by José de la Isla
HOUSTON– So tell me again, what’s wrong with this?
The national economy has grown 54 percent since 1993. More than 25 million jobs have been created. Average unemployment dropped from 7.1 percent in 1994 to 5.1 percent in 2007. And U.S. manufacturing averaged nearly 4 percent gains during that period, almost double the previous 14 years.
To hear Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton tell it, this wasn’t good enough and it’s time to consider a “time out” or “renegotiation” over NAFTA, the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and other trade deals.
They were countered by a chorus of voices. One of those that rang loud came from Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutiérrez, who wrote this zinger in the Washington Post: “Taking a ‘timeout’ on trade is akin to standing at a moment when the rest of the world is moving forward.” And he added, “Suffocating our economy isn’t a viable strategy for prosperity. Pretending we’re not part of North America isn’t a prescription for growth.”
Therein lies the trade dividing line not just between parties but the ideologies going into the selection of the next president.
You can almost hear Obama and Clinton lip-syncing Britney Spears saying, “Oops! I did it again.”
Appealing to isolationism seems to be rhetorically just too tempting to withdraw from it entirely. Playing to the crowd is enticing when the audience doesn’t feel it has benefi ted as have others.
In fairness it’s hard to tell people in some parts of the country–the ones on the down side of global trade,” It’s really not all that bad overall.” Ohio has lost about 231,000 jobs in the last ten years.
But wasn’t change-wecan-believe-in Obama’s campaign theme? Change to what? How will the country redevelop by threatening, for starters, commerce with our first and third largest trade partners? What purpose does that serve if the jobs are already gone? Someone is not leveling with us on this one and that’s the problem.
Scape-goating Canada and Mexico might feel good for a while, but that’s not going to bring lost jobs back. A year ago, Hillary Clinton told Time magazine she believed in the “general principles of NAFTA.” She narrowed the problems down to enforcement, noting, “I believe we need tougher enforcement of the trade agreements we already have.” She claimed the Clinton administration had brought more trade enforcement actions in one year than Bush had in six.
Enforcement is a reasonable claim. But a timeout, as she asserted later, is a different matter. Obama’s assertion to renegotiate NAFTA opens up the proverbial can of worms that many experts already shake their head over.
In the fi rst ten months of 2007, trade between the three North American countries was $742.86 billion. Bilateral trade with Mexico was $290.38 billion, resulting in a $6.7 billion surplus in Mexico’s favor. NAFTA has produced a large and growing trade deficit with Mexico. The effects on Ohio and other industrial states have been overwhelmingly negative. In 1993, the year before NAFTA started, the U.S. had a positive $2.4 billion trade balance from Ohio’s cars, trucks, and auto parts manufacturing. By 2007, it had turned into a trade defi cit of $12 billion. The Economist magazine generalizing about NAFTA correctly says, “Trade hurts some people but helps many more.”
The art of the deal isn’t with threats to cut and run where it doesn’t work well but to figure out how to spread the pain and benefi ts and turn it into a winning hand. Telling workers they need to take night school courses for a new career can be helpful but looks like a Band-aid for a heart attack.
Secretary Gutiérrez’s boast about trade is no comfort for those on the short end of those proud trade numbers. But instead of a retreat from trade, this might be a good time to steal some of the Republican’s thunder. The discussion should turn next to accelerating the development of new technologies and how we will transition into a wellpaid, sustainable, green post-industrial, education and training-centered economy. The emphasis is no longer if but how.
[José de la Isla, author of “The Rise of Hispanic Political Power” (Archer Books, 2003) writes a weekly commentary for Hispanic Link. E-mail joseisla3@yahoo.com]. ©2008
