Hillary Clinton's Rust Belt Rhetoric
Commentary: A Clinton victory in Pennsylvania—and maybe in the whole primary race—hinges on the same voters her husband's free trade policies betrayed.
March 14, 2008
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If the Ohio Democratic primary contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was, in part, the Battle of NAFTA, voters in Pennsylvania can expect a rematch as the two candidates head toward the April 22 primary. Like Ohio, Pennsylvania is a beleaguered industrial state that has suffered the damaging fallout of globalization, losing, by one estimate, more than 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001. "There is no way to avoid this issue in the Pennsylvania primary," Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, says of NAFTA, "and it will only become a brighter line wedge issue in the general election."
Consequently, the continued success of Hillary Clinton's bait-and-switch tactics on the subject of the North American Free Trade Agreement might have a decisive impact on the primary race. In Ohio, she pulled off a remarkable political feat: While her last name alone should have made her vulnerable on free trade, she countered by campaigning against NAFTA. "Let's get real about NAFTA," she told a cheering audience in economically devastated Youngstown. "I'm going to fix it." Then she blasted what she claimed was her opponent's inconsistent position on NAFTA, a pseudoscandal that her campaign quickly dubbed NAFTA-gate.
Both Clinton and Obama have adjusted their statements on NAFTA to suit their audiences, and it's not certain that either would do much to change this or other existing free trade agreements. Yet heading into Pennsylvania (and after it, other hard-hit manufacturing states like Indiana and West Virginia), Clinton still seeks to portray herself as a working-class heroine, the candidate who can triumph in the Rust Belt states that may prove crucial in November. By doing so, she surpassed her opponent in the rhetoric/reality gap, betting her presidential fortunes on winning the hearts and minds of the very people her husband's policies betrayed—on the very issue that epitomized that betrayal.
Hillary Clinton's own words show clear, long-standing, and largely uncritical support for NAFTA. But beyond this, she has been running hard on her husband's record, taking a share of the credit for everything good that happened in the 1990s, from the economic recovery to peace in Northern Ireland. Yet she now seeks to disavow what may be the single most significant and emblematic event of Bill Clinton's presidency. When he signed the agreement in 1994, with a stroke of the pen Bill Clinton abandoned part of the Democratic Party's core constituency and signed the party on to the neoliberal agenda of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), heralding a new approach to both domestic economic policy and foreign policy. NAFTA, perhaps more than anything else, is Bill Clinton's legacy.
Hillary Clinton has sought to downplay her husband's responsibility for NAFTA. In the same Ohio news conference where she declared "Shame on you, Barack Obama" for distributing flyers misrepresenting her NAFTA position, Hillary asserted that "the agreement was negotiated in the Bush administration. It was passed in the Clinton administration." A year earlier, she told a Time magazine interviewer that "NAFTA was inherited by the Clinton administration," and that while it was "in principle, a good idea to try to create a better trading market between Canada and the United States and Mexico," there were problems with "the terms that it contained, and how it was negotiated under the Bush administration and the failure to have any tough enforcement mechanism." While the basic terms for NAFTA were indeed negotiated under George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton was a fervent advocate for the agreement, the man who pushed it through Congress, where the strongest resistance came from his own party. Clinton himself would say, in a 1995 interview with Tom Brokaw, "We took on the NAFTA fight. It was deader than a doornail when I became president, and we brought it back to life."
After NAFTA was approved, in large part with Republican votes, Clinton declared, "The truth of our age is this and must be this: Open and competitive commerce will enrich us as a nation." The corporations and well-off Americans who were indeed enriched in the 1990s would find little reason to question such claims. But those left behind by the boom times may have had a better sense of what NAFTA really represented: a fundamental Democratic policy shift toward the long-held Republican position that a rising tide would lift all boats, and that endless growth through a deregulated capitalist economy and expanded markets was the cure for all ills. It was a lot closer to Reaganomics than it was to the New Deal.
