Hillary and Barack, Afta Nafta
Was Hillary Clinton really against NAFTA in 1993? I was in the administration then, and I remember her position quite precisely. And I'll get to that in a moment. But before I do, I want to say something: It’s a shame the Democratic candidates for president feel they have to make trade – specifically NAFTA – the enemy of blue-collar workers and the putative cause of their difficulties. NAFTA is not to blame. Consider the numbers. When NAFTA took effect, Ohio had 990,000 manufacturing jobs. Two years later, in 1996, it had 1,300,000 manufacturing jobs. The number stayed above a million for the rest of the 1990s. Today, though, there are about 775,000 manufacturing jobs in Ohio. What happened? The economy expanded briskly through the 1990s. Then it crashed in late 2000, and the manufacturing jobs lost in that last recession never came back. They didn’t come back for two reasons: In some cases, employers automated the jobs out of existence, using robots and computers. In other cases, employers shipped the jobs abroad, mostly to China – not to Mexico.
NAFTA has become a symbol for the mounting insecurities felt by blue-collar Americans. While the overall benefits from free trade far exceed the costs, and the winners from trade (including all of us consumers who get cheaper goods and services because of it) far exceed the losers, there’s a big problem: The costs fall disproportionately on the losers -- mostly blue-collar workers who get dumped because their jobs can be done more cheaply by someone abroad who’ll do it for a fraction of the American wage. The losers usually get new jobs eventually but the new jobs are typically in the local service economy and they pay far less than the ones lost.
Even though the winners from free trade could theoretically compensate the losers and still come out ahead, they don’t. America doesn’t have a system for helping job losers find new jobs that pay about the same as the ones they’ve lost – regardless of whether the loss was because of trade or automation. There’s no national retraining system. Unemployment insurance reaches fewer than 40 percent of people who lose their jobs – a smaller percentage than when the unemployment system was designed seventy years ago. We have no national health care system to cover job losers and their families. There's no wage insurance. Nothing. And unless or until America finds a way to help the losers, the backlash against trade is only going to grow.
Get me? The Dems shouldn't be redebating NAFTA. They should be debating how to help Americans adapt to a new economy in which no job is safe. Okay, so back to my initial question. The answer is HRC didn't want the Administration to move forward with NAFTA, but not because she was opposed to NAFTA as a policy. She opposed NAFTA because of its timing. She wanted her health-care plan to be voted on first. She feared that the fight over NAFTA would use up so much of the White House's political capital that there wouldn't be enough left when it came to pushing for health care. In retrospect, she was probably right.
NAFTA has become a symbol for the mounting insecurities felt by blue-collar Americans. While the overall benefits from free trade far exceed the costs, and the winners from trade (including all of us consumers who get cheaper goods and services because of it) far exceed the losers, there’s a big problem: The costs fall disproportionately on the losers -- mostly blue-collar workers who get dumped because their jobs can be done more cheaply by someone abroad who’ll do it for a fraction of the American wage. The losers usually get new jobs eventually but the new jobs are typically in the local service economy and they pay far less than the ones lost.
Even though the winners from free trade could theoretically compensate the losers and still come out ahead, they don’t. America doesn’t have a system for helping job losers find new jobs that pay about the same as the ones they’ve lost – regardless of whether the loss was because of trade or automation. There’s no national retraining system. Unemployment insurance reaches fewer than 40 percent of people who lose their jobs – a smaller percentage than when the unemployment system was designed seventy years ago. We have no national health care system to cover job losers and their families. There's no wage insurance. Nothing. And unless or until America finds a way to help the losers, the backlash against trade is only going to grow.
Get me? The Dems shouldn't be redebating NAFTA. They should be debating how to help Americans adapt to a new economy in which no job is safe. Okay, so back to my initial question. The answer is HRC didn't want the Administration to move forward with NAFTA, but not because she was opposed to NAFTA as a policy. She opposed NAFTA because of its timing. She wanted her health-care plan to be voted on first. She feared that the fight over NAFTA would use up so much of the White House's political capital that there wouldn't be enough left when it came to pushing for health care. In retrospect, she was probably right.
posted by Robert Reich | 1:53 PM
33 Comments:
Interesting, informative post. I know it's a complex issue, but if you can shed this much light on it in a blog entry, the candidates should be able to do better than simply hurling "he supports NAFTA more than I do; no she supports NAFTA more than I do" sound bites.
