Nafta Bashing Ends at Texas Line

[DeepModem Mom]

WSJ: Nafta Bashing Ends at Texas Line
Clinton, Obama Try to Avoid Pact Before Key Primary
By AMY CHOZICK and NICK TIMIRAOS
March 3, 2008; Page A13

SAN ANTONIO -- After weeks of hammering the North American Free Trade Agreement on campaign stops in Ohio, the Democratic presidential candidates are singing a different tune in Texas. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had to adjust their messages as they have shuffled between hard-hit Ohio and robust Texas, where Nafta is largely seen as an economic boost to the state's border communities. Saturday, Sen. Clinton dedicated her stops in Fort Worth and Dallas to talk of national security. Friday, she focused a speech in Waco on veteran's rights, because Texas has a large military population. Sen. Obama is keeping his Texas message squarely set on uniting the country. He omitted mention of Nafta at a rally here Friday night that attracted 8,000 people....

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As Ohio voters express concern over the economy and a shrinking manufacturing segment, Texas has seen its energy sector boom, and a growing high-tech industry has brought new jobs to places like Austin.

Last year, Texas's 3.1% job growth was triple the nation's 1% growth rate and topped the state's historic average of 2.8% for the third year in a row, according to a report issued last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Employment in the construction sector grew by 4.3%, while it fell by 2.9% nationally....Ohio, meanwhile, posted a 6% unemployment rate in December, ahead of the national rate of 5%. Job growth in Cincinnati, for example, measured just 0.5%, compared with 1.7% for the nation beginning September 2006, largely because of the exodus of manufacturing jobs, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Ohio has also been much harder hit by the fallout of the subprime-mortgage crisis. Foreclosure filings in the state shot up 88% last year, while Texas saw foreclosure filings fall by 4.5%, according to RealtyTrac, a company that monitors housing.

In Ohio, Nafta has become the ultimate symbol of antiglobalization sentiment and is a constant source of contention between the two candidates. The agreement went into effect under President Bill Clinton in 1994 and created what remains the largest trade bloc in the world based on the combined gross domestic product of its member nations: the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Sen. Obama has consistently criticized Sen. Clinton for supporting Nafta during her husband's administration. "The fact is, she was saying great things about Nafta until she started running for president," he said on a recent visit to a factory in Lorain....Sen. Clinton has fought back with a new radio ad in which unemployed blue-collar workers talk about how their jobs have been moved overseas. "Hillary has gone on the record saying that Nafta was a mistake," a woman says. "She wants to change it from free trade to fair trade," another worker says.

But the towns along the Texas-Mexico border have a very different impression of the trade agreement. In the past decade, Laredo has gone from an impoverished backwater to one of the nation's largest inland ports. Its population has grown from 72,000 in the early 1990s to 250,000 in 2006. Sen. Clinton pointed to the Nafta paradox after an event focused on poverty in Hanging Rock, Ohio. "I'm well aware that many parts of our country have different views about trade. I was in Laredo as I said last week, and it has greatly benefited from trade," she told reporters. "We need to maintain the positive aspects (of Nafta) but get very specific on what we are going to do to fix it."...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120450985647506721.html