Was Perot right?
“Ross Perot was fiercely against NAFTA. Knowing what we know now, was Ross Perot right?”That’s what CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Hillary Clinton at last week’s Democratic presidential debate. It was a straightforward query about a Clinton administration trade policy that polls show the public now hates, and it was appropriately directed to a candidate who has previously praised NAFTA.
In response, Clinton stumbled. First she laughed at Perot, then she joked that “all I can remember from that is a bunch of charts,” and then she claimed the whole NAFTA debate “is a vague memory.” The behavior showed how politically tone deaf some Democratic leaders are.
To refresh Clinton’s “vague memory,” let’s recall that Perot’s anti-NAFTA presidential campaign in 1992 won 19 percent of the presidential vote - the highest total for any third-party candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. That included huge tallies in closely divided regions like the Rocky Mountain West, which Democrats say they need to win in the upcoming election.
A Democrat laughing at Perot on national television is a big mistake. Simply put, it risks alienating the roughly 20 million people who cast their votes for the Texas businessman.
But Clinton’s flippant comments and feigned memory lapse about NAFTA were the bigger mistakes in that they insulted the millions of Americans (Perot voters or otherwise) harmed by the trade pact. These are people who have seen their jobs outsourced and paychecks slashed thanks to a trade policy forcing them into a wage-cutting war with oppressed foreign workers.
Why is Clinton desperate to avoid discussing NAFTA? Because she and other congressional Democrats are currently pushing a Peru Free Trade Agreement at the behest of their corporate campaign contributors - an agreement expanding the unpopular NAFTA model. When pressed, Clinton claims she is for a “timeout” from such trade deals - but, as her husband might say, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is, because she simultaneously supports the NAFTA expansion.
Of course, this deviousness is precisely why it is worth asking about Perot’s predictions: to make sure America has an informed and honest discussion about impending new trade policies before they are enacted.
And so without further ado, let’s answer the question Clinton ducked: Was Ross Perot right?
In 1993, the Clinton White House and an army of corporate lobbyists were selling NAFTA as a way to aid Mexican and American workers. Perot, on the other hand, was predicting that because the deal included no basic labor standards, it would preserve a huge “wage differential between the United States and Mexico” that would result in “the giant sucking sound” of American jobs heading south of the border. Corporations, he said, would “close the factories in the U.S. [and] move the factories to Mexico [to] take advantage of the cheap labor.”
The historical record is clear. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports, “Real wages for most Mexicans today are lower than when NAFTA took effect.” Post-NAFTA, companies looking to exploit those low wages relocated factories to Mexico. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the net effect of NAFTA was the elimination of 1 million American jobs.
Score one for Perot.
What about immigration? In 1993, the Clinton administration pitched NAFTA as “the best hope for reducing illegal immigration.” Perot, by contrast, said that after NAFTA depressed Mexican wages, many Mexicans “out of economic necessity” would “consider illegally immigrating into the U.S.”
“In short,” he wrote, “NAFTA has the potential to increase illegal immigration, not decrease it.”
Again, the historical record tells the story. As NAFTA helped drive millions of Mexicans into poverty, the New York Times reports that “Mexican migration to the United States has risen to 500,000 a year from less than 400,000 in the early 1990s, before NAFTA,” with a huge chunk of that increase coming from illegal immigration.
Score another one for Perot.
Clinton may continue to laugh at Perot and plead amnesia when asked about trade policy. And sure, she and her fellow Democrats in Washington can expand NAFTA and ignore the public’s desire for reform. But these politicians shouldn’t be surprised if that one other Perot prediction comes true again - the one accurately predicting that Democrats would lose the next national election if they sold America out and passed NAFTA.
Foreshadowing that historic Democratic loss in 1994, he warned, “We’ll remember in November.”
Yes, indeed, Ross. America probably will.
David Sirota’s daily blog can be found at www.credoaction.com/sirota.
© The San Francisco Chronicle
Perot WAS right. Now Dennis Kucinich is right also. As he said, once elected, his first act will be to end this destructive program (fostered by that Clinton guy).