Of course, to fan the flames a bit; would Mrs. Clinton have supported NAFTA in 1993 if the timing hadn't been bad for her health care plan?
Robert,
If "wage insurance" is your solution and if the job is gone permanently and no comparable replacement in sight, do you want the wage insurance to be for a lifetime?
We cannot compete with low, slave wage labor countries that have no protection for labor.
All the hoopla about Ricardian graphs do not take into account differing treatment of labor.
During the stock market boom, U.S. wages were flat: The rich got richer; the poor got poorer.
The last time we had a trade surplus was in the 1970's: Doesn't say much for us, does it? The jobs we have added have been generally in goverment, health care (wow), and services.
Clinton was lucky: The computer and the internet came of age in the 90's--we rode the crest of it. Since then, IT has fled offshore.
Meanwhile, our vaunted financial community--our pride and joy--has been caught selling toxic joy bundles...and we talk about financial transparency.
And the lobby wheel keeps rolling. How about Bill Clinton being a lobbyists? An ex president? Making a bundle for his library for arranging a uranium deal for a Canadian? If Hillary wins, he continues to lobby for whoever or whatever? Is he going to lobby for Dubai while holding Hillary's hand? Come on. This is disgusting.
And Trent Lott ducking out early so that lobbying restrictions will not affect him?
Frankly, I have had it: A pox on both your parties.
There is no honor, no real patriotism left...just a bunch of scumbags feathering their own nests.
I remember Truman--and his quiet, unostentatious retirement. Yes, I am that old.
I could say much more, but giving you wisdom on a blog pin-head is finally downright silly.
The CEO makes millions, the factory worker makes 50K + benefits, both live large by any measure of human living standards. This is really part of the issue going forward for Americans-how to maintain a lifestyle that few people on earth enjoy.
My guess is that creating a economic model that continues to use vast amounts of the earth's resources of all kinds at the expense of others on the planet and create a lifestyle that offers all the high end foods, housing, transportation and medical advantages we have will be impossible. The bottom line is that Americans of all economic levels will be scaling back their lifestyle to levels that are more efficient and sustainable. The ideas presented by both the Republican's and Democrats that the high life can continue with more education or retraining will eventually be replaced by a more pragmatic approach.
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Anonymous: You hit the nail on the head. The bottom line: We need leaders that tell us the truth as you've put it, without all the sugar coating. Leaders that find responsible ways to slow this juggernaut we call the U.S. and keep it from going over the cliff. To make up for the environmental deficite we have racked up. To reposition our country as a leader in efficient and clean living.
Do we have one running for office today? Let's hope so.
Keep hearing that there are far more winners than losers. Now these winners, how many? All here in the good old, are they? And losers, how many would you say? In the relative terms of families, how many winners and losers?
Ben: I assume that the changes will come slowly over time, the lower standard of living will as Robert has noted be blamed on trade issues today with newer manifestions coming every 2 and 4 years! Their really isn't a free lunch and our current economic model built on leveraged debt and asset bubbles has reached it's peak so we move on, kicking and screaming but moving on.
It's good to see a bit of sanity when discussing NAFTA, especially in pointing out where it succeeds and where the candidates SHOULD be taking umbrage.
As Obama's prospective Secretary of Commerce/Labor/Treasury (whichever, it seems from his speeches that he wisely wants you on board), would put a few more specifics to your NAFTA suggestions? Would the gov't or the private sector bear the brunt of costs for re-training? Would this fall into the Nu New Deal which seems to be lurking in the Democratic playbook? Do you think Obama/Clinton's plan to create a wealth of so-called green collar jobs would be a good niche for re-training folks?
Thanks for this blog. I greatly value your thoughts and enjoy reading well-written economic criticism/policy.
Dr. Reich,
I have long wondered about the claim that trade has net benefits for the country. Of course there are also winners and losers as you mention, but has anyone looked at what form the benefit comes in?
