12 March 2008
Our Sovereignty is at Stake
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: Constitution in Peril .
McCain scolds Obama, Clinton over NAFTA
ST. LOUIS - Sen. John McCain said Tuesday that proposals by Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to use pressure tactics to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement could undermine U.S. trade relationships with other nations.
I’ll be making intermittent comments about this article. First, remember that only 16% of Americans approve of NAFTA. It would be far less than that if they understood everything in that agreement.
“We’ve got to stop this protectionist, bashing,” the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting told a town hall meeting at Savvis Inc., an information technology company.
The Founding Fathers were protectionists but free trade has been passed off on the Republicans as a crucial part of our platform even though it is not inline with the Constitution. It wouldn’t be so bad if the playing field was level but the US is always expected to take the short end of the stick.
McCain said his potential Democratic opponents were wrong to threaten pulling out of NAFTA to force Canada and Mexico to negotiate more protections for workers and the environment in the agreement.
An example of protections we need is that with NAFTA, Mexican truckers are supposed to be allowed to drive on our roads without weight limits or driving time limits. We need to protect our truckers from this implementation and to protect our infrastructure and the safety of other drivers.
If that threat is made, McCain asked, “What are the other countries in the world going to think about the agreements we’ve negotiated with them?”
That we will no longer participate in the economic rape of our country.
In a debate in Cleveland before the March 4 primary in Ohio, where NAFTA is blamed for the loss of industrial jobs, both Democratic presidential contenders endorsed threatening to pull out of NAFTA…
Instead, McCain said, “We’ve got to do a lot better job of taking care of those workers who have been displaced.”
He said the host for the meeting, Savvis, is providing the kind of jobs crucial to the transition from a Rust Belt industrial economy to an intellectual economy.
In difficult times of war, or economic downturns, to not have manufacturing and the right kind of farming on our soil is a disaster. Intellectual jobs will not feed the people. Other countries turn protectionist at times like this just like Russian is doing now and others are beginning to follow suit.
“We’re in an informational-technological revolution,” McCain said. “And they need trained and educated workers. That is vital to giving Americans another chance.”
He said he intended to use junior colleges to lead the way in retraining displaced workers for new technology jobs. “As president, my highest priority will be to provide the educational and training programs so those who have lost their job can come and apply for a job here,” McCain said.
“We know that Americans are hurting; we know that these are difficult times,” McCain said citing rising home foreclosures and the loss of manufacturing jobs, particularly in the Midwest. Protectionism and isolationism are not the answer, he said.
Labels to scare us into getting in line with trade agreements that favor everyone but the United States.
“The fundamentals of our economy are still strong” and the U.S. has gotten through similar economic difficulties in the past, he added.
No, the fundamentals of our economy have weakened with jobs being lost off-shore and our strong point being a banking system based on a weakening dollar. A nation in such extreme debt with citizens who are personally in debt does not create long term wealth.
12 Comments so far...
Cavetrollhead Says:
12 March 2008 at 1:39 am.
How did this country ever prosper without free trade? I mean since Free trade is the most important consideration, how did we ever become the worlds most powerful economy without it?
Great point about Manufacturing. Those auto plants and steel mills and so on helped win WWII didn’t they?
I like this one Joy. Nice job. We are really bowing to free trade. When did free trade become holy?
Joy Bischoff Says:
12 March 2008 at 2:31 am.
Wikipedia says this about free trade:
“Governments often call managed international trade agreements “free trade”, and although this is not really free trade, such treaties may result in freer trade.”
So trade agreements that hurt our work force but line pockets of big international business is shoved down our throats but it isn’t actually free trade, it is an unbalanced treaty.
Alexander Hamilton and the founders were against the idea of free trade and we became the most protectionist nation in the world. That does not mean we don’t want trade, we just want to protect American jobs while trading. Abraham Lincoln was fiercely against free trade.
Here is more from Wikipedia and this answers your question, Cave:
“President William McKinley stated the United States’ stance under the Republican Party (which won every election for President until 1912, except the two non-consecutive terms of Grover Cleveland) as thus:
“Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral…. Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefitting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, ‘Buy where you can buy the cheapest’…. Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: ‘Buy where you can pay the easiest.’ And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.”[2]
The tariff and support of protection to support the growth of infrastructure and industrialization of the nation became a leading tenet of the Republican Party thereafter until the Eisenhower administration and the onset of the Cold War.”
Hank Says:
12 March 2008 at 2:35 am.
Why does anyone want free trade then?
Joy Bischoff Says:
12 March 2008 at 2:40 am.
To grease the skids for cheap labor and globalization. Riches and power for those in charge. This nation became powerful and rich on protectionism which in a very Orwellian way has become a dirty word that frightens us.
Hank Says:
12 March 2008 at 2:46 am.
Gotcha. More of that political correctness you were talking about that herds us to where they want us to go. But republicans are waking up.
Joy Bischoff Says:
12 March 2008 at 2:51 am.
bingo
SGS Says:
12 March 2008 at 10:21 am.
Hank, it’s not Republicans as much as it’s conservatives that are waking up 
McCain won the party’s nomination, and that, after he went all the way for Iraqi War, for illegal immigrants, for stomping on our right to speech (Fiengold-McCain law), and more, showing what kind of people within the party that have voted for him.
SGS Says:
12 March 2008 at 10:24 am.
Cave, do you know that our Federal Government was almost exclusively funded by the tariffs until, I think, 1910s (maybe 1930s when New Deal was implemented). Yes, the Federal Government has absolutely nothing to do with trading except to tax the imports and exports. The rest was entirely up to businesses themselves. It’s not so nowadays 
E.E. Says:
12 March 2008 at 10:33 am.
I just learned a lot. I didn’t know a lot of this but now I am wondering how republicans have been so blind about all of this. I guess we just didn’t know. It looks like getting back to what our founders knew is really the key to it all. They are seeming smarter to me all the time. My loyalty is to the Constitution and my respect is for the founders and those who understand the process they went through to determine political truth.
SGS Says:
12 March 2008 at 12:56 pm.
E.E I do not know why the general Republican voters are blind, but the Republican insiders and leaders definitely are not. They are getting their share with this so-called free-trade through contributions, favors, supports, back-door deals and more.
This is why I am a conservative first, and Republican second. The Republican party does not stand for what Constitution stands for anymore. Because it has moved toward left, it has left me behind. That has allowed the liberal media to label me extremist for not moving leftish with the party itself. But, making the Federal Government bigger is not the solution we need for many of our issues; it will only make them worse. This is why I am not bungling.
Joy Bischoff Says:
12 March 2008 at 1:04 pm.
Well said.
Pickles Says:
12 March 2008 at 1:53 pm.
I’m not totally sold on being republican but if we can work to pull them back right maybe that’s good. My parents were sold on the free trade thing but we’ve talked and they are looking at it different now.
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