Trailhead: A campaign blog.

Don't Sweat NAFTA, Eh?

Did someone from Barack Obama’s campaign call an official from the Canadian Embassy and tell them that the senator’s opposition to NAFTA is just “rhetoric,” as CTV reported? No, according to both the campaign and the embassy. But whether or not someone made the call, the real question is: Would it even have been necessary?

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe flatly denied the original story. But when more details emerged—economic adviser Austan Goolsbee may have placed the calls to a Canadian consulate in Chicago—the campaign stopped responding head-on. Today on a conference call, a reporter asked if Goolsbee had ever phoned a Canadian official in Chicago to discuss NAFTA. Plouffe reverted to the blanket denial that “the story is just not true. … Our guy and the Canadian ambassador denied this. It’s just not true.”

Fine, innocent until proven otherwise. But here’s the problem: Goolsbee didn’t need to make the call. Canada already knew that the candidates' new tough-on-NAFTA rhetoric was political, not permanent. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said as much. “If a future president actually did want to open up NAFTA, which I highly doubt, then Canada would obviously have some things we would want to discuss,” Harper said recently. From CTV:

But Harper also noted that assertions made in the heat of political campaigns should be taken with a grain of salt.

Indeed, the whole NAFTA pile-on has been conducted with a wink and a nod. When Tim Russert pressed Clinton during Tuesday’s debate, she said she would withdraw from NAFTA—unless we renegotiated it. Obama agreed. But “renegotiation” doesn’t mean “overhaul.” When asked for specifics, both candidates say they would impose labor and environmental standards. But they don’t say they would scrap the system that currently benefits farmers in Obama’s home state of Illinois and drives Ohio’s manufacturing jobs overseas. The promise on Obama’s Web site to “amend” NAFTA is hardly abolitionist: “Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.” For NAFTA haters, that’s weak consolation.

Whether or not Goolsbee placed a phone call, the reassurance is implicit: We’re not going to have a president who aggressively resists free trade and brings jobs back from overseas. (A subject on which McCain has been upfront.) They may well try to humanize the agreements and make them more palatable to American workers. But it’s difficult to see the candidates living up to their current rhetoric, and Canada is certainly OK with that.

A NAFTA Truce?

With a debate in Ohio tomorrow and a primary there a week from now, the Clinton and Obama campaigns have been struggling to distance themselves from NAFTA—and to portray the other as NAFTA’s best friend. But the fact is, both candidates have said good things about the free-trade agreement in the past, and both now condemn it. They should really save themselves the oxygen and declare a truce.

To hear Obama tell it, Clinton’s original sin lies in her husband’s administration, under which NAFTA passed. Obama also cites a quote from Hillary in 2004, when she said, “I think, on balance, NAFTA has been good for New York and America.” An Obama mailer distributed in Ohio claimed that Clinton had said NAFTA was a “boon” to the economy, but it turns out that was Newsday’s characterization of Clinton’s stance—not her own word. (Even Newsday says Obama's comments are a misrepresentation.) Her real position seems to be ambivalence—understandably, given that NAFTA has benefited many and hurt many others—but Obama has been quick to exploit it.

Clinton has similar dirt on Obama. During his 2004 Senate campaign, Obama attended an event in rural Shirley, Ill., where he spoke to 100 members of the Illinois Farm Bureau—a group that had decidedly benefited from NAFTA, since it opened up markets for the farmers' grain. According to an account of the event by the Decatur Herald & Review, “Obama said the United States benefits enormously from exports under the WTO and NAFTA.” The Associate Press confirms this account. So far, so bad.

But the Herald piece goes on: “He said, at the same time, there must be recognition that the global economy has shifted, and the United States is no longer the dominant economy. ‘We have competition in world trade,’ Obama said. ‘When China devalues its currency 40 percent, we need to bring a complaint before the WTO just as other nations complain about us. If we are to be competitive over the long term, we need free trade but also fair trade.’ ”

In other words, Obama’s main point was that the country has to be more aggressive about protecting American interests. If anything, the first part about the United States benefiting enormously was a hedge—a statement meant to lessen the blow of what he was about to say. That doesn’t mean he didn’t say it. It just means it was part of a larger point that the United States can’t rely on free markets to solve all its problems. 

Obama boasts about speaking truth to people who don’t want to hear it. He prides himself on lecturing automakers about fuel-efficiency standards, telling leaders in the Cuban community that we should relax travel restrictions, and talking up merit-based pay in front of teachers. But the Shirley, Ill., instance seems more complicated. He clearly couldn’t say, “NAFTA sucks,” but he seems to err on the side of accommodating farmers—and then says something different to workers losing their manufacturing jobs.

In the world of political campaigns, there are no gray zones. You’re either for a policy or against it. Nuance reads as evasion. Adjustment reads as flip-flopping. Given this, both Clinton and Obama would benefit from dropping the NAFTA issue. Both candidates have complex positions rooted in ambivalence. Neither one’s opposition research is much stronger than the other’s. They can spend the next week bloodying each other with allegations about past statements, but it’s not an argument either person is going to win. There’s plenty worth debating about the future —Obama’s protectionist “Patriot Employers” plan, for example, or the creation of “green collar” jobs. But quibbling over ancient NAFTA statements isn’t benefiting anyone. Save yourselves the trouble. Declare a truce.