As you point out in your book "Supercapitalism" be have benefited as consumers but at the cost of declines in our democracy. My question is how much of the benefit as consumers has been in the form of wasteful disposable plastic junk from China that we didn't need and soon threw away and replaced. I think of this as the Billy Bigmouth Bass Effect. We can buy things ridiculously cheap so we buy more and waste more. We have sold our Democracy, do we have anything left to show for the transaction?
As Chang points out in "Bad Samaritans," a lot of this talk of 'free trade' is just crap.
If you were asked to implement a national retraining system, WHAT JOBS WOULD YOU TRAIN PEOPLE TO DO????
I'm waiting . . .
While you're trying to come up with an answer, here's my follow-up question: Would the field you plan to retrain people to work in be able to absorb all of the unemployed and underemployed people in the country?
I'm unemployed but not counted as such because my benefits expired a year ago. My best hope at the moment is to become underemployed. I have a bachelor's degree and years of experience in my field, so I get a little touchy when people say the unemployed just need education. (Or imply they're unemployed because they're uneducated.)
The losers usually get new jobs eventually but the new jobs are typically in the local service economy and they pay far less than the ones lost.
I remember all the economists tell us both about the benefits of free trade, and about our move to a service economy.
I don't recall any of these economists telling people that these new service economy jobs would pay far far less than the ones we were losing.
And whether it's NAFTA or GATT/WTO, I don't think many people care, and I think the solution is the same.
Fair Trade Agreements that stop our allowing foreign governments to subsidize their jobs by not requiring jobs are safe, workers get a living wage, or industries are environmentally sound.
I'll also point out that GATT/WTO and Free Trade is precisely why we encouraged China to kill our pets and poison our children. It's also why Mexico fears they'll only be able to sell one genetic strain of corn.
When we have future problems in the food supply because of the loss of genetic diversity in our foods (see articles discussing how our banana crop is about to be wiped out) we'll be able to argue back and forth just as we do with global warming until it is too late to do anything. Why? Because GATT and NAFTA make it impossible for a global economy made up of so called sovereign nations to act in the name of anything other than maximum trade.
And as I mentioned at Brad DeLong's blog, it's fundamentally insane to for economists to split A) free trade agreements from the B) necessary safety net required. We've seen (A) over and over again, and have almost never seen any amount of (B). And what is the common definition of insane? Repeating the same behavior and hoping to get a different result.
Anyone that creates any sort of policy or bill that splits (A) from (B) is basically criminal. And anyone that supports (A) while bemoaning never seeing any of (B) is basically clueless, corrupt, or in cahoots.
(Except for you Professor Reich -- Next to PK, you're, well, well half a PK?)
Dearest Secretary Reich . . .
I concur and do not. I think the North American Free Trade Agreement is extremely flawed. We are not and cannot continue to act as though we are isolated or insulated. Global trade could be wondrous. However, I think, until all countries are equal in regard to the opportunities and education they offer the citizenry, free trade agreements such as NAFTA will worsen the situation in many nations.
Superpowers are selfish. When lower prices for "us" are the perceived priority, then, it is likely the means will justify the end. Profiteers take advantage of cheap labor and do not treat people humanely at home or abroad. Until, universally, people take precedence, there will be problems. Powerbrokers and policymakers on every continent must not accept the abuses we see in the workplace since the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted.
I believe we must train displaced laborers. Health care must be provided for all. As long as we allow for what is currently done, Free Trade will not truly be fair. For me, fairness is the essential issue.
While I still favor Dennis Kucinich and his worldview, I endorse the statement Presidential hopeful Barack Obama offered on the issue during the Cleveland debate.
[T]he problem is we've been negotiating just looking at corporate profits and what's good for multinationals, and we haven't been looking at what's good for communities here in Ohio, in my home state of Illinois, and across the country.
And as president, what I want to be is an advocate on behalf of workers. Look, you know, when I go to these plants, I meet people who are proud of their jobs. They are proud of the products that they've created. They have built brands and profits for their companies. And when they see jobs shipped overseas and suddenly they are left not just without a job, but without health care, without a pension, and are having to look for seven-buck-an-hour jobs at the local fast-food joint, that is devastating on them, but it's also devastating on the community. That's not the way that we're going to prosper as we move forward.
I invite further review of the topic and I share what I learned on the issue you, Professor Reich introduced. Did Hillary Clinton oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement when she was "in the White House" years ago? Apparently, according to Carl Bernstein she did. However, the Journalist also gives reason to believe that Secretary Reich, you are correct.