By the end of his presidency, Clinton would sign nearly 300 trade agreements. He championed extending Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China—a move that would have a wider economic impact than NAFTA—and presided over American entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), of which he said, "It creates hundreds of thousands of high-paying American jobs.... It is the largest international tax cut in history. Most importantly, this agreement requires all trading nations to play by the same rules. And since the United States has the most productive and competitive economy in the world, that is good news for our workers and our future." It wasn't good news for everyone, but a few million American manufacturing jobs were small matters in the context of the larger vision of which NAFTA was a vital part.
In his book American Empire, Andrew J. Bacevich, the former director of Boston University's Center for International Relations, notes that NAFTA was a cornerstone of Bill Clinton's foreign policy. Clinton was the first president to take office in a post-Cold War world, and his campaign mentioned both the genocide in Bosnia and human rights violations in China as appropriate targets for intervention by the world's sole superpower; but once in office, he eased off of both positions. As Bacevich points out, NAFTA and subsequent trade agreements were crucial to the administration's overall international strategy, which Clinton's National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake (now an Obama advisor), described in a 1993 speech at Johns Hopkins called "From Containment to Enlargement." Having won the battle against the Soviet Union, the United States would now work for the "enlargement of the world's free community of market democracies" in a global movement toward democracy and market economics—which were seen as inseparable. This strategy, Lake said, would make the world a "more humane and peaceful" place, but it was hardly a humanitarian venture, since it would also make the United States "more secure, prosperous, and influential." The strategy Lake set out, Bacevich observes, was a plan to "preserve and reinforce American preeminence"—a blueprint for a new kind of American empire.
Can anyone tell me the real deal on “The Clinton Chronicles?”
Someone told me I should watch this video, so I did, and the accusations just blew me away! It took over an hour to watch the whole video, but it is SO interesting and it certainly brought up a lot of questions in my mind about the Clintons.
I noticed the video is a few years old too - does anyone know if these accusations have since been debunked or refuted?
Here's a link to where I watched the video, which I found rivetting.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6470450895164255089
Thanks again,
Jill
FROM THE, "Nafta Three Year Report Card": 1997
"Heritage Foundation-The Backgrounder"-
"Indeed, if NAFTA were to be graded on its effects after only three years, it would
receive an “A+” for enhancing the level of trade between the United States and its North
American neighbors; an “A+” for increasing the number of U.S. jobs that support this
increased trade; an “A+” for its positive impact on manufacturing and on the personal
income of American workers; and a “B” both for encouraging U.S. compliance with
implementation of NAFTA’s deadlines and for improving U.S. relations with Mexico in
general. Finally, although much more can be done, NAFTA has been instrumental in the
strides Mexico has made in liberalizing its economy, and is one reason Mexico is taking
steps to reform its political system. With this kind of report card, Congress should have no
doubts about the success that NAFTA has achieved.
Growth in Trade: A+
Total North American trade increased from $293 billion in 1993 to $420 billion
in 1996; a gain of $127 billion or 43 percent during NAFTA’s first three years.’
If that gain had been with a single country, it would have made that country the
fourth-largest trading partner of the United States. In 1996, U.S. exports to
Canada and Mexico, at $190 billion, exceeded U.S. exports to any other area of
the world, including the entire Pacific Rim or all of Europe. Mexico and
Canada purchased $3 of every $10 in U.S. exports and supplied $3 of every
$10 in US. imports in 1996. Overall, total U.S. exports of goods and services
grew from $602.5 billion in 1993-the last year before NAFTA was
implemented--to $825.9 billion in 1996, a gain of $223.4 billion.’
-.
