In the last debate, we can only pray, of the Democratic contest, the "N" word reared its ugly face. NO! Not that "N"! I mean NAFTA. Both Clinton and Obama have little about NAFTA on their websites, at least as of yesterday and they both seems to want to reform the agreement.
The North American Free Trade Agreement began in 1994 and was said to be the answer to the US economic problems. Public Citizen offers these synopses of the agreement.
NAFTA opponents - including labor, environmental, consumer and religious groups - argued that NAFTA would launch a race-to-the-bottom in wages, destroy hundreds of thousands of good U.S. jobs, undermine democratic control of domestic policy-making and threaten health, environmental and food safety standards.
NAFTA promoters - including many of the world’s largest corporations - promised it would create hundreds of thousands of new high-wage U.S. jobs, raise living standards in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, improve environmental conditions and transform Mexico from a poor developing country into a booming new market for U.S. exports.
So far the opponents have been more accurate than the promoters. The opponents did not foresee the rise in illegals crossing the border looking for jobs that did not show up with NAFTA. And the promise of hundreds of thousands of jobs that it would create...fell a bit short. Absolutely NOTHING in the promises of the promoters has become reality. The only thing that NAFTA has done is create a labor problem in the US and to make the corporations, the real benefactors of the agreement, more money, while the workers in the US have suffered and suffered long with the implementation of the agreement.
So why do the Dem candidates support NAFTA? Clinton was for it before she was against it. And Obama is against it, but thinks it can be reformed to be more equitable for all. The problem is that reform accomplishes little. Why? Reforms are usually short lived and changed by the next administration. Seldom do reforms change anything at all. Reform is just a feel good fix to give the appearance of success.
NAFTA has all the earmarks of a program from the DLC and their globalization strategy. The only way to save jobs and protect the workers in the US is to flush the agreement down the first available toilet and start over. Remember: to try and reform NAFTA is just a feel good fix to give the appearance of success. With reform little will actually change, just an illusion of change.