Shame on Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton. A Shame for Americans
Since you spoke of the subject of health care and how business practices affect the people, may I also submit another discussion.
Clinton and Obama Offer Universal Health Care Plans; No Insurance
Betsy L. Angert
BeThink.org
I'd like to co-sign with Jerry and Alex's comments above.
Professor Reich bifurcated the two trade agreements (NAFTA and GATT), when they are really two heads of the same beast. As for the initial gain in manufacturing jobs, how much of that was merely cyclical as the economy pulled itself out of years of stagnancy?
From Peter Goodman of the New York Times:
Nicole Flennaugh has a college degree, office experience and the modest expectation that, somewhere in this city on the eastern lip of San Francisco Bay, someone will want to hire her.
But Ms. Flennaugh, 36, a widow, cannot secure steady, decent-paying work to support herself and her two daughter...
“You’re used to making $17 an hour with benefits, and now you have to take any job for $8 an hour,” Ms. Flennaugh says....
“I’ve literally sat and cried, but my friends with double degrees are doing worse,” she says. “It’s the economy. It’s really bad.”
Robert: what kind of retraining do you have in mind?
Robert,
Wonder what Dr. Deming would say? It's easy for political candidates to claim they will bring jobs back, but how do you compete with inhumane labor practices and two-cent an hour wages overseas? Computers and automation, like you said is also part of the problem, even though it is the solution. (Increased productivity.)
In California, you have a lot of non-document workers that take construction and other jobs away from residents who pay property taxes, fees, income taxes and have to pay for health care, but they are shut out by the non-documented workers. And to top it off, the City loses, too, because this income is under the table.
Factor in all the illegal vending that hurts retailers and mom and pop store owners -- also paying property taxes at home and at work.
So it looks as though the electronic era, has leveled the playing field in a global economy, and the U.S. has lost out to oversea economies who don't have to play by the rules of democracy and environment standards and decency.
"I believe we must train displaced laborers. Health care must be provided for all. As long as we allow for what is currently done, Free Trade will not truly be fair. For me, fairness is the essential issue"
What are you going to train them to do? what income levels do you expect to create? Who pays for the health care and how extensive is the coverage? Just a few questions!
The problem is, you're conflating NAFTA with "free trade," which is a mistake.
What passes for "free trade" in the neoliberal establishment is nothing of the sort. It's a heavily subsidized form of corporate mercantilism.
"Free trade" and "trade" are not the same thing. Free trade is a good thing. Trade which is *subsidized* and *protected* is a bad thing. And if all the current subsidies and protections were withdrawn, and people had to do it on their own nickel, there'd be a lot less of it.
The current model of corporate globalization relies on enormous transportation subsidies to make long-distance distribution artificially cost-efficient, and to artificially increase both firm size and market areas.
It relies on enormous subsidies to the export of capital; most of foreign aid and World Bank loans go to subsidize the transportation and utility infrastructure needed to make the foreign capital investment profitable.
Most of all, it depends on so-called "intellectual property" [sic], which is an abomination from a free market standpoint. IP serves the same protectionist function in the globalized corporate economy that tariffs served in the old national industrial economies. All the leading sectors of the corporate global economy pursue business models that rely heavily either on state patent and copyright monopolies (software, entertainment, biotech), massive direct subsidies (armaments), or both (electronics, agribusiness, pharma).
Genuine free trade means allowing Americans to trade with anyone in the world without hindrance, on whatever terms they can negotiate--but bearing the full cost and risk of all their own activities. If this model of genuine free trade were followed, we'd all be buying a lot more stuff from small-scale industry serving local markets.
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-30.htm
While there has been some media coverage of NAFTA's ruinous impact on US industrial communities, there has been even less media attention paid to its catastrophic effects in Mexico:
NAFTA, by permitting heavily-subsidized US corn and other agri-business products to compete with small Mexican farmers, has driven the Mexican farmer off the land due to low-priced imports of US corn and other agricultural products. Some 2 million Mexicans have been forced out of agriculture, and many of those that remain are living in desperate poverty. These people are among those that cross the border to feed their families. (Meanwhile, corn-based tortilla prices climbed by 50%.)
