What Would Obama Do?

As is the case with most presidential campaigns, the race between Barack Obama and John McCain was tight because the candidates’ stances on most issues were so similar. The two men essentially agreed that the nation was not on the right track (with 80 percent of the nation disapproving of the President, it isn’t surprising to agree that our country is off track). While neither was actually willing to detail what they planned to do to fix the problem, candidate Obama did discuss the possibility of reorganizing “free-trade” regimes, NAFTA in particular, so as to favor American workers.

The question remains: What would President Obama do about NAFTA?

The answer, according to Latin Business Chronicle, is probably “not much.” Despite campaign promises that he would advocate “fair-trade” instead of “free-trade,” Obama may not actually bring any change to our crippling trade agreements NAFTA.

Four experts were asked to share their predictions about what an Obama presidency would be like. The general consensus was that NAFTA is so engrained in the fabric of the economy; any alterations could be incredibly difficult to bring about. NAFTA is not a U.S. operation, it is a massive triumvirate agreed upon by the United States, Canada and Mexico. The U.S. may be the world’s “strongest” nation, but it simply cannot make solo decisions regarding multilateral organizations.

NAFTA is often erroneously perceived as the most successful “free-trade” regime in the world. But the volume of trade is not indicative of the success of trade. In terms of increasing national security, quality of life, and the availability of income NAFTA is an abject failure in three separate nations simultaneously.

U.S. companies laid-off or terminated hundreds of thousands of employees and moved their jobs to cheaper grounds in Canada and Mexico. Many of those companies (especially GM in Canada and Ford in Mexico) are now rock bottom and may be forced to lay off their foreign workers. At first we were exchanging well-paid American workers for cheaper foreign counterparts. In many places both are now out of work.

In terms of the security, many believe that opening borders has allowed a flood of undocumented illegal immigrants to enter the United States. This is not to say that undocumented immigrants are bad people, for the most part they are just looking for better opportunities. However, a nation as security obsessed as the United States cannot simply ignore the thousands of miles of unguarded borders to the north and south.

The experts agree that there are major problems associated with and stemming from NAFTA. Unfortunately, they also agree that there is little the United States can do about it. Our government is turning a blind eye to our opposition to NAFTA and continues to collect checks from the corporations that profit off of trade liberalization.

There is significant monetary encouragement available to policymakers who uphold free-trade organizations. There is indeed a very small group of individuals who profit mightily from “free-trade,” and they are willing to pay top dollar to keep the profits rolling in. The wealthy elite are reaping the benefits of NAFTA, while the rest of us witness the rapid deterioration of our manufacturing base and any hope of sustaining ourselves in the future.

Source Latin Business Chronicle:

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