See, Hillary actually knows perfectly well that NAFTA and the PFTA modelled on NAFTA is bad policy and a mistake. But she brilliantly finessed the question to reassure her corporate supporters that she appreciates the positive effects of these plans on the corporate bottom-line.
This way, her campaign cannily ensures that the corporate donations keep flowing to fund her Iowa primary campaign and increase her momentum during the primary cycle.
But when she’s elected, she’ll govern from the center-left, because she’ll have the power of a mandate and a Congressional supermajority in both houses!
OK, I just made all that up. I’m just trying on the “inside politics” approach to see if it sounds wise, shrewd, and wonderfully pragmatic when I say it. Unfortunately, it still sounds like a bunch of crap.
NAFTA was fostered by the first Bush; he couldn’t get it passed. However, Clinton was elected, in part, because he promised to block NAFTA.
As we now know, he did just the opposite. And one reason a sectir of the oligarchy backed Clinton was because they knew he could be trusted to get NAFTA passed.
Moreover, Clinton also successfully implemented the right-wing, Republican “Welfare Reform” package…a policy that they had been pushing for years.
If the US oligarchy can’t successfully pass major laws that benefit them, a section of it will back the whatever political party will be successful.
Of course, when disaster stricks -as with 9/11, the right-wing sector of the oligarchy will take full advantage. And they know the Republican Party is much less hesitant in so doing as compared to the Democrats (whom prefer a more incremental approach).
Fear-mongering has always been the Republican Party’s modus operendi. The Democrats usually crumble when hit with a major Republican fear campaign. They can’t sell out fast enough.
Long ago, the Democrats lost an organized political base on which to fall back if attacked. (The beginning of this loss emerged with the rise of the post-war Red Scare.)
Instead, most of them fear the loss of campaign contributions from well-heeled plutocrats.
I’m pretty sure that when NAFTA was being discussed either Commondreams didn’t exist or I unfortunately didn’t know about it. And I remember trying to make sense of that policy. already, the voice of public debate was hampered, mot heard above a whimper.
NAFTA and its’ counsins are all plans to keep poor workers poor.
And anyone who thinks of themselves as progressive should be pushing Hillary hard on this one.
First the public has to get rid of the corporate hacks ruining our way of life.
Then the public needs to reform our election system. Public financing would help.
Yeah, lets push Hillary……right out the door! Vote me for KUCINICH 2008 I also voted for Ross. Texrey
Hilary is a liar and a hypocrite.
This is what you get when you vote for the lesser of two evils.
I think Hillary despises the working class. She’s certainly willing to mistreat them. And what a performance. Treating NAFTA like a joke, then saying she doesn’t really remember much about it. Does she think we’re idiots? She sounds like Gonzales.
NAFTA doesn’t seem to have done much either way. U.S. jobs have flown to China and India rather than Mexico. Mexicans are poorer than ever and moving north of the border to find work in the U.S.
I’m all for free trade if we get our trading partners to adhere to our environmental, labor and safety standards, and have the WTO enforce them.
Does anyone else remember Bill Clinton crowing that a vote for him was a vote for Hillary as co-president?
And now that co-president has a vague memory about NAFTA, the anti-worker policy she and her co-president fast-tracked through Congress (and let’s not forget GATT and the FTAA that co-prez Bill supported). The same trade policy Bush I couldn’t get passed. The same darling of big biz that Ross Perot and Jerry Brown and others on the Left warned about.
I’d like to give Hillary a push alright.
she’s a lying bitch
To answer this question, you also have to consider what would have happened without a NAFTA policy. Technological change is probably a big factor with or without NAFTA.
Sirota says the Democrats should behave better on trade and labor issues or they may lose the next election.
But what evidence is there that the Democrats want to win elections?
In 9th grade Civics we are told the two parties contest for power and perks by winning elections. But with both parties corrupt corporate fronts, it doesn’t much matter which party wins. And none of the top Democrats will starve if they remain out of power.
I see the role of the Democrats to offer token resistance and then roll over. Like TV wrasslin.
And I think I can make an interesting circumstantial case that the Ds threw the 2000 election.
