That didn’t stop the Clinton campaign from renewing its attack. Ohio Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, a key Clinton supporter, said Monday it is important for Ohioans to understand that Obama’s economic adviser has indicated to Canada’s leadership that the candidate is not “terribly serious about what he’s saying in Ohio about NAFTA but this is just political rhetoric.”
Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton responded by criticizing Clinton for desperation and for distorting Obama’s record. “The truth is, Sen. Clinton called NAFTA a victory and has switched positions for raw political reasons,” he said. Unions supporting Obama also attacked Clinton for highlighting the memo, and noted that President Bill Clinton’s administration spearheaded NAFTA’s congressional passage.
“There is a tendency to believe that some of these statements are made I think [because of] the campaign,” said Ira Shapiro, a former U.S. trade official in the Clinton administration who is now a lobbyist for Greenberg Traurig.
“But certainly there are a lot of Democrats who want to look at how trade agreements are working.”
Clinton, who has served four more years in the Senate than Obama, has the longer voting record on trade. She voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and against providing fast-track authority to President Bush, a law that makes it easier to negotiate new trade agreements. But Clinton voted in favor of trade deals with Australia, Chile and Singapore.
Seven of the 15 House Democrats who voted for CAFTA have endorsed Clinton for president, compared to three for Obama. At the same time, Clinton endorsers include such free-trade critics as Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who have repeatedly voted against trade deals negotiated by the Bush administration.
Obama last week won the endorsement of one of the Senate’s best-known free-trade critics, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a few weeks after Obama won North Dakota’s Democratic caucus. Dorgan wrote a book criticizing free trade, Take this Job and Ship It, and has sponsored legislation with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) that would tie the negotiation of trade deals to how those agreements affect U.S. job gains and losses.
Brown, whose endorsement could carry huge weight in Ohio, has remained neutral. Polls show Clinton and Obama in a tight race in the Buckeye State.
Obama and Clinton gave very similar answers to the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition ahead of that state’s primary last month. Both said they would renegotiate NAFTA and CAFTA if elected president, and both promised to vote again trade deals with Panama and South Korea if they were presented to Congress.
Both declined to directly answer questions about whether they would seek to eliminate the “fast track” law, under which trade agreements are negotiated by an administration and then given up or down votes by Congress. Both said they opposed granting fast track to Bush, and both said they would work to create a new and improved trade policy. Neither would commit to opposing the “current direction” of the World Trade Organization’s round of negotiations.
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