* Growth in U.S. Exports: A+
Thanks to NAFTA, Mexican tariffs---which had averaged 10 percent before the
trade agreement was implemented--now average less than 6 percent, while
average U.S. tariffs have fallen from 4 percent to about 2.5 percent. As a result,
U.S. exports to Mexico grew by 37~percent from 1993 to 1996, reaching a
record $57 billion.3 During this period, U.S. exports to Canada also i&creased
by 33 percent, to $134 billion. Total two-way trade between the United States
and Canada was $290 billion in 1996, while total two-way trade between the
United States and Mexico was nearly $130 billion. According to the U.S.
Department of Commerce, U.S. exports to Mexico in the fourth quarter of 1996
were growing at an annualized rate of $64 billion. Moreover, U.S. market share
in Mexico increased from 69 percent of total Mexican imports in 1993 to 76
percent in 1996.4 During NAFTA’s first three years, 39 of the 50 states
increased their exports to Mexico; moreover, 44 states reported a growth in
exports to Mexico during 1996 as the pace of U.S. exports to that country
accelerated.
GROWTH IN UNITED STATES EMPLOYMENT: A+
NAFTA has shattered the myth that U.S. trade deficits destroy U.S. jobs. The
combined US. trade deficit with Canada and Mexico increased during the first
three years of NAFTA’s implementation-from $9 billion in 1992 to 539.9 billion
in 1996--because Canada and Mexico suffered economic recessions.
Since 1992, however, the U.S. economy has created 12 million net new jobs.
Moreover, manufacturing employment grew from 16.9 million jobs in 1992 to
18.3 million.in 1993, an increase of 1.4 million net new jobs.” The general
unemployment rate declined from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 5.3 percent in 1996.
U.S. exports to NAFTA countries currently support 2.3 million U.S. jobs.’
- Output Gains for U.S. Manufacturing: A+
The largest post-NAFTA gains in U.S. exports to Mexico have been in such
high-technology manufacturing sectors as transportation and electronic equipment,
industrial machinery, plastics and rubber, fabricated metal products, and
chemicals NAFTA also has been a boon for major U.S. agricultural states like
Montana, Nebraska, and North Dakota, and traditional southern textile states
like North Carolina and Alabama. NAFTA has encouraged U.S. and foreign
investors with apparel and footwear factories in Asia to relocate their production
operations to Mexico. This diversion of investment from Asia to Mexico
“saved the heavier end of clothing~manufacture in the U.S.: the textile mills,”
as Rich Nadler, a journalist who has covered NAFTA’s progress since 1992,
recently observed.”
* Improved Standards of Living for American Workers: A+
According to Nadler, who has reviewed pre- and post-NAFTA growth rates in
U.S. standards of living, the rate of increase in personal wealth has more than
tripled since NAFTA was implemented.” His review measured the improvement
in three ways: (1) inflation-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) per
capita grew by 1.79 percent annually in 1994 and 1995, compared with only
0.23 percent from 1990 to 1993; (2) disposable personal income growth,
adjusted for inflation, averaged 1.89 percent annually in 1994 and 1995, compared
with 0.25 percent annually from 1990 to 1993; and (3) personal consumption
expenditures grew by an inflation-adjusted 1.76 percent annually
during 1994 and 1995, compared with 0.56 percent a year from 1990 to 1993.
The data on trade, production, and employment growth for NAFTA’s first three years
quantify objectively that NAFTA is good for the United States. Moreover, a recent economic
analysis published by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago concludes that
NAFTA will lead to output gains for all three participant countries. l3 These gains are
roughly twice as large as those predicted by previous forecasts of NAFTA’s potential for
accelerated growth in North American trade, output, and employment growth.
The Federal Reserve study, based on a dynamic economic model, also predicts that the
adjustment to NAFTA should be virtually completed by 2004 (although NAFTA will not
be fully phased in until 2009) and that NAFTA will greatly expand the flow of all goods,
both from Canada and the United States to Mexico and from Mexico to the United States
and Canada. In general, bilateral Mexican-North American trade should increase about 20
percent as a result of NAFTA. This projected growth also means more U.S. jobs and a
higher standard of living for American workers."
