Both Senator Obama, and Senator Clinton, claim that NAFTA has been bad for the American economy. Senator Obama has gone so far to claim that if he is elected he will renegotiate the agreement. By that I guess he means gettingout all together. Senator Clinton also claims to be against NAFTA, despite past comments supportive of the free trade deal, and the fact that it was her husband who got the agreement ratified.
Politically, it makes sense for them to attack NAFTA. It's easy for people to believe economic populism, it sounds good to people since it requires no thought. Economic populism is a bunch of empty slogans and unrealistic promises. Senator Obama has promised to punish corporations that "ship jobs overseas" funny I didn't know jobs were something that could be put into a shipping crate and sent to some foreign country.
Since NAFTA America has added jobs, despite the claims of the free trade opponents that American jobs are being shipped away, American joblessness is low, and American factory output and orders are up. America, with NAFTA, is the largest exporter in the world. We export about 1.4 trillion dollars worth of goods every year.
Our biggest trade partner is Canada, which is not exactly some third world country, and whenever America has a free trade agreement it's exports go up. What the Democrats really don't understand, or don't want to understand, is that it's not really all that complicated. The fewer barriers there are to trade the more trade there is, the more trade there is the more business there is, and the more business there is the more money people make.
Yet Senator Obama, and Senator Clinton, would raise barriers to trade. Such an act might appeal to some people who feel that the government needs to do "something" about economic troubles, but few ever stop to think about the consequences of such action.
The more barriers to trade, the more it might help labor unions who pump money into the campaigns of Democratic candidates, but it doesn't help the American consumer. Trade barriers, in the form of taxes on imports and quotas on imports only result in higher prices. Prices are going up, gas prices are going up, grocery prices are going up, it seems everything is more expensive.
The answer isn't to hide behind a protectionist government and expect them to actually be able to do anything positive. If we want lower prices we need fewer barriers to trade, not more. All the rhetoric in the world doesn't change economic reality, and economic reality has shown that NAFTA and free trade have been good for America.