No wonder many so Mexican peasants have called NAFTA their 'death warrant.'
NAFTA's service-sector rules allowed big firms like Wal-Mart to enter the Mexican market and, selling low-priced goods made by ultra-cheap labor in China, to displace locally-based shoe, toy, and candy firms. An estimated 28,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses have been eliminated.
Wages along the Mexican border have actually been driven down by about 25% since NAFTA, reported a Carnegie Endowment study. An over-supply of workers, combined with the crushing of union organizing drives as government policy, has resulted in sweatshop pay running sweatshops along the border where wages typically run 60 cents to $1 an hour.
So rather than improving living standards, Mexican wages have actually fallen since NAFTA. The initial growth in the number of jobs has leveled off, with China's even more repressive labor system luring US firms to locate there instead.
But Mexicans must still contend with the results of the American-owned 'maquiladora' sweatshops: subsistence-level wages, pollution, congestion, horrible living conditions (cardboard shacks and open sewers), and a lack of resources (for streetlights and police) to deal with a wave of violence against vulnerable young women working in the factories. The survival (or less) level wages coupled with harsh working conditions have not been the great answer to Mexican poverty, while they have temporarily been the answer to Corporate America's demand for low wages.
With US firms unwilling to pay even minimal taxes, NAFTA has hardly produced the promised uplift in the lives of Mexicans. Ciudad Juarez Mayor Gustavo Elizondo, whose city is crammed with US-owned low-wage plants, expressed it plainly: "We have no way to provide water, sewage, and sanitation workers. Every year, we get poorer and poorer even though we create more and more wealth."
Falling industrial wages, peasants forced off the land, small businesses liquidated, growing poverty: these are direct consequences of NAFTA. This harsh suffering explains why so many desperate Mexicans -- lured to the border area in the false hope that they could find dignity in the US-owned maquiladoras -- are willing to risk their lives to cross the border to provide for their families. There were 2.5 million Mexican illegals in 1995; 8 million have crossed the border since then. In 2005, some 400 desperate Mexicans died trying to enter the US.
NAFTA failed to curb illegal immigration precisely because it was never designed as a genuine development program crafted to promote rising living standards, health care, environmental cleanup, and worker rights in Mexico. The wholesale surge of Mexicans across the border dramatically illustrates that NAFTA was no attempt at a broad uplift of living conditions and democracy in Mexico, but a formula for government-sanctioned corporate plunder benefiting elites on both sides of the border.
I have incredible respect for Robert Reich and even if I may disagree a bit here, that fact won't change.
However let's consider what happens when say my industry, computers, moves to India - how am I going to get "retrained"?
Anyway, here's a couple of letters I wrote to Salon.com on the matter that I think sum it up. Forgive me for reposting them here:
-----------------
In theory, like most Libertarian ideals, free trade sounds great. By trading freely with all countries, we "share" our wealth and enable their countries to lift their economies and their people out of poverty with it.
That's the theory. The problem is most of the countries we want to trade freely with aren't exactly free. China for instance isn't a democratic society that has governmental controls to ensure workers are paid fairly or treated fairly. In fact, and this is true in even the more free countries - the system is decidedly tilted against the little guy. There's nothing in these countries systems that guarantees that the "tide will lift all boats". Quite the contrary, many positively enforce inequality of wealth (to some degree I would argue this is even true of the U.S.). And, as we've seen in cases like Nigeria, as cronies pockets are lined, it may not even give the advantage of lifting the economy of the country itself, much less the average citizen.
In short, the benefits of free trade being espoused assume those we trade with are model countries like we believe ours is. Since they're not, mostly what these policies function to do is siphon from our economy into the hands of their elites, by way of the hands of multinational companies.
The later point perhaps being the most important. For despite the best intentions of free-traders, they are really doing the dirty work of multinationals and the monied class here. The appeal of "free trade" is the Trojan horse whereby monied interests are able to use the stick of labor competition to increase profits by chipping away at the benefits that westerners currently enjoy. In the end, instead of bringing 3rd world workers on par with the U.S., they bring U.S. workers on par with 3rd world countries. A Pakistani worker who earns $20 a month today is likely to earn $20 in 5 years, regardless of how much free trade we share (actually more likely it'll be $21.50 and someone will be touting the "success" of free trade, despite the fact they're still starving).
