Dems favor Ohio over Texas on trade

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By: Gebe Martinez

SAN ANTONIO — In the final days before what could be make-or-break primaries in Texas and Ohio, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have cast their lot with Ohioans instead of Texans when it comes to the issue of free trade.

As they race back and forth between the two states, Clinton and Obama have pushed aside pro-trade stances that appeal to Texans and instead are arguing fiercely over who has been the toughest critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which blue-collar workers in Ohio blame for major job losses in their state.

Last year, Ohio's unemployment rate averaged 5.6 percent — a full percentage point worse than the national average. Texas' unemployment rate was 4.3 percent — slightly better than the national average.

One reason the candidates might be focused more on Ohio's pain than Texas' pleasure: While Ohio is likely to be a major battleground state in November, Texas hasn't handed its Electoral College votes to a Democrat since 1976, when Jimmy Carter carried the state.

While the candidates say as little as possible about NAFTA in Texas, the trade agreement was a major focus of a debate in Ohio last week. Pressed by moderator Tim Russert, Clinton and Obama both agreed to a major policy shift that could hurt Texas if carried out. They said they would threaten to pull out of NAFTA if that's what it takes to force Mexico and Canada to renegotiate the deal.

The candidates have not exactly stressed that threat in Texas, a state that has the largest inland port in the United States in Laredo and has reaped NAFTA’s benefits. When they talk about trade in Texas, the candidates express their positions in a more nuanced way than they do in Ohio; they note that NAFTA has been good for Texas, but bad for Ohio, and that the pact needs to be “fixed” to be a “win-win” for as many regions across the country as possible.

In Ohio, by contrast, Clinton and Obama strike anti-corporate tones and argue over who has opposed NAFTA most consistently as they try to win the votes of the state's middle-class workers. NAFTA, job lay-offs and the subsequent loss of health insurance for displaced workers have dominated the Democratic primary campaign in Ohio.

Clinton is running a radio spot in Ohio that notes that she has "gone on record saying that NAFTA was a mistake" and that she "wants to change it from free trade to fair trade."

She has also attacked Obama for news reports that had one his advisers privately assuring the Canadian government that the candidate's anti-NAFTA rhetoric was just campaign talk. In a statement, Clinton said it was "somewhat disturbing" that Obama "would say one thing in Ohio" and then say the opposite in a "private signal to a foreign government."

Both the Obama campaign and the Canadian Embassy have said that the news reports are false, and the Obama campaign has protested by sending Clinton a letter from UNITE HERE union leaders in Ohio and the Midwest, testifying to Obama's anti-NAFTA bona fides.

“Just as you know that this story is false and yet repeat it anyway, you also know that Sen. Obama has consistently called for amending the flawed NAFTA agreement passed by the Clinton Administration — which you have called one of the most significant legislative accomplishments of the Clinton years,” the letter stated.

Last weekend, Clinton chided Obama for distributing a campaign leaflet that quoted her as calling NAFTA an economic “boon.” Clinton has not called the trade deal a “boon,” and the Obama camp's claim that she'd done so prompted her to issue the now-famous scolding, “Shame on you, Barack Obama.”

The Obama campaign said that if Clinton had opposed NAFTA from its inception, she should have spoken up sooner.

Watching from a distance, Texans say the anti-NAFTA talk is unfair.

“It is really easy for politicians to pick on NAFTA,” said Jorge G. Gonzalez, an economics professor at San Antonio's Trinity University. Gonzalez argues that the manufacturing job losses in the Midwest, including Ohio, were going to happen sooner or later, with or without NAFTA.

The candidates are “misplacing their concern," he said. "NAFTA is not the cause. The global economy and changing technology is what has caused the problems" in Ohio. Gonzalez said the focus should instead be on worker retraining programs.

That's not what Texans would have heard if they tuned in to last week's Democratic debate in Ohio, where Clinton declared that she'd "opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate it," and vowed to enforce labor and environmental standards and to remove the right of foreign companies to sue the United States over worker protections.

Obama agreed completely.

“I will make sure that we renegotiate in the same way that Sen. Clinton talked about, and I think actually Sen. Clinton’s answer on this one is right," Obama said in Ohio. "I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced."

As president, Bill Clinton overcame the objections of many in his party, including labor unions, to win congressional approval of NAFTA. The pact was considered a hallmark achievement of his eight years in office, but he didn't mention it all during a campaign stop in San Antonio on the night of the Democratic debate here -- despite the fact that the city has clearly benefited from NAFTA.

Obama's surrogates have also walked a tightrope on NAFTA in Texas. In the border town of Del Rio, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the last Democratic nominee, heard the concern of a pro-NAFTA voter that the manufacturing plants across the international bridge might leave for China. Kerry stressed that China needs to be dealt with, not feared.

Kerry, who voted for NAFTA, emphasized afterward that he and Obama are pro-trade. “We are not saying ‘Don’t trade and become protectionists,'" he said. "We are saying, ‘Have smart agreements.’”

Watching from the sidelines is Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee. McCain voted for NAFTA and said in Texas recently that Canada would view a U.S. threat to pull out of the agreement "as a betrayal."

If the United States were to force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA, it is widely expected that those countries would come to the table with their own lists of demands, including one from Mexico that the United States pass a comprehensive immigration bill that would greatly expand the visa programs.

Former Del Rio Mayor Dora Alcala, a Republican and longtime trade advocate, said she was dismayed by the Democratic candidates' posturing on the issue.

NAFTA, she said, "is not what hurts the Ohio River Valley. A better approach would be universal health care for the laid-off workers and looking for other job retraining programs.”

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