From my perspective and from historical data regarding Nafta during the Clinton years there was no net loss of jobs in America. In fact there was a huge gain in US manufacturing jobs and jobs overall. The US economy was booming during the Clinton Presidency. So for you, Mr. Ridgeway, to say that 3 million jobs were lost because of Nafta and that Clinton betrayed the American worker is an out and out fabrication!
I suggest you read a Business week report about the whole sale shipment of jobs overseas starting in 2000. The number of lost jobs is quite close to the 3 million you accuse Clinton's Presidency of.
Bill Clinton left office with the highest approval rating of any President in US history for many reasons but the most significant was the economy!
Now as obvious as it to me I can't see how so many people do not really know what the acronym, Nafta, North America Free Trade Agreement, means not just literally but economically. Nafta was not an economic disaster for the US but quite the contrary. Those 3 million jobs James Ridgeway talks about disappearing from the US happened from 2001 until the present and the majority until 2005, under the Bush regime, not under Clinton. Nafta affects job and business in North America directly and Nafta created jobs in all 3 signing countries during the Clinton years. As a matter of fact Mr. Ridgeway Bill Clinton handed GWB the lowest federal budget in decades, a humming economy and an international approval rating higher that this country had ever seen! The three million jobs that Mr. Ridgeway talks about are now in China, Eastern Europe and South East Asia mostly. These countries are not covered by Nafta.
So lets lay the blame for the economic disaster that has befallen Pa and Ohio and the so-called "Rust Belt" as well as the US economy where it really belongs-The neo-con corporativistic Presidency of corporate stooge George Bush and the evil Dr. Dick!
One last thing. It took a Clinton to pull the US out the senior Bush's induced economic doldrums of the his Presidency. It's going to take another Clinton to pull us out of the economic and international sewer Bush senior's son has pushed us into!
Obama has presented an alternative tapping a social force that neither Clinton nor McCain seem to either understand or do battle against. ...
pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/02/obama-social-phenomenon.html
I believe Big H. will end the “Disaster and War” Economy paradigm and replace it with a Universal Trade / Production / Research-Technological / Scholastic / Artistic economy while making the other changes that will promote a NEW paradigm. Don't see any left brains currently suggesting anything close to that!!
Imagine - PROSPERITY without war!!!
Collea-Devi
The idea of being a VP candidate was presented to Obama - If he can't negotiate with members of his own party, (??) how could he be expected to negotiate trade with other countries??? - Something nasty this way comes between the Democratic candidates.
Collea-Devi
I'll take the word (and statistics) of Kucinich and our remaining labor unions over the Heritage Foundation anyday.
A simple question for NAFTA.... what is it supposed to do? (that is, if trade agreements with single countries seems to work, and did work since trade agreements began... what is it's purpose again?)
The media, even here, are determined to bring her down, misrepresent her and buy into the Obamamania which is mystifying. Most folks can't eat Hope, nor pay bills with it. A Democrat in the White House is the Change I want and if you listen to Obama when it is not a rehearsed practiced sermon he is full of boring 'uh' and 'uh' and 'uh' and I still don't know what he will do or what he really knows how to do.
The media hate Hillary, period, and they are our source of news. That's the real story.
As if the political arena in Washington was a simple yes or no, black or white, and the hopelessly uneducated think they know what they would have done, etc. The more someone clearly hates the Clintons the more I believe that person is not only uneducated and misinformed but have incurious closed minds, not unlike the current president.
She used her name and recognition to gather a base that follows TV news, and spoon-fed them reasons no to like Obama.
She's tacitly letting the race argument play out. Sen. McCain showed way more class than her in his Hannity interview. Look it up for yourself. That's what a politician is supposed to sound like.
She's basically giving the dems two bad options: nominate Obama, and she'll tell her playmates not to vote. They listen to her and nobody else.
Or nominate her. And then it will be all good.