And these arguments don't even get into the issues of domestic subsidies et al that hopelessly imbalance trade outside of just labor itself.
I am all for sharing our wealth through real free trade, but to do so, all parties have to be really "free" and the systems have to be designed so all can benefit, not just the few who use those markets to their benefit.
-----------------
"Free-trade advocates are constantly telling us that we should get educated and innovate ourselves into a competitive position in the global economy."
Exactly - I always think it's funny how they say Americans need to retrain to be competitive. Sure, that's great maybe if you're working in a low skill factory job, but what if you're working in something like IT already (which incidentally is generally the implied replacement)? Those are moving now too. Worse the combination of foreign competition and all these people moving to IT threatens to dilute the salary base and opportunities of these higher tech jobs as well.
Ok, maybe I should "move up" and do more management (I do actually). Can everyone who loses their job or has their salary crunched move up? Someone has to be stuck with the crappy low level job and pay. In fact most have to - that's their plan for us.
Moreover we always talk about things like family values, but we never weigh the societal cost of requiring our workforce to be entirely mobile (by this, I mean, willing to pick up and move at a moment's notice). How can we have strong families and communities if everyone has to be willing to move around to be competitive at the drop of a hat? How many families succumb to the fractures caused by the stresses of lost jobs? How can parents foster values in their children if their salaries are so weak they have to work long hours or two jobs and are never home? What emotional damage does this upheaval or threat of upheaval wreak onto to all of us? How can we form healthy emotional bonds together as a society if we don't know if our neighbors will be moving away tomorrow to chase a living wage?
In short we don't measure these costs of free trade and free markets, even though they have very real effects. Free trade looks at people as the same as the widgets they slave over. People aren't - there are real consequences to the upheaval this system demands. Consequences that are ignored because they aren't "real" like money.
Ultimately this system as it stands is an anathema to the very values we claim to cherish.
Real and Conjured Threats
A poli-sci undergrad can tell you who will prevail if Canadian, U.S., and Mexican negotiators get together to set out a common agenda. (Hint: it's not Mexico or Canada.)
Officially described as "... a White House-led initiative among the United States and the two nations it borders—Canada and Mexico—to increase security and to enhance prosperity among the three countries through greater cooperation," the SPP poses a much more palpable sovereignty threat to NAFTA's junior partners. Canadians have been the most active in opposing the SPP, not out of fear of a mythical NAU but because of real threats to their ability to protect consumer health, natural resources, and the environment. SPP rules would force open oil production in environmentally sensitive areas and channel water supplies to U.S. needs. Likewise, Mexican civic organizations have protested against SPP pressures to privatize Mexican oil and allow greater U.S. intervention in the Mexican national security system.
Both these fears have been born out in Mexico in recent months. President Felipe Calderon is expected to announce a plan to privatize segments of the state-owned oil company PEMEX any day now. Plan Mexico (also called the Merida Initiative) currently before the U.S. Congress goes farther than any other measure in the history of the binational relationship toward developing a common security perimeter, within which U.S. government teams and private defense companies would train security forces, coordinate intelligence-gathering, and provide defense equipment for use against internal threats. Few countries in the world have been willing to take this kind of risk.
As for moving toward a borderless North America, the years since the SPP began have witnessed a hardening of the U.S.-Mexico border never seen before in modern history. Fifteen thousand Border Patrol agents, 6,000 members of the National Guard, and a border fence powerfully belie any suggestion that the U.S. government aims to eliminate borders as it moves toward a secret North American Union.
Right Wing Red Herring?
How, then, to explain the fact that the NAU conspiracy has gone viral among rightwing populists in the United States?
How to explain how a baseless myth has garnered the support of millions, made it into presidential candidates' debates, and become the subject of 20 state resolutions and a federal one?
Given the absolute lack of factual data to support the existence of a secret plan to create a North American Union, it's tempting to assume that the NAU scare was put forth as a red herring to divert attention from real issues facing the country. By channeling the insecurities of white working-class Americans into belief in an attack on U.S. sovereignty, the NAU myth obscures the very real globalization issues raised by NAFTA—job loss, labor insecurity, the surge in illegal immigration, and racial tensions caused by the portrayal of immigrants as invaders. This is convenient for both rightwing politicians and the government and business elites they attack because real solutions to these problems would include actions anathema to the right, including unionization, enforcement of labor rights, comprehensive immigration reform, and regulation of the international market. Instead, these options are shunted aside with the redefinition of the problem as a conspiracy of anti-American elites. Stop Plan Mexico!
