The news from Canada on Wednesday and Thursday nights created quite a storm here in the States about Obama’s views on Free trade. I’ll briefly review – then get into his history on the topic.
On Thursday February 28, 2008 We learned from Canadian TV
Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.
The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value*
Obama’s response
Late Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign said the staff member’s warning to Wilson sounded implausible, but did not deny that contact had been made.
“Senator Obama does not make promises he doesn’t intend to keep,” the spokesperson said.
Hillary’s Response
Low-level sources also suggested the Clinton campaign may have given a similar warning to Ottawa, but a Clinton spokesperson flatly denied the claim.
Then Friday, February 29, 2008, We heard an update from Canadian TV
On Thursday, the Canadian embassy in Washington issued a complete denial.
“At no time has any member of a presidential campaign called the Canadian ambassador or any official at the embassy to discuss NAFTA,” it said in a statement.
NOTE they carefully used the words ambassador, and embassy, not the words consulate or Consulate General
Hmmm Interesting parsing.
Obama Camp Response
Earlier Thursday, the Obama campaign insisted that no conversations have taken place with any of its senior ranks and representatives of the Canadian government on the NAFTA issue.
Early Thursday, we are told no conversations took place with a senior member of Obama’s campaign and representatives of the Canadian Government. Now the term Consulate General is a title and the word representative is generically used to mean lower level people, but still with some authority. More parsing and confusion.
On Thursday night, CTV spoke with (Austan) Goolsbee, but he refused to say whether he had such a conversation with the Canadian government office in Chicago. He also said he has been told to direct any questions to the campaign headquarters.
Mr. Goldsbee, Obamas Senior Economic Advisor will neither confirm nor deny whether he had a conversation with the Chicago Canadian Consulate General.
The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.
However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama’s senior economic adviser — Austan Goolsbee — and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago
Late Thursday night, Obama’s campaign issue a flat denial.
But the undaunted and intrepid Canadian reporters (WOW Real Reporters) press on and inform us:
Sources at the highest levels of the Canadian government — who first told CTV that a call was made from the Obama camp — have reconfirmed their position.:
ABC News Report, 2/29/08:
On Thursday, Goolsbee told ABC’s Jennifer Parker that Georges Rioux , Canada ‘s consul general in Chicago, contacted him “at one point to say `hello’ because their office is around the corner.”
Goolsbee refused, however, to deny whether he downplayed Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric.
Both men did say that they know each other
Curioser and Curioser. And none to happy to learn that an OUTRAGEOUS LIE was now to be called CAMPAIGN RHETORIC by DC insiders. As a die-hard Academician, the first thing I do when there are totally opposing statements, is to go digging a bit into the past to see what patterns, if any, exist.
First I needed to know who the heck is Goolsbee. Austan Goolsbee is a neoclassical or Friedman type economist Professor at the University of Chicago Grad School. He calls himself “a centrist, market economist” (Washington Times, July 16, 2007).
Come with me below the fold.
The next thing I wanted to know is which Candidates words and actions were most closely aligned. The best way to do that was to check their ranking on Progressive Issues What I found was that Obama ranked only 43rd, while his mentor, Joe Lieberman was ranked 44th – right up next to Republican votes. Hillary, on the other hand, ranked 29th, right in the middle of the Democrats. Conclusion, Hillary obviously has the more Progressive views, and her words and actions ring true.
What has Obama said, or, more importantly, done regarding free trade?
The New Yorker (May 2004) provides this insight:
On a raw, rainy late-April (2004) day in Springfield, the state capital, Obama, who represents a district on Chicago’s South Side, ducked out of the statehouse for a meeting with labor leaders from southern Illinois at an A.F.L.-C.I.O. building down the street. “This is a kiss-and-make-up session,” he told me as we entered a ground-floor conference room–the state A.F.L.-C.I.O. had supported one of his opponents in the Democratic primary. They represented the building trades–the painters’ union, the carpenters.
He mostly told the union men what they wanted to hear. Then he said, “There’s nobody in this room who doesn’t believe in free trade,” which provoked a small recoil. These men were ardent protectionists. A little later, he said, with conviction, “I want India and China to succeed”–a sentiment not much heard in the outsourcing-battered heartland. He went on, however, to criticize Washington and Wall Street for not looking after American workers.
When William Finnegan, the reporter, later asked him if his comments about free trade might be raising a red flag with those union workers, Obama, in the snide way he uses when not wanting to answer questions or discuss a topic said: “Look, those guys are all wearing Nike shoes and buying Pioneer stereos. They don’t want the borders closed. They just don’t want their communities destroyed.”
So much for being open to other peoples viewpoints, or to even acknowedge their problems.
While Campaigning against Alan Keyes, Obama told a crowd
The United States should continue to work with the World Trade Organization and pursue deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. My opponent’s call for tariffs would spark a trade war. AP reported then that the Illinois senator had spoken of enormous benefits having accrued to his state from NAFTA, while adding that he also called for more aggressive trade protections for US workers. Associated Press 9/8/2004
This last was at first strongly denied by Obama. Then AP’s Calvin Woodward did a FACT CHECK in Febraury 2008. Obama sorta, kinda admitted that in fact he did say what AP had attributed to him, about Trade, in September 2004.
Obama acknowledged in the debate that in his 2004 Illinois Senate campaign, he said — as he puts it now — “NAFTA and other trade deals can be beneficial to the United States.”* His comments, as reported in 2004, were that NAFTA had brought enormous benefits to his state*, but that trade deals needed to be made better for workers
So we know Obama was for NAFTA and Free Trade through 2004.
