deal the whole time, even if she was constrained from saying so publicly.

The full piece is available here.
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/report_obama_campaign_wrong_on.php

Here is information about the Peru bill.

Obama never said he was against trade, but Hillary lied about her support for NAFTA. It was a horrible bill, which Bill Clinton signed into law and Hillary has defended.

Is that the link citing "free" trader Kerry again? He is as credible as Clinton and Obama on the issue.

Here is Obama’s statement which could have being plagiarized straight from the DLC:

"Obama said he would vote for a Peruvian trade agreement next week, in response to a question from a man in Londonderry, NH who called NAFTA and CAFTA a disaster for American workers. He said he supported the trade agreement with Peru because it contained the labor and environmental standards sought by groups like the AFL-CIO, despite the voter's protests to the contrary. He also affirmed his support for free trade."

The voter's "protests to the contrary" are exactly right. The AFL-CIO does not support the bill expanding NAFTA into Peru, and the much-trumpeted labor/environmental standards leave enforcement up to the Bush administration, rather than empowering third parties to enforce them (like corporations have the power to enforce investor rights provisions in these same trade agreements). Leaving enforcement to the Bush administration -- or any administration -- is the biggest loophole possible. It is precisely why corporate lobbyists have bragged to reporters that the standards are not enforceable.

Obama is the first presidential candidate to officially declare his/her support for the NAFTA expansion moving through the Congress. His announcement is not necessarily surprising, considering he was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Hamilton Project -- a Wall Street front group working to drive a wedge between Democrats and organized labor on globalization issues. His announcement comes just days after a Wall Street Journal poll found strong bipartisan opposition to lobbyist-written NAFTA-style trade policies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/breaking-oba ...

Sherrod Brown:
"Congress (has) passed another job-killing trade agreement that will shut down our factories, hurt our communities, and send more unsafe food into our kitchens and consumer products into our children's bedrooms."

Brown, like the other freshmen Democrats elected to the Senate in 2006, understands something that Clinton and Obama are still missing. "Our current trade model chases short-term profits for the few, at the expense of long-term prosperity, health and safety for the many. It's a model that doesn't work. Look at our trade deficit, look at manufacturing job losses, look at wage stagnation, look at imported product recalls, look at forced labor, child labor, slave labor. Look what it does to communities," says the senator, who made changing trade policy a central issue in his successful challenge to Republican Senator Mike DeWine, as did other Democratic winners such as Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Claire McMaskill of Missouri, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, John Tester of Montana and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island – all of whom opposed the Peru deal.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=256831

John Edwards:

-snip-

“Today I am announcing my opposition to the Peru Trade Agreement negotiated by the Bush Administration and being considered for approval by Congress. Despite strong efforts by many Democrats in Congress, labor organizations and fair trade advocates to embed international labor standards into the Agreement, what resulted were references to general principles and not specific standards. And the Agreement still replicates and in fact expands all of the other most damaging aspects of past trade agreements. In short, this agreement does not meet my standard of putting American workers and communities first, ahead of the interests of the big multinational corporations, which for too long have rigged our trade policies for themselves and against American families.

-snip-

Right now, President Bush is pushing to expand this NAFTA approach to four more countries. He has signed agreements with Peru, Panama, Korea and even Colombia, where since 1991, in this tiny country, there have been over 2100 documented cases of trade unionists being assassinated, 72 in 2006 alone.

All of these agreements replicate these terrible features of NAFTA:

• All of these agreements provide the expansive investor rights that literally create incentives to relocate U.S. jobs overseas;
• All of these agreements limit our ability to inspect imported food - even as the International Trade Commission projects that these pacts will result in a new flood of imported food;
• All of these agreements allow foreign corporations operating here to attack our environmental, health and even local zoning laws in foreign tribunals to demand our tax dollars in compensation if following our laws undermines their expected profits.
• All of these agreements even limit how we can spend our own tax dollars. These deals ban many Buy America and other similar policies. Instead of your tax dollars going to support American workers, these agreements take away one the few opportunities the government has to directly create jobs here.

But these four proposed agreements actually go even further than NAFTA.

For instance, these deals give those foreign corporations who get contracts to rebuild our nation's bridges and highways or to operate mines or cut timber on U.S. federal land special privileges superior to the treatment of U.S. firms. U.S. firms have to meet our laws, but in contrast, these agreements let foreign corporations operating within the United States who have a gripe about their contract terms drag the U.S. government into foreign tribunals stacked with their own lawyers acting as ‘judges.'

The damage threatened by these NAFTA expansion agreements extends beyond the United States. Buried deep in the 800-page text of the Peru FTA are ambiguous provisions that could allow U.S. banks to demand compensation if Peru reverses its disastrous social security privatization. That's right, the Peru FTA could lock in the misery facing millions of the elderly and ill in that extremely poor country all to ensure U.S. firms can profit on what should be a government service available to all in the first place.
(jackson_dem’s 2 cents, this is not Edwards’ comment: I guess the people of Peru will just have to settle for “hope”)

-snip-

The Peru, Panama and Colombia agreements are also projected to displace millions of peasant farmers

-snip-

The presidents of Peru's labor unions oppose this NAFTA expansion. So does Peru's Archbishop Pedro Barreto, who calls the NAFTA expansion into Peru immoral - and a threat to the national security of his nation and ours.

http://www.art-us.org/node/282

Unfortunately. Edwards was the best of the viable candidates on the issue, and I am surprised that the unions didn't get behind him early. I guess it was too risky, since he was such an underdog.

Protectionism in the form of both protecting American jobs and goods is leaving the station. Both candidates need to get on the train. Hopefully they see John Edwards up there in the engineer's chair waving to them.

"Clinton wants a trade agreement "time-out"

How would she manage to call a "time out" regarding trade with any country, especially Communist China? China would NOT go for a "time out."

By the way we don't have a FTA with China as many believe. We have normalized trade with them, like we do with almost every country, although China has been cheating on trade.

Why are Obamites so eager to do that but won't engage in an honest discussion of their positions? Is it because they KNOW they are, at best, the same on trade and more likely Hillary is actually a bit better?

That is true.

Yet they refuse to engage in an against, factual comparison of the two candidate's positions on trade. Is this what the "politics of hope" (TM Axlerod) will bring? Not hope but a politics of smear and jeer?