Could somebody please explain to me

[Ken Burch]

Why the LAST Democratic president didn't fight anywhere near as hard for healthcare reform as he did to get NAFTA.

And is there anybody here who still thinks it's a GOOD thing that that last Democratic president worked for NAFTA and against the American working class?

[Skittles]

1. I don't think Clinton realized the future repercussions of NAFTA

and they did try for healthcare reform but the public was not as ready for it back then as it is now

[Ken Burch]

2. You'd have thought that the opposition of every union in the country

might have given him a clue as to who NAFTA would screw over.

And the thing is, it didn't even help the "open shop" South.

[Skittles]

4. alright so it is done

what's being done to undo it?

[Ken Burch]

7. At this point, not enough

the "anti-globalization" movement of the late 90's was a start, but was sidetracked by 9/11. We ALL need to be building a trade justice movement, something that is based on the notion that the the passage of goods and services from one country to another should not be driven by exploitation.

The political class will never take the lead on that. They can only be FORCED to create a humane and socially just model of international by US, working from below. We'll need new tactics, new approaches, and new forms of critical thinking.

I don't have the answer to how we get to all that, but that's what's needed.

[Skittles]

9. you are correct

I think a lot of the political class does not understand what it's like out here; it's not like they are in danger of being outsourced :mad:

[yurbud]

3. Clinton was a DLC poster child. He thought if he did that for corporate America, they would shower

Democrats with money.

They did, but not as much as they did the Republicans, who are unconstrained by voters who actually know anything about economics, trade, or foreign policy.

[barb162]

5. He didn't have to fight to get NAFTA. Every corporation

wanted it.

[Oregone]

6. Spot on

[sandnsea]

8. He did, and I'm not a huge Clinton fan

They tried. I honestly think the thing was just too convoluted. It was a bunch of HMO's, as far as I could tell.

NAFTA was easy actually. About 1/2 of Dems and all of Repubs supported it. Unemployment was about what it is now. Economy was in the doldrums. People were ready to try new things.

They should have called it the North American Cheap Labor Agreement.

[Skip Intro]

10. Wouldn't be as close as we are now without the efforts of Bill & Hillary Clinton in the early 90's.

[lapfog_1]

11. See the West Wing - Season 2 Episode 16

"SOMEBODY'S GOING TO EMERGENCY,SOMEBODY'S GOING TO JAIL" aka "Big Block of Cheese Day".

While a contemptuous Toby (Richard Schiff) is assigned to meet with a noisy, unruly mob protesting the World Trade Organization...

Toby explains why the protesters are wrong to a policewoman assigned to protect him at the meeting...

Basically he says "World Peace" because you don't go to war with your trading partner.

That plus the conventional wisdom of the "liberal elite" was that WTO and NAFTA would send dirty manufacturing jobs to places that wouldn't mind doing them while American workers would be retrained to work new clean industry jobs for the information age.

Much like the rest of the crap they started believing (like corporate fundamentals are not related to the stock price of that company, and than web business would make brick and mortar business die off, etc) they were all wrong.

Of course we can and will go to war with our trading partners. The major reason that Japan attacked the US in WWII was a trade dispute. And the information economy FOLLOWS the industrial economy. And we needed those manufacturing jobs. And the information jobs got outsourced too (as will the management eventually). And the smug liberals of that time (mid nineties) were arrogant and stupid.

Anyway, those were the justifications for the DLC'ers to promote all the free trade crap. They should have been a little bit suspicious when big corporate America just loved the idea too. But NOOOO.

[Ken Burch]

12. Thanks for that.

n/t.

[Hippo_Tron]

15. Clinton believed a lot of classical liberal international relations theory

And amongst the tenets of that theory is the idea that free trade stops wars, as Toby points out. Another one is that Democracies don't go to war with each other.

Personally my view on the "free trade leads to peace" theory is that yes it does sometimes. I think, for example, that our trading relationship with China makes it more costly for them to try and test our commitment to defend Taiwan and likewise makes it more difficult for us to challenge them on Tibet.

But as a general proposition I'm not convinced that free trade prevents states from going to war with each other.

[lapfog_1]

16. It's worse than that.

When you start messing with another persons income, they become very angry with you.

If you are involved as trading partners, and one party or another starts to feel like the partnership is benefiting one partner exclusively, the aggrieved party might try to rectify the imbalance through tariffs or import restrictions, thus messing with the other party's income, war often follows.

[Hippo_Tron]

13. He fought pretty damn hard to get health care actually

As for NAFTA, it didn't take a whole lot of fighting. The Republicans provided half the votes and the President can pretty easily get half of his own party to vote for something. Things get done pretty easily when there is bipartisan support for them.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

14. False. He fought harder for healthcare

NAFTA wasn't nearly as difficult, being broadly supported by the party in control of congress at the time.

Arguing with Ross Perot was not heavy-lifting.

[salguine]

17. Because Clinton was a hard-core corporatist. NAFTA benefited corporations, whereas

healthcare would only have benefited people.

[grantcart]

18. Many of the trade concessions that people attribute to NAFTA (and other multilateral agreements)

were in fact already part of the trade policy and allowed countries liberal access to the US market with little or no tariff.

In many cases NAFTA (and other multilateral trade agreements) actually increased market access to American companies to foreign markets and simply brought conformity to other bilateral trade agreements that preceded the multilateral approach.

Without NAFTA and WTO agreements much of our higher tech exports, like civilian aircraft production, would continue to suffer from unequal bilateral agreements while foreign countries would still have liberal access to our markets.

Your objection to liberal free trade agreements that allow wide access to the US markets is better aimed at the myriad bilateral agreements that preceded the multilateral approach, and not NAFTA or other multilateral approaches.