Posted on 05/03/2016 8:35:47 PM PDT by Milhous
Donald Trump claimed his status as the presumptive Republican nominee on Tuesday with a restrained victory speech that hinted at a possible principal line of general election attack against his Democratic counterpart Hillary Clinton.
“She doesn't understand trade,” Trump said after his win in Indiana forced Sen. Ted Cruz to drop out of the race and all-but cemented the nomination for the real estate mogul. "Her husband signed perhaps in the history of the world the single worst trade deal ever done. It's called NAFTA.” Advertisement
This emphasis on workers and trade was incredibly similar to the speech he gave after his critical Super Tuesday II victories on March 15 that eliminated Sen. Marco Rubio from the primary field. “Apple, and all of these great companies will be making their great products in the United States, not in China, Vietnam,” Trump said at the time of what a Trump presidency would mean.
That was a more general speech about how he’d be the candidate of working class voters on the issue of trade, specifically the protectionist candidate (you can read more here about how disastrous the economic policies he's hinted at would be for the economy).
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I agree. Trade deals are one thing. Tariffs have their place, but if too elevated, they allow for soft, non-competitive behavior on the part of the workers and companies that are protected. It's a balancing act, although Trump is correct that we've let the balance go pretty far in the direction of our competitors, allowing them to restrict access to their markets while ours remain open.
My daughters reactions are similar. 27 and 29, neither knew anything about Clinton ordering employees to drop to their knees and service him with Arkansas police guarding the door.
Historically, objections to NAFTA and other FTAs come from the unions and enviros. Right wing opposition is relatively new.
It boils down to protections for the investors versus protection for labor and environment. Investor protections are found mainly in Chapter 11 but also in other Chapters. Mexico took the US into arbitration over the Mexican trucks pursuant to Chapter 20.
The other objection is arbitration. Disputes are settled by an arbitration panel and these decisions trump or supercede national regulations. The courts in the US, Mexico, and Canada have to honor the NAFTA arbitration panel's decisions.
Free Trade agreements are actually Investor-State Trade Agreements and everytime an arbitration hands down a decision on a dispute, that decision establishes a precedent, which is known as Investor State Law. Each and every arbitration panel decision adds to the body of laws governing trade.
For more info on this do a Google search of Investor State Law or Investor State Trade Agreement.
Eventually, over time, as more and more precedents are set by the arbitration panels, a new set or body of laws/regulation are established that supercede the laws/regulations of the individual nations.
There is a leftwing conspiracy theory that the GOP is using these trade agreements as a means to roll back the New Deal. And to make it worse, many of these lefties think that the Clintons and Obama are in cahoots with the GOP. So when Hillary said she was opposed to TPP they all said she was lying and is a Corporatist Suck-Up. They want to see the speeches she gave to Wall Street.
Everybody agrees that there has to be investor protections in these trade agreements. Otherwise, a govt could impose a tax masquerading as a labor or environmental regulation and the investors have to be protected from that. The question then becomes one of degree. To what degree are the investor protections detrimental to protections for labor and environment. In the case of NAFTA, the labor/environmental protections that Clinton negotiated in NAALC & NAAEC turned out to be toothless. Since they weren't actually found within the NAFTA agreement, the arbitration panel gave them no weight.
Everybody agrees that disputes have to be settled by an arbitration panel because the dispute has to be settled quickly and these types of cases can take years to be resolved in the courts. But what happens when a ringer is appointed to the arbitration panel. GW Bush swore up and down that the US lost the Canadian Soft Woods dispute because of a ringer.
Still waiting for Carrier to announce price reductions.....
How can you complain about US workers who were hurt by NAFTA and ignore the Mexicans who were hurt by cheap corn Mexico imported from the US.
The reality is that trade agreements help some and hurt some. If you had a career as a sewing machine operator foreign trade has been very detrimental. But if you work in insurance and banking foreign trade is good.
Texas and California have benefitted immensely from NAFTA, but your state may have been hurt?
Millennials know nothing at all about the impeached former president or the complicity of his wife in the trashing of the injured women.
...
That’s because the press has never mentioned his impeachment, his contempt of court, his disbarments or anything else negative since he left office. Compare that to how they always smeared Nixon’s name every time they used it.
Agree, prior to Free trade we had winners and winners. Now we have winners and losers. Great. /sarc
Under a protectionist umbrella all Americans win.
What you Free Traitor™ thugs don't understand is real Americans don't give damn about the plight of foreigners over the plight of their fellow Americans.
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