".... In 2000, President Clinton prevailed upon Congress to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations status under a trade and investment agreement with China. Before that, the US trade deficit with China was $85 billion; last year it was $256 billion, according to US government statistics. Before NAFTA, the United States had a slight trade surplus with Mexico, but by the end of 2007, the annual trade deficit was $74 billion.... "
Now read what his wife said on the trail!
"by Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | February 29, 2008
TOLEDO, Ohio - Cranking up their populist rhetoric, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are outbidding each other as they attack NAFTA before their showdown in Ohio's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.
Both have threatened to withdraw from the 14-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement if Mexico and Canada refuse to negotiate changes, and both have ramped up their criticism of trade with China, saying investors in the global economy have profited at the expense of American workers.
The reason American trade policy has suddenly moved to the center of the Democratic contest is clear - it plays in Ohio and other Midwestern states, where many voters blame NAFTA and other trade agreements for the loss of manufacturing jobs - 231,200 in Ohio in the past seven years. Some Democrats believe trade will be an issue with at least strong regional appeal in the general election against Senator John McCain, a Republican who ardently supports so-called free trade agreements.
But opting out of NAFTA or even amending the agreement would be foolhardy, unrealistic, or at least very difficult, according to several trade policy analysts who span the political spectrum.
Which is why the American public didn't want it in the first place!
"They're kind of snookering the voters . . . throwing out a false hope," said Alfred E. Eckes, the Ohio Eminent Research Professor in Contemporary History at Ohio University and the author and editor of several books about US trade policy.
"I can't imagine anybody seriously trying to renegotiate NAFTA. It would just reopen a can of worms," said Eckes, who served as a member of the US International Trade Commission, from 1981 to 1990, during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. Canada and Mexico have their own concerns about the agreement, he said, noting that Mexico has lost agricultural jobs because of American corn imports.
Prolabor economists remain critical of NAFTA, but agree it would be tricky to tamper with.
"Yes, there's a reason to amend NAFTA; it hasn't worked well in any of the three countries," said Robert E. Scott, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank funded in part by American labor unions.
But Scott said that in any renegotiation, Mexico might inject itself into the immigration debate by seeking rights, such as a path to legalization, for Mexican workers now in the United States illegally. Canada would almost certainly seek concessions on timber and agricultural issues, he said.
Free trade proponents see NAFTA as an unmitigated boon.
"Doing away with NAFTA would be disastrous for the United States; it would probably plunge us into a recession and certainly slow our growth rate," said Richard "Terry" Miller, director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation, a think tank that advocates free enterprise.
"From our point of view, NAFTA has been an unqualified success," said Miller, a former State Department official and ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council under the current President Bush. He cited gains in US employment, manufacturing output, average real compensation, and investment in all sectors compared with the period before NAFTA. The loss of manufacturing jobs results more from improved productivity and technology than trade, Miller asserted.
Look at the "experts" they give you: three PRO-"FREE" TRADE, PRO-CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION agenda-pushers!
But Miller would have trouble convincing many residents of Toledo and other industrial cities in Ohio of the benefits of liberalized trade.
State Representative Peter Ujvagi, Democrat of East Toledo, has seen the region suffer through many plant closings, especially automobile and parts makers, and the resulting loss of jobs has affected many labor union members.
A huge Ford stamping plant shut down in the Toledo suburb of Maumee last fall, Chrysler eliminated the third shift at its Toledo Jeep Assembly complex early this month, and the supplier that makes seats for Jeep Wranglers in nearby Northwood announced two weeks ago it will outsource that work to a company in India.
Pffffffftttt!
"Some statistics say that Ohio has had a net gain of jobs under NAFTA, but I don't think we've had a net gain in wealth or earning power," Ujvagi said.
The current economic downturn has hammered Ohio, where unemployment is a percentage point above the national rate and the state ranked third last year in the number of foreclosures. Toledo and three other Ohio cities are among the top 20 in the United States in foreclosure rates in 2007.
If NAFTA is a bête noire in places like Toledo, it isn't in Texas, which has benefited and where trade has not been an issue.
What the fuck are they talking about?!
You telling me IMMIGRATION and the North American Union aren't an issue in Texas?
Can the MSM lie anymore than it does since it lies all the time, readers?
Texas also votes Tuesday. Free trade, which has cost organized labor many high-paying jobs, has been good for American farmers, Wall Street, and multinational corporations.
