NAFTA: Are Democrats pandering?

last updated 8 January 2015

A 14-year-old trade agreement suddenly became the hottest issue of the Democratic presidential race this week, said Jessica Wehrman in the Dayton, Ohio, Daily News. But as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were scraping for every last vote in the crucial Ohio primary, the debate wasn’t over whether or not the North American Free Trade Agreement was good for the country. “It was over which candidate hates it more.” Obama accused Clinton of flip-flopping on NAFTA, citing her earlier praise of the accord that her husband had signed into law. Clinton charged that the Obama campaign had privately assured Canadian officials that his anti-NAFTA rhetoric was mere political posturing that he wouldn’t actually pursue. But with the loss of thousands of jobs in Ohio and other industrial areas blamed on NAFTA, both candidates pledged to withdraw from the pact unless it was renegotiated. Can you spell pander? said Daniel Griswold in The Wall Street Journal. NAFTA, by virtually every assessment, has been a net plus for the American economy. “Democratic opposition to NAFTA and free trade is not driven by any real facts on the ground, but by special interest politics.”

Come November, the Democrats may wish they hadn’t turned NAFTA into a “dirty word,” said Jonathan Riskind in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. NAFTA-bashing no doubt plays well with union members and other Democratic stalwarts. But the general election may turn on independents, who tend to be wary of protectionism—especially if they work in high-tech or other economic sectors that benefit from robust foreign trade. Besides, both Clinton and Obama seem to be making promises they can’t keep, said Dudley Althaus in the Houston Chronicle. For all their “saber-rattling,” there’s very little a president can do on his or her own to gut an existing treaty. Congress would have to go along, and the votes for that just aren’t there.

But even just the talk of going backward on free trade is sending “jitters” throughout the world, said Fareed Zakaria in The Washington Post. The Democratic candidates may have been directing their appeals to voters in Ohio, “but you can’t target messages so easily anymore. What’s said in Ohio is heard in Ghana, Bangladesh, and Colombia.” What most people in the developing world really want is an open world economy, so that farmers in Kenya, for example, have a chance to sell their products abroad. George Bush alienated the world with his bullying, America-first tactics. Now Democrats, by threatening to unilaterally rewrite international treaties, are essentially promising more of the same. What happened to the politics of change and hope?