It is remarkable that only the cost of labor is mentioned by Mr Reich.
Should we allow American companies to dump toxic waste into our waterways? Should we rid ourselves of cumbersome product safety regulations regarding lead, mercury and other toxic materials? Should we free American employers from the restrictions posed by collective bargaining and labor organization rights?
If not, then why must American companies and workers compete on a skewed playing field against international companies lacking such environmental, labor and product safety protections?
NAFTA and similar free trade agreements, along with sovereignty-impinging organizations like the WTO, are simply mechanisms to work around the protections that our ancestors fought and died for.
AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY AND THE NORTH AMERICAN UNION
The term ‘Free Trade’ is usually defined as the absence of tariffs, quotas, or other governmental barriers to international trade. There is no doubt that some recent free trade agreements have not been very good for the American worker. On the other hand, the agreements have been great for the large multinational corporations, particularly those that have moved their manufacturing plants from the United States to China, Mexico and other low-wage countries where they can hire people there for a few dollars a week. These corporations can now produce their products without worrying about the costs of meeting OSHA requirements, providing employee health care or pensions for its workers and then they can bring their products back into the USA to sell. These products oftentimes are not made to the same quality standards as when they were produced in America and as recents incidents involving Chineese imports have shown, these products can pose health hazards to Americans as well.
The supporters of many free trade agreements, particularly the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have always promised increased exports, better jobs and better wages. Under many of these free trade agreements, however, just the opposite has occurred. Under NAFTA, for example, the U.S. trade deficit has soared and now averages $55-65 Billion dollars per month; the U.S. has lost over a million manufacturing jobs and real wages in both the U.S. and Mexico have fallen significantly. In short, NAFTA has not been a friend to the citizenry of either the United States or Mexico.
In 2005, a new mechanism was created to speed the further expansion of the NAFTA free trade agreement into a North American Union. It is called the Strategic and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP)’ The SPP is designed to facilitate the establishment of a North America Union through the “economic integration” of the US, Mexico and Canada. The most important feature of the SPP is that it does not require congressional ratification or the passage of any federal legislation by the congress of the United States. This design places the negotiation fully within the authority of the executive branch in the United States. How else would Mexican truckers be able to begin operating in the USA over the objections of Congress, American truckers and most of the American people?
The people and their elected representatives in congress no longer seem to have a voice when it comes to international trade. This is definitely a national sovereignty issue. International trade issues that affect 300+ million Americans should be made by the people’s representatives in Congress, not by a handful of government bureaucrats and corporate elites who use their government connections to bypass congress and ignore our Constitution, which expressly grants Congress the sole authority to regulate international trade.
The goal of these international trade elite is to create an integrated North American Union, complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the proposed Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the destruction of our national sovereignty. A free America, with limited, constitutional government, would just be a memory.
Not all free trade agreements are bad, but I believe that the United States of America must withdraw from any international agreements that infringe upon the freedom, sovereignty and independence of the American people.
By:
JOHN W. WALLACE
Candidate for Congress
New York’s 20th Congressional District
www.johnwallaceforcongress.com
My question is how much of the benefit as consumers has been in the form of wasteful disposable plastic junk from China that we didn't need and soon threw away and replaced. I think of this as the Billy Bigmouth Bass Effect. We can buy things ridiculously cheap so we buy more and waste more. We have sold our Democracy, do we have anything left to show for the transaction?
Believe you me, the Chinese, and any other society that rises above the level of subsistence, is perfectly willing and capable of buying plastic crap. They are as much "rational consumers" as the rest of us.
I don't buy a word of it. Trade must be managed just as capitalism has been managed. When capitalism hasn't been managed it has failed -banking industry or whatever. What difference does it make if my job went to Mexico or China. Bad argument! How long can you invent technologies, start up new industries and them ship them overseas and retrain all the workers. We have got to learn to and protect good industries and keep them here at home - at least for a reasonable time.