That's what it was meant to do, you lying fucking agenda-pushing shitters!!!!!!!
Attempting to cut into Clinton's blue-collar base, Obama's campaign has replayed every positive remark Clinton has made about NAFTA, which dropped trade barriers between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, after being pushed through Congress by her husband in 1993. She insists she always had misgivings about the pact, but the Obama onslaught has been relentless.
Now if that doesn't tell you the pro-Zionist, Obama-bashing tilt of the AmeriKan MSM, I don't know what will.
An ONSLAUGHT, you say?
After the shit Obama has had to deal with from the scummy Clinton campaign?!?
Pffft!
Objective and unbiased, my ass!!!!
Eckes, the trade historian, said that the enforcement of labor, environmental, and product safety provisions of trade agreements, which both Obama and Clinton say should be strengthened, is expensive and difficult, if not impossible, in some countries.
"If the candidates were serious about addressing the trade issue, they would deal with China's currency manipulation," Eckes asserted. China, which accounts for more than a third of the $712 billion annual US trade deficit, exports cheap goods based in part on the artificially low value of its currency, the yuan, which is pegged to the value of the US dollar.
The Democratic candidates have criticized US trade policies with China as well.
At a Feb. 19 rally in Youngstown, Clinton blasted the Bush administration for the growing budget deficit and the national debt, which now exceeds $9 trillion, more than $1 trillion of which is owed to China.
Bush, she declared, "has signed a subprime mortgage on America's economic future. . . . And so when people ask me 'Why can't we get tough with China?,' well, when was the last time you got tough on your banker. . . . We play by the rules, they manipulate their currency. And we get tainted fish, lead-laced toys, and poisoned pet food in return."
Yup, go bash China you little globalist whore!!!
Need I remind you, fat-assed bitch:
".... In 2000, President Clinton prevailed upon Congress to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations status under a trade and investment agreement with China. Before that, the US trade deficit with China was $85 billion; last year it was $256 billion, according to US government statistics. Before NAFTA, the United States had a slight trade surplus with Mexico, but by the end of 2007, the annual trade deficit was $74 billion...."
As for the banks, they are controlled by usury-loving Jews, so WTF?
She's a real piece of work, ain't she?
Her and her fat-fuck, mass-murdering husband!
In his stump speech, Obama gets a reaction when he talks about workers watching their factory machinery "suddenly unbolted and shipped off to China."
Why shouldn't he get a "reaction," and why is manipulation (implied) wrong for Obama and not Clinton, shit press?
In 2000, President Clinton prevailed upon Congress to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations status under a trade and investment agreement with China. Before that, the US trade deficit with China was $85 billion; last year it was $256 billion, according to US government statistics. Before NAFTA, the United States had a slight trade surplus with Mexico, but by the end of 2007, the annual trade deficit was $74 billion.
"NAFTA is a symbol to the people who are dislocated or in fear of losing their jobs, and it has achieved a significance well beyond its current importance," said Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, a Clinton supporter and NAFTA foe during six terms in the US House of Representatives. "The problem now is Southeast Asia; it's China."
Yeah, the problem is NEVER AmeriKa!!!!!
Fuck off, DemocraP!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, NAFTA is just a symbol, it is not real!
How did you get elected governor then?
"China is cheating; they're stealing our jobs," said Linda Andros, a lobbyist for the United Steelworkers union and formerly a trade lawyer at the US Department of Commerce. Besides its cheap currency, she said, the Chinese government provides other subsidies to its manufacturers, who then dump below-market-cost goods in American markets.
Leading the charge in Ohio against US trade policies is Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who has sponsored related bills that are pending: to give tax benefits to US firms that retain jobs in this country and provide benefits and decent wages to workers and to require manufacturers and importers to show proof of insurance or other financial resources to cover the cost of a recall of defective products.
In 2006, as a seven-term congressman from a district outside Cleveland, Brown ousted Republican incumbent Mike DeWine on a populist economic platform that painted US trade policies as a sellout of the middle and working classes.
"People in Ohio understand that these trade agreements are written for investors and by investors," Brown said. "They understand that intuitively."Yeah, and no amount of MSM horseshit is going to change American minds about what they SEE ALL AROUND THEM!!!!
You got two choices, America:
Either YOU ARE CRAZY, or businesses, government and the MSM are LYING TO YOU!!!
Which one do you think it is, readers?