She is of course assuming the people that didn't vote for her are stupid. I agree with PacificGate that either she doesn't see, or doesn't want to see, why people are voting for Obama, a newcomer to the national arena (but, in fairness, more time spent in public office than her).
i have watched her behavior and tactics on tv and flowed her and barak's coverage on the web and i find her uncrupulous - and such a manipulator -
and deciever - she will do anything to get votes - she has no character and is just plain power hungry - i feel such remorse for the american citizens who are not making themselves aware of her
dirty politics and decieved by her and will vote based upon not only her husbands legacy as uniformed as they are about what he actually did -
once again ty for for making us a more informed voter -
lynette roberts
Regardless of your author's painfully tedious and de-humanizing number crunching metric measurements and face-less percentages of the so-called beneifts and advantages of NAFTA on all sides, the far deeper and truer to life reality is that in "Origins...," we re-discover that, since Woodrow Wilson, America is culturally-psychologically-morally-intellectually and spiritually long programmed and entrenched in seeing ourselves as The New World (if not the only one). This delusional false pride of ignorance pronounces that we have been elected and destined to be a Christ-Redeemer-Savior nation (read utopian neo-Jacobinism), which also reads as a utilitarian pragmatic and non-reflective realism (read a myopic and ferocious will-to-power-resource-to-riches unconsciousness).
Far worse, is that this is without the great and terrible freedom of consciousness or sovereignty of the self-soul. The later is what reminds us how to be a human being.
If there is nothing else of value that you read for present into future, find this essay work and ponder it until it calls 'you-me-we, the critical mass forth!'
Can anyone tell me the real deal on “The Clinton Chronicles?”
Someone told me I should watch this video, so I did, and the accusations just blew me away! It took over an hour to watch the whole video, but it is SO interesting and it certainly brought up a lot of questions in my mind about the Clintons.
I noticed the video is a few years old too - does anyone know if these accusations have since been debunked or refuted?
Here's a link to where I watched the video, which I found rivetting.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6470450895164255089
Thanks again,
Jill
Pre-Shrub, employment increased in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, from 1997 through 2000.
Do you know there was a Watergate special prosecutor that preceded Ken Starr. Upstanding Republican and staunch Reaganite, named Robert B. Fiske. Spent about $1mil and said it was all a load of crap. Then Starr spent $75mil and produced no results but Monica's kneepads. Funny how they both ended up at Pepperdine.
Jill
And after careful consideration of Obama's 20 years in a hate-mongering racist church, I've decided to go with McCane (even though I'm less than enthused about him - at least I think he is an honest broker).
We'll see what turns up between now and November.
Jill
You are way off base. The RIGHT WING wants Hillary Clinton "IN" as president because she will do what DLC Democrats as REPUBLICAN EXTREMISTS do, just like Bill did. The FOX "RIGHT WING Propaganda" Network even campaigns for Hillary, as well as all the other major television networks that are, also, RIGHT Wing owned and operated have a tilt toward Hillary -- along with ALL the major RIGHT Wing newspapers that are RIGHT Wing owned and operated tilt to Hillary. Hillary Clinton is a RIGHT WINGER'S DLC Democrat, and our country needs to be rid of the REPUBLICAN led DLC.
As this post sets the record straight, Alan Greenspan, a REPUBLICAN, also set the record straight, William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton was the best REPUBLICAN
president in the United States EVER; because no LEFT Wing president would have sold out the COMMON PEOPLE of the United States to such a large degree as Bill Clinton did; and through Hillary, the RIGHT EXTREME will continue to sell the COMMON PEOPLE out. There is a 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION in the United States and none of them should vote for anyone who is a member of the Democratic "Weaselship" Council, the DLC -- Democratic Leadership Council --like Hillary Clinton IS.
Obama as president, since he is FREE of the DLC, means our country could be rid of the DLC cancer that's destroying the United States politically and economically, which would be a wonderful start at reclaiming democracy for the people of the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION in the United States.