The problem is we no longer have American Companies. We have international companies to whom one country is as good as another. This does the American people no good at all. If you don't have a job you wont be able to buy anything no matter how cheap the price.
This is a hot one. Needless to say there is no such thing as free trade. Free trade involves two parties agreeing to an exchange for some payment. What we look for is generally fair trade. And, when our economic systems differ substantially with prospective trading partners, our agreements should reflect as much. To trade with Canada, which is generally as the US, we would negotiate around our differences. To trade with Mexico is substantially different as their labor can be arbitraged. And, it is. And, to say this is good for US is HIGHLY debatable. Labor arbitrage must be ameliorated to some degree to support the rise of economies able to buy our goods and services while protecting our jobs. There is no defense of anything other than this position and nothing but horsesh*t perpetrated by the power elite that can substantiate anything else.
Free trade takes this into consideration. It is an exchange of goods or services for agreed to value between two parties. These 'free trade' agreements in their current forms are complete nonsense.
Consulates and Embassies routinely follow political developments in areas they serve. We all know that US Embassies follow elections in places from Pakistan to Russia -- even in the UK. So Canadian representatives have undoubtedly talked to dozens of leaders within the Clinton, Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Edwards, Dodd, etc. campaigns.
The only real question is WHY DID THE CONSERVATIVE-PARTY GOVERNMENT OF CANADA PUBLICIZE, AND EVEN MISCONSTRUE, SOME CONVERSATION BY THEIR CHICAGO CONSULATE WITH A PRO-OBAMA COLLEGE PROFESSOR ON THE EVE OF THE OHIO PRIMARY? Governments don't normally blab about contacts of the sort this is purported to have been!
All Americans should demand that the Canadian government make repeated statements to correct this situation, and especially one on the eve of the Pennsylvania elections.
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Dear Mr. Reich,
I have followed your writings and thinking for years in many media, including our wonderful conversation at the FastCompany event in New Orleans. While we were not always backing the same party (I consider myself an independent) or position, I have greatly admired your logic and intellectual integrity in the style of WFB Jr and friends and wonder if you too were a guest at some of his parties.
I sense here that you are again touching upon a question about HRC that I find absolutely paramount in the current political season. The political game is all about seizing opportunities in which opposed or skewed players are temporarily in complementary orbits on a particular issue or campaign to forge alliances or compromises. Too often such similarities are illusory but sold to the voting public as meaningful and productive - forgetting Newton's Third Law of Politics.
My point here is that careful scrutiny of the Clinton campaign reveals three things.
She holds mostly political expedience and opportunity and nearly zero substance. I see numerous examples of her speech rhetoric that are either shamelessly hollow of any real meaning, or contradictory - though many loyalists will not agree. But, how can she really justify her manipulative nit-picking stance on the Florida and Michigan delegations that is so reminiscent of her husband's hair-splitting testimony ? More importantly, how can she continue her vicious personal attacks on Obama (regardless of whether or not they're true) and simultaneously, joyfully float the possibility of a combined ticket ? Who can find genuineness in that ? While I did not agree with her avid antiwar rhetoric of the preceding years, it is the sincerely antiwar constituency that holds a strong sense of betrayal in her recently expanded war on terror stance. Her two most frequently presented (but vapid) planks - "fighting" Republicans and offering "government" money to everyone who can claim any kind of suffering - offer nothing in terms of improving the long-term state of the country.
Secondly, the collective campaign effort is apparently targeting a segment of the population who cannot reason through these many indicators and issues that she herself creates. What does that say about her long-range perspective on the state of the country when her execution of the political process continues to embrace this low road.
Finally, it is clear that the political operatives in her campaign - despite occasional re-shuffling - keep coming back to this alignment, confirming that the inner soul of the campaign, the candidate herself, is the source of these misjudgments.
Mr. Reich, I truly respect what you have to say, as do many others, and I wish to encourage you to express that intellect and show how the Empress has no clothes. She may enjoy temporary support and alignment on some positions, but as you have said before, some people do or say the right thing for the wrong reasons. I certainly wish the Democratic Party as an organization were performing better and offering real substantive progress, but they won't until they understand that the electorate sees through such thin political circus.
Thank you.
Don in Austin TX
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