In September 2005, Obama cast the deciding vote against an amendment to a Commerce Appropriations Bill (S. Amdt 1665, attached to HR 2862), proposed by North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, that would have prohibited US trade negotiators from weakening US laws that provide safeguards from unfair foreign trade practices. The bill would have been a vital tool to combat the outsourcing of jobs to foreign workers and would have ended a common corporate practice known as “pole-vaulting” over regulations, which allows companies doing foreign business to avoid “right to organize,” “minimum wage,” and other worker protections.
We can safely say that in 2005, Obama was definitely for Free Trade without restrictions.
In his book Audacity of Hope, released in October 2006, Obama wrote:
“Like [Clinton Treasury Secretary] Bob Rubin, I am optimistic about…the ability of U.S. workers to compete in a free trade environment — but only if we distribute the costs and benefits of globalization more fairly across the population,”
Again, in 2006, Mr. Obama seems to be a Free Trade Advocate.
The night before the January 8, 2008 Primary, Obama told a crowd in Lebanon NH
I believe in the Free Market. I believe in Capitalism. I believe in Free Trade. I am not worried about us being able to compete anywhere on earth with American workers
On February 2, 2008, The Chicago Tribune provides FACTS as to the plight of the Galesberg Il Maytag workers, whose stories Obama uses in railing against corporations that use trade pacts to replace well-paid union workers with low-cost foreign ones in his stump speech:
* Lester Crown was one of the Maytag’s directors and biggest investors, whose family raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaigns since 2003. Lester’s son, James, is the Illinois finance chairman of Obama’s presidential campaign.
- Obama gave one of his rousing speeches of support for the Maytag workers, expressing solidarity, and did NOTHING else.
- 1,600 Maytag workers were put out of work, and their jobs were shipped to Mexico.
- What rankles is what Obama did not do even as he expressed solidarity four years ago with workers mounting a desperate fight to save their jobs.*
It seems R. Thomas, Beffenbarger, international President of the Machinists union, has 1,600 very good reasons to be angry with Senator Obama, his brutal betrayal of the Illinois workers, his eloquent words, and his broken promises.
And from an interview with KITV in Houston, Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s Top Economic Advisor, stated:
Barack Obama supports multi-lateral trade deals, does not view himself as “protectionist” and does not believe the overall corporate tax rate should rise, one of his top economic advisers said.
However, Austan Goolsbee, a key economic official in the Illinois senator’s inner circle, told Reuters that he believed Obama does want oil and gas companies and private equity firms to pay higher taxes.
“As an overall matter do corporate rates need to go up? No,” Goolsbee said in an interview on Thursday.
Jake Tapper , of ABC News informs us that these diametrically opposing views are Mr. Obama’s NEW definition for consistency
Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said that “the news reports on Obama’s position on NAFTA are inaccurate and in no way represent Sen. Obama’s consistent position on trade
Why is NAFTA so critical to Ohio Voters? This February 20th article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer spells it out very clearly:
The more than 209,000 non-farm jobs Ohio lost from 2000 to 2007 comprised the largest proportionate decline in employment since the end of the Great Depression, a national manufacturing trade group said Wednesday.”
“Employment dropped by 3.7 percent, the biggest seven-year drop since the period starting in 1939, near the end of the Depression and including the years the U.S. military absorbed millions of American workers to fight World War II
Yesterday Senator Clinton’s campaign rightfully released a statement, after learning that Senator Obama’s top economic advisor (Austan Goolsbee) admitted to meeting with the Canadian consul general but has refused to deny that he discussed NAFTA in this meeting asking a few vital questions:
Now that it is clear that this meeting occurred, what was discussed? Did Austan Goolsbee or any Obama official downplay Senator Obama’s anti-NAFTA rhetoric to Canadian officials? And, Why have they have been trying to give the impression that no conversation ever occurred?
The historical record clearly indicates that Obama is Pro NAFTA and Free Trade*. Despite the Hypocisty and duplicity, Obama had the AUDACITY to appear on Cleveland’s WKYC TV on Thursday, February 28th, and outright lie on air to direct questions posed by their political correspondent, Tom Beres.
Obama’s campaign rhetoric is a deliberate attempt to mislead Ohio voters. Working people in Ohio will do well to pay close attention to this comment in a February 21st article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal
Until his campaign reached the Midwest, Mr. Obama sounded like a former president “Like (Treasury Secretary) Bob Rubin, I am optimistic about…the ability of U.S. workers to compete in a free trade environment — but only if we distribute the costs and benefits of globalization more fairly across the population,” He wrote in his 2006 book. (Audacity of Hope). The big-company chief executives, who belong to the Business Roundtable, say almost the same thing.
Stated even more strongly are these words from Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) regarding Obama’s Double Talk:
Senator Barack Obama faces a huge credibility gap on NAFTA. In a nationally televised debate, he told Ohioans he would renegotiate the treaty. But just weeks earlier, his senior economic adviser signaled to a foreign government that the Senator’s anti-NAFTA stance would be just ‘campaign rhetoric.” WASHINGTON, Feb. 29 /PRNewswire- USNewswire
Ohio voters ought to be concerned that Obama would betray them, in the same cavalier manner he betrayed the Maytag workers in Galesberg, Il. Senator Obama needs to apologize to Ohio Voters for his shameful duplicity, and apologize profusely for sending them this slanderous flyer filled with egregious untruths. And, Ohio voters need to let Senator Obama that YES, words do matter and they should speak the truth, and not outright lies.
H/T to Susan Hu, Alegre, LindaSFNM, Scan, and everyone else whose hard work is helping bring this situation to light. Their efforts make research an easier task.
As always, your comments are welcome and appreciated
