Obama should stay tough on trade

The
general elections are not time for an embrace of the “corporate
globalization” agenda for the Americas

By
Mark Engler                                                                           Read Spanish Version

Speaking
at a February campaign rally, Senator Barack Obama decried “leaders
[who] change their positions on trade with the politics of the
moment.” He argued, “We need a President who will listen to Main
Street — not just Wall Street; a President who will stand with
workers not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.”

These
words hold as true in the general election as they did in the
primaries, when grassroots demands for a trade policy that truly
respects workers’ rights and protects the environment made the
topic a hot campaign issue. Yet today the presumptive Democratic
nominee risks backsliding into a business-as-usual advocacy of
corporate globalization for the hemisphere.

In
a June interview with Fortune magazine,
Obama moved away from his earlier denunciations of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Queried about his comments
characterizing the agreement as “devastating” and “a big
mistake,” Obama said, “sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric
gets overheated and amplified.” The candidate then softened his
past proposal to renegotiate NAFTA, saying that he would merely favor
“opening up a dialogue" with Canada and Mexico.

Obama
also came under criticism this summer from labor advocates for
appointing as his top economic aide Jason Furman, an economist who
has defended “free trade” policy and aligned himself with
economically conservative sectors of the Democratic Party.

These
signs are troubling, because the arguments made during the Democratic
primaries were not only accurate — they are too rarely voiced within
a Washington establishment that seems oblivious to how pro-corporate
economics have adversely affected working people both in this country
and abroad. 

There
is good reason to believe that NAFTA — and the broader agenda it
represents — was indeed a big mistake. President Clinton promised
that the agreement would bolster a trade surplus with Mexico.
However, we now have a trade deficit with the country that soared to
a record $74.3 billion in 2007. He promised that labor and
environmental concerns would be fairly addressed by NAFTA’s “side
agreements.” In truth, those who have inspected
the maquiladora zone
in northern Mexico, such as journalist David Bacon, author of The
Children of NAFTA,
have found wanton environmental and human rights abuses.

These
are among the reasons why 56 percent of respondents in a new
Rasmussen poll from June said that NAFTA needs to be reworked, while
only 16 percent thought it should not be. As the firm reported,
voters “in every age group, income level, range of education and
political category overwhelmingly believe it needs to be
renegotiated.”

The
Bush administration hopes to expand “free trade” economics by
ratifying a trade agreement with Colombia by the end of the year.
During the primaries, Senator Hillary Clinton criticized the deal,
citing Colombia’s “history of suppression and targeted killings
of labor organizers.” Thankfully, Obama has also voiced opposition
to the accord.

In
early July, Senator John McCain traveled to Colombia, a country he
has dubbed “a beacon of hope in [the] region,” to tout the
potential trade deal. In reality, his trip only highlighted the
disaster that is current U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. McCain
was forced to lavish praise on the dubious achievements of the
Colombian government in large part because he has so few other allies
to point to. He would likely have been greeted by mass protests had
he visited virtually any other nation on the South American
continent.

Countries
including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay
have elected progressive leaders in past years and have asserted a
greater level of independence from the White House. They have done so
not because of the machinations of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, as the
Bush administration would like us to believe, but rather because the
“free trade” dictates promoted by Washington in recent decades
have created huge inequalities in their societies and failed to serve
the majority of their peoples.

By
answering the demands of the American people for a new type of trade
policy, a President Obama would have the chance to both attend to the
needs of working people in this country and improve the United
States’ relations with its Southern neighbors. But only by avoiding
a retreat into corporate globalization will the candidate honor his
campaign’s much-needed call for change.

Mark
Engler, a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus, is author
of How
to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation
Books, 2008). He
can be reached via the web site http://www.DemocracyUprising.com