HERE, HERE MR. SIROTA!!!
“Why is Clinton desperate to avoid discussing NAFTA? Because she and other congressional Democrats are currently pushing a Peru Free Trade Agreement at the behest of their corporate campaign contributors - an agreement expanding the unpopular NAFTA model.”
Our government has become so arrogant that is believes it can act however it wishes rather or not the American citizens agree with their action. I believe the majority of Americans feel NAFTA and virtually all of our so-called trade agreements are destroying our economy and the American middle class.
Our government’s refusal to see this and begin to act in the best interest of our country is deplorable. We should start using to power of the ballot to replace every member of the House of Representatives every two years until they (and all branches of government) wake up and remember this is a government for the people and by the people.
After Bush failed to push through NAFTA, Clinton was installed by the corporate state as a sort of populist good old boy who could get away with promoting corporate interests. Neither the Clinton nor the Bush family give a damn about anything but their own greedhead ambitions.
Borussky:
“And I think I can make an interesting circumstantial case that the Ds threw the 2000 election.”
I’d like to hear your case…..
Hillary, your lips are moving and YOU’RE LYING:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npbftGodGGI
As though men like Gravel and Kucinich get fair opportunities to challenge Clinton head-on at any national debate.
Last debate Obama gets 10 minutes to distinguish himself from Clinton, and the best he can do is curdle out his answers in a different mealy-mouthed way. His politics of hope are a euphemism for Clintonian triangulation.
Not only was Ross Perot right, but he was even stronger than that 19% showing he ended up getting, as those remarks he made when he temporarily dropped out of the race cost him dearly, because he was finishing first in the polls nationally and in critical California before he dropped at 40% or maybe better, and the odds are without those crazy sounding comments he made about Poppy trying to sabotage his daughter’s wedding that Perot may well have made it to the White House. With the way things are now I’d have to say sentiment against any of these trade agreements is even stronger than it was then. Just tell the Democrats they can look forward to a good whipping if HRC is their standard bearer, and that goes for the congress as well. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid think about that.
Re: Dems throwing 2000 election
How about this from Wikipedia?
On January 6, 2001, a joint-session of Congress met to certify the electoral vote. Twenty members of the House of Representatives, most of them Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus, rose one-by-one to file objections to the electoral votes of Florida. However, according to an 1877 law, any such objection had to be sponsored by both a representative and a senator, and no senator would co-sponsor these objections. Therefore, Gore, who was presiding in his capacity as President of the Senate, ruled each of these objections out of order.
Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001.
Very interesting. I was unaware of that.
How is it that NAFTA caused Mexican wages to go down and drive greater illegal immigration to the US?
I’ve read that before, yet seen no explanation. Seems counter intuitive.
Perot never objected to a rational trade agreement. He only argued that “we should get it right first”. History will certinly judge him correct. This was perhaps the worst policy of the Clinton administration.
Not only did no senator sign the resolution by the Congressional Black Caucus, but the few who were sympathetic to it were strongly urged by Gore not to do so. He also could have signed but of course didn’t. Our hero.
“In response, Clinton stumbled. First she laughed at Perot, then she joked that “all I can remember from that is a bunch of charts,” and then she claimed the whole NAFTA debate “is a vague memory.””
A diamonds and pearls response if ever I heard one. What a lying sack of dung.
“The behavior showed how politically tone deaf some Democratic leaders are.”
They’re not tone deaf, they have perfect pitch in the key of G (for gold).
Sirota said: “Why is Clinton desperate to avoid discussing NAFTA? Because she and other congressional Democrats are currently pushing a Peru Free Trade Agreement at the behest of their corporate campaign contributors - an agreement expanding the unpopular NAFTA model. When pressed, Clinton claims she is for a “timeout” from such trade deals - but, as her husband might say, it depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is, because she simultaneously supports the NAFTA expansion.”
Ah HA!
That’s why the bush family has bought up so much Peru property this year! Those scumbags (the clintons and the Bushes) are lining their pockets in broad daylight again to the detriment of the working class (again!)
Traitors all!
vote third party or you’re stupid!