The 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States that is the political LEFT is not represented in the government of the United States by a political party, does not have a political horse in the race for the Democratic Party Primary Election and as a result will not have a political horse in the race in the General Election.
The 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States must realize its own existence as a class and culture, must reject being represented against its best interest by orthodox democracy, must get political horses in political races at all political levels, city, county, state and federal with political party representation and get elected by their own 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION to represent their own interests of the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION at all levels of government in the United States.
The 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States as a class and culture are at present being ruled over by a combined 30% minority population of the United States, a 10% American aristocracy and a 20% Professional Middle Class as the dominant classes and cultures of the United States that choose to represent the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States politically as COWS in someone else's field, COWS that are entitled only to the freedom of someone else's field, rather than full and equal rights along with their own political party and their own representation at all levels of government of the United States; if these rights will not be given peacefully by the American aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class, the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States as a class and culture must bring themselves to sufficient awareness to take these rights from the American aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class and represent their own interests as a 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION class and culture at all levels of government of the United States and not allow the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States to continue to be represented in the government of the United States by competing classes and cultures of the American aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class as COWS in someone else's field deserving only of the freedom of someone else's field.
It makes me disgusted and physically ill to have to continually listen to orthodox democratic choices of totalitarism in the United States being represented by complicit media, complicit political parties of the American aristocracy and the Professional Middle Class and a complicit educational system in the United States as actual choices of democracy; the choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is just one more false choice of orthodox democracy that disgusts me and makes me physically ill to have to continue to listen to.
It is time for a change from orthodox democracy for America to actual democracy for America. It is time for the 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULAITON as a class and culture to be represented in the government of the United States.
"Give me control of a nation's money, and I care not who makes its laws"
-Mayor Rothschild,Private Banker.
Another wise man said that "if the american people truly understood how our banking system works, there would be a revolution overnight..."
I know Obama doesn't go into enough detail about his policies, and the fact that Zebigniew Brezezinski, who belives in a one world gov't (read his "The Grand Chessboard"..could have been pinned by Hitler, if Hitler were smarter)has endorsed Obama..but I think people feel that bacause he's half-black/half white, he might be able to bring us together..and we do need that. Also, I think people are privately hoping that once he gets into power he will open up more, and possibly work to end the war on drugs, or at least on marijuana, which has never killed one single person, has been used for centuries, is an all-natural, organic plant, yet because of politics people's lives, responsible adults, are being ruined by it. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn't grow hemp, which does not get one high, but can be used to make about a thousand products (to help replace oil..a possible non-food source bio-diesel...because using food for gas is CRAZY. The fact that so many things can be made from hemp has caused the lobyists for several industries to lobby heavily against it, just as alcohol lobbies aginst marijuna..which is stupid, because they are twocompletely different relaxants for different occasions. Like the war on terror, the war on drugs is a war on our Civil Liberties.
Clinton also swings pretty hard right sometimes...like what she said about speaking with the leaders of other countries like North Korea, Iran, etc. First, she made Obama out to be naive for saying he would talk with them, and
now she's saying the same thing.
Finally, she's just got this socker-mom look and mentality. Has she even figured out that 9/11 was a false-flag terrorist plot, aided by someone in the White House? It's the only possile explanaion. Every other time a single plane has even gone off-course, there been a Fighter up there within 15 minutes; yet we're supposed to believe that on this day, planes flew around our skies crshing into buldings for 2 hours without any military response. We got larry Silverstein on T.V. adimitting that WTC 7, which wasn't hit by anything, was demolished, plus several police officers, firemen and reporters displaying knowledge that they knew that building was going to be "pulled." The olny problem withthis is that, to rig a building of that size for wireless demolition takes a minimum of 3 days...which means it was rigged to explode before 9/11..and if it was...Plus, there's the fact that thermate, an unmistakeable, "smoking gun" & chemical fingerprint for thermate demolition, which is also the only thing that would acount for the molten metalfound in the basements of all 3 WTC buildings.