You may remember–this is old history…a year ago so this might seem like eons ago–that during the Democratic 2008 primary campaign, there was a huge surprise: we learned that NAFTA was a bad thing. Who knew? I couldn’t keep track of all those candidates running for office who suddenly had discovered something that a lot of people had been arguing for some time–NAFTA was a bad deal when it was negotiated, signed and implemented–and it still is.
In particular, candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were most vocal about "fixing" NAFTA, though I was skeptical about what they seemed to view as the problem with NAFTA. No matter. Here we are today and the question now is: what will the president do about NAFTA and what will he say about NAFTA as he embarks on his trip to Mexico and Latin America?
Let me start by giving the president kudos. When was the last time you heard a U.S. president say, in talking about U.S. relations with Latin America, "There’s no senior partner or junior partner." But, to the crucial question: what about NAFTA, Mr. President?
The good folks at Public Citizen have the president’s previous commitments outlined:
What exactly did Obama commit to fix?
NAFTA’s EXTREME FOREIGN INVESTOR PRIVILEGES: Obama answered "yes" to the question: "Will you commit to renegotiate NAFTA to eliminate its investor rules that allow private enforcement by foreign investors of these investor privileges in foreign tribunals and that give foreign investors greater rights than are provided by the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by our Supreme Court thus promoting offshoring?" He also said: "While NAFTA gave broad rights to investors, it paid only lip service to the rights of labor and the importance of environmental protection. We should amend NAFTA to make clear that fair laws and regulations written to protect citizens in any of the three countries cannot be overridden simply at the request of foreign investors."
NAFTA’s MISSING LABOR RIGHTS: Obama said: "We’ll add binding obligations to protect the right to collective bargaining and other core labor standards recognized by the International Labor Organization. And I will add enforceable measures to NAFTA, the World Trade Organization (WTO), CAFTA [Central America Free Trade Agreement] and other Free Trade Agreements (FTA’s) currently in effect." http://www.citizen.org/documents/Obama_IFTC.pdf. "The rights of working people should be equal to those of commercial interests and their protections in trade agreements should be the same. Again, this was a fundamental failing in the NAFTA and CAFTA agreements."
NAFTA’S ENVIRONMENT GAP: Obama said: "We must add binding environmental standards so that companies from one country cannot gain an economic advantage by destroying the environment." http://www.citizen.org/documents/TXFairTradeCoalitionObama.pdf. "The protection of the environment is just as critical as the protection of commercial interests and must be subject to the same mechanism for protection."
NAFTA’S PROCUREMENT POLICY MEDDLING: Obama answered "yes" to the question: "Do you support renegotiating trade agreements so they will allow us to use "Buy America" and "Buy Local" procurement policies?"
The rest of the analysis is here.
We await the president’s words and actions now that he has the power to act.