MollyJ November 25th, 2007 1:23 pm
“And anyone who thinks of themselves as progressive should be pushing Hillary hard on this one.”
Yes, we should be pushing her hard enough to push her right off the edge of the cliff that the U.S. is standing at the edge of.
Lobo Gris
Frosty bunny November 26th, 2007 12:12 am
“How is it that NAFTA caused Mexican wages to go down and drive greater illegal immigration to the US?
I’ve read that before, yet seen no explanation. Seems counter intuitive”
Not counter intuitive at all. You just have to understand the nature of corporations. They exist solely to make profits and enhance shareholder value. When they moved to Mexico and found an almost endless supply of labor they figured correctly that they could lower wages rather than raise them so they did. Thereby increasing profits and enhancing shareholder value.
Lobo Gris
Mexico has a full fledged far right dictatorship today, and the “oppositon” parties don’t have any voice in anything. The real opposition is the EZLN and others outside the offiicial political process, and they aren’t fielding candidates for public office lately. Those who have peacefully opposed the central government have ended up getting killed in large numbers by the military or security forces or their hired thugs. The press is even less free than in this country, which is really saying something.
That’s progress toward Mexico being a vassal state for Uncle Sam and his imperialism. True once in a while the Mexican president will criticize W, but without doing anything to back it up.
If you buy into NAFTA being the end all then you’re buying into more Republican propaganda do destroy the election for the dems. We were in financial trouble far before NAFTA was passed. and good call on whoever remembered that NAFTA is a baby of George the first not Clinton.
Our factories, foundries and textile mills and homeland military bases, were shut down during the Reagan Administration Illegal immigration has been hijacking our low wage unskilled jobs long before NAFTA. What is the difference between these jobs going to illegals in our country or overseas? either way the sucking sound is the money leaving our economy. Killing NAFTA which unless you don’t understand the real balance of power in this world isnt going to happen, we are past the point of no return on NAFTA with globalization and without any restrictions from the WTO theres no rolling back NAFTA. the money that is needed from the corporations would never support that.
Yes I love Dennis Kucinich too, he’s a throwback to the Kennedy’s and the things that he says gets me all nostalgic and misty eyed as well, but back in reality it just aint going to happen. You have to play the hand you’ve been dealt, there arent any wildcards.
While programs like NAFTA and the undermining of the labor unions have destroyed the very way of life that used to be our bragging rights, it can’t be repealed without some form of economic genius, like a Perot as an architect. Think about the reliance from the foreign countries on that outsourcing of jobs, remember the “borrow and spend republicans” have us owned by China twice over, try pulling jobs from that country get them pissed at us and call in a note on a trillion dollars that we do not have and the new depression will make the 20’s depression look like a walk in the park.
And a little common sense here also, if you, Joe Shmoe own a company that you would like to take public someday, and you need to adhere to a bottom line, what wages are you going to pay? 5.00 an hour to a grateful non union foreigner who is unspoiled by americas wealth and does not aspire to own an ipod, or to a feeling of entiltlement spoiled american brat that spends all day talking on his cellphone while at work an unreasonable amount of 10.00 an hour?
That isnt an anti american statement it is telling you that the damage has been done. We as a nation built our standard of living on the backs of the Unions. My dad worked in a factory during the 30’s and his whole life, in those days he made 12 cents and hour and there werent any lunch hours, weekends, or paid holidays. You can thank the Unions and FDR for the fact that we once had a living wage, paid holidays and paid vacations and were once a nation that produced something. But the Republicans policies built on undermining everything that FDR had ever done, has destroyed our great “standard of living” and now we are nothing better than a 3rd world country.
So all that being said how would you roll back NAFTA and regain our financial status in the world without losing the jobs that corporations provide, or by causing sanctions against us by foreign nations that don’t need us for a damn thing? Money is the bottom line. The corporations own the elections when are people going to wake up to that fact and stop wasting time.
The fight at hand is to make the people that the corporations own accountable,(Hillary Clinton) not wish for some pie in the sky wildcard to rush in like a knight in shing armor (Dennis Kucinich). all the protests in the world havent stopped the war in Iraq, all the protests in the world havent gotten Bush impeached and thrown in jail, don’t you get it yet?!!!!
