Saturday, March 31, 2007

Is Hillary a Fair Trader?

I saw this story on Political Wire saying that Hillary Clinton has split ways with her husband, Bill, on the issue of trade. Bill Clinton was a leading advocate of so-called Free Trade by approving NAFTA when he was in office and fighting to include China into the WTO.

From Bloomberg News...

Senator Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, wonders why the North American Free Trade Agreement is ``continuing to drive hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people from Mexico into our country,'' she said in an interview. ``We just can't keep doing what we did in the 20th century.''

Somewhere along the Clintons' ``bridge to the 21st century'' -- their 1996 campaign mantra -- they parted ways on trade. Bill was a champion of the global economy and prodded Congress to approve Nafta in 1993 and China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Hillary, 59, says new deals may need to be put on hold pending a review -- an idea she calls ``a little timeout.''

Hillary isn't near the top of my list of candidates, but this is good news to hear. It will be interesting to see where Edwards, Obama, Richardson, Dodd, and Biden come out on this issue.

1 comment:

T.M. Lindsey said...

Sounds like Hillary's political barometer is shifting and pointing away from NAFTA. Her statemments look more calculating than coming out in support of Fair Trade, but rather, a means of laying groundwork on immigration.

The failures and shortcomings of NAFTA have been obvious since first implemented, even by common voters such as myself. To come to this realization now adds only feeds my underlying suspicions of...well,just about anything Hillary says