And one more thing, the bleeding heart liberals that are dancing on the edge of a straight razor, you can’t be for protecting and providing for the illegals, and against NAFTA, uless you are talking out of both sides of your face.
Personally I oppose NAFTA and Illegals, I hate that the first jobs we used to have as kids are now career aspirations for illegal immigrants and the fact that the guy behind the deli counter doesnt understand a godamn word that I am saying….but I am a Liberal…..
“When they moved to Mexico and found an almost endless supply of labor they figured correctly that they could lower wages rather than raise them so they did.”
I understand the drive to pay as little as possible to workers, but more factories = lower wages? Factories moved to Mexico, lowered wages to below Mexican wages and thus spurred more illegal immigration? Did big agribusiness move there as well and drive Mexicans off the land?
I feel dense. More factories = lower wages makes no sense to me.
N= …New
A= …Anxiety
F= …For
T= …The
A= …Americans
A couple of years ago my wife bought me a wallet at the Tandy Leather Outlet store in Yoakum TX. Yoakum is an important leather center and even has an annual Land of Leather Days. Anyhow my wallet has a little tag inside that reads “Hecho in China”. That suggests the work was outsourced to Mexico that was, in turn, outsourced it to China. Go figure.
MKMC: Leather goods from China, sewing from Mexico (including the tag).
Namaste
__ __ __ __ We must be the change
__ __ __ __ we wish to see in the world __ Gandhi
Frosty bunny November 26th, 2007 10:33 am
“I understand the drive to pay as little as possible to workers, but more factories = lower wages?”
When the number of factories and the numbers that they can employ never reaches the need to employ the quantity of people seeking employment, yes.
“Did big agribusiness move there as well and drive Mexicans off the land?”
Big agribusiness didn’t need to move to Mexico, all they needed was to be able to export their mechanized, subsidized, farm products at prices that were lower than what it cost an individual Mexican farmer to grow the same crop.
Lobo Gris
Doesn’t matter. When the gloves come off, and they look like they might be coming off as we speak, her selling out to the corporate free market lobby, as well as her sellout to the health care industry will finally become fair game, and she will have nowhere to run. Unless the other Democratic candidates turn into complete whimps - a certain possibility - she is going to get killed by attacks on her record. Simple as that. We don’t need anything else. Name a bad bill, and you will find that for the most part, her name is on it, or she was involved in it during her husbands terms.
Now think about this Frosty Bunny;
We have approximately 300 million people in the U.S. of which approximately 120 million are employed. China has 1.5 billion, India a billion more. If we exported every single job we have in the U.S. to just those two countries do you think it would make even the smallest dent in the standard of living of the people living there? Keep in mind that the reason for the existence of Corporations is to increase profits and enhance shareholder value. And what happens when all of the middle class jobs here are gone and no one can afford all the cr#p being made? Because for sure with the Corporate “mantra” the people making the products in those low wage non regulated economies can’t afford to buy what they are making. Of course the stockholders won’t care, they all got rich before it collapsed like the house of cards that it is. The tiniest of breezes of which will blow it over.
Lobo Gris
Thanks, Lobo Gris.
Tijuana, if you want some facts on the last Mexican election, check out this site:
http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-mexico
After the election, the Mexican Election Commission, by choosing to review only a partial recount despite the many irregularities reported and documented, found that Calderon still won.
Vicente Fox’s illegal campaigning for Calderon, although regrettable, wasn’t treated as a crime.
Like the US, Mexico is a democracy in name only.
I remember watching a presidential debate with Bush 1, Clinton and Perot in 1992. I recall Ross Perot raised questions about NAFTA in that debate and the media plainly
ignored his comments. I voted for Clinton anyway but I
now wish I had not. Surely there has got to be an alternative to Hillary. Ross Perot was right about
NAFTA.
Yes Perot was correct; as Kucinich is now. If you tell people the truth, your out. If you waffle, flip flop & lie your a real presidential candidate.
Hillary is a Republican, so is Jane Harmon.