Obama blatantly breaks campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA

[brentspeak]

Obama has so completely turned his back on what he promised during his campaign regarding NAFTA that Rep. Peter DeFazio D-OR actually has to mount a http://www.landlinemag.com/todays_news/Daily/2010/Mar10/030810/031110-01.htm">House campaign to remind him about his promises.

Meanwhile, Obama's trade represenative, Clinton-era NAFTA clown Ron Kirk, is http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2010/0303/Ron-Kirk-rejects-any-timeout-on-new-NAFTA-like-free-trade-pacts">telling Americans to essentially "stuff it" in regards to having any real say regarding future trade deasl.

[katandmoon]

1. By now, shouldn't it only be newsworthy if Obama KEEPS a campaign promise?

[VMI Dem]

2. +1.

[jody]

3. Excellent point & ROFLMAO n/t

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

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[denimgirly]

13. I'm willing to bet those 96 promises kept dont involve Big Money lobbying

Obama tends to break or compromise if there is big money involved: War, Health care, Climate, Bank Regulations, NAFTA, etc will always be compromised or broken because there is money to be made that could benefit him in the long run and the democratic party (lobbyists will stuff the partys coffers). If, however, his promises dont affect big business all that much e.g. DADT, women rights, etc then he will keep his promise...this is just my observation. This explains why his promises kept would be larger than the broken....

[Lord Helmet]

14. Your "observation" is unsubstantiated equivocation. nt

[denimgirly]

16. Let's see who's right: Please list the 96 Promises Kept.

I am willing to admit i am wrong but i am very interesting to see what those 96 promises kept were because Obama's decisions seem very patternized...he will always lean towards the entity carrying the money.

[Lord Helmet]

17. I already posted the link. Knock yourself out. nt

[Kalun D]

22. This

is a bullsh*t list

[girl gone mad]

30. We've been through the list, and many are wrongly in the "kept" category.

For example, his foreclosure prevention programs have been a failure to date, though this is counted as a promise kept.

[jgraz]

34. Oh yeah! Those expanded Senior Corps sure make up for millions of lost jobs.

:eyes:

[Lord Helmet]

46. Are you prepared to mock/deny every promise kept?

While a few items on this "random list" (reads comprehensive analysis of 500 of Pres Obama's promises) may be arguable, are you so firmly wedged into your antipathy that you are loathe to acknowledge actual accomplishments on the record?

When the animosity toward this president from the left mimics that from the right, something is seriously wrong. I'm not happy about some decisions made and promises not yet kept; your attitude (and that of others) has metastasized into a cartoon version of reality. No reasonable discussion here can be had because of it.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted sub-thread

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[Tailormyst]

58. "agitators"?

:puke:

[ChimpersMcSmirkers]

27. What a bunch of pure bullshit.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

[jgraz]

32. Yeah, are you gonna believe some random website or your own lyin' eyes???

He's really a GREAT President!!! It says so on Teh Interwebs!!!!1111!!!1


:eyes:

[Dinger]

39. That Deserves Its Own Thread

Please consider it.

[jefferson_dem]

4. Again?

I thought he broke that pledge last summer. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/11/obama_reverses_campaign_pledge_to_renegotiate

[asdjrocky]

6. Kind of hard to keep up with all the broken promises.

[rhett o rick]

35. And how do you feel about the President's support of NAFTA? nm

[asdjrocky]

5. Card check, DADT, real HCR, Gitmo, financial reform...

NAFTA, yeah the list goes on and on.

[zulchzulu]

7. The article does not say that... and besides the Colombian FTA helps workers there

It may be too complex for you to understand, but some of the FTAs still being negotiated offer more rights for workers in those countriies as well as address environmental concerns.

Not all FTAs are as bad as NAFTA, which will be renegotiated as the article does point out.

If you want to start a trade war and be isolationist, that your strategy... which would actually hurt our economy more.

NAFTA sucks, but the Colombian and other FTAs address worker and environmental issues. Why take them off the table?

[brentspeak]

12. Where does the article say "NAFTA will be rengotiated"?

Was the article "too complex for you to understand"?

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

19. It doesn't -- which is the point

You OP conflates the renegotiation of NAFTA with the completion of trade agreements with Panama, Columbia, and South Korea. As though these two are somehow related.

They're not.

[zulchzulu]

21. Listen...

I understand your intention to bring attention to how NAFTA needs to be renegotiated... I couldn't agree more!

And nowhere in the article does it say that NAFTA will NOT be renegotiated.

Kirk is referring to the FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea which have been authored with full intentions of NOT being like NAFTA, such as working on environmental and workers' rights issues as part of the agreement.

Obama has not stated that he is no longer willing to renegotiate NAFTA. Kirk hasn't either. It's that simple.

As for NAFTA being renegotiated, it will be just as painful a legislative process as getting reasonable health care reform. You can't just stop NAFTA at this point, as much as pinheads like Kucinich might lie and tell you so you give him money.

NAFTA has lots of tentacles wrapped up with China. They now command and operate within several Mexican, Central American and Latin American seaports to move an increasing volume of containers with cheap Chinese goods through NAFTA trade pipelines.

China OWNS us. If we told them to fuck off, hello Depression 3.0 with a lot of ugly other shit on the side.

[jeanpalmer]

52. How it that these trade agreements

and the resulting jobs shipped overseas contributed to the current recession/depression, but if we try to reverse them and start to get the jobs back we also get a depression. The depression bogeyman can't work both ways.

The major provision that's missing in all these trade agreements is a mimimum wage provision. The other provisions are window dressing. If there's no mimumu wage provsion (and there won't be one), these agreements will simply facilitate more offshoring of jobs. Andthat's what's going to happen.

[Hello_Kitty]

60. No free trader has ever, to my knowledge, come up with a coherent argument

It's like Warren Buffett says, if you can't explain it with a crayon don't invest in it. And no "free trader" can ever come up with a simple explanation of why their theory "works". Nor can they explain exactly what bad things the scary "trade war" will cause.

[Hello_Kitty]

61. We could totally tell them to fuck off.

Slap a hefty tariff on their goods LIKE THEY DO TO OURS and make stuff here again.

Fuck this "OMGZ scawey twade war will ensue!" nonsense.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. Peter DeFazio is my Rep

and this is why we elect him. Ron Kirk was elected mayor once, and even then he was all about the NAFTA. He's a broken record.

[girl gone mad]

31. Ron Kirk's coroprtism in Dallas turned off even moderate Rpublicans, in the end.

All of the tax dollars for private stadiums and other corporate sell-outs are the reason the Democratic candidate (Laura Miller) swept into office after he resigned to run for the Senate, rather than the Republican candidate he had personally endorsed. Miller was carried into office primarily by middle class Republican-leaning voters who had heard enough of Kirk's broken record.

[Name removed]

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[denimgirly]

11. Follow the Money -- The direction of Money flow is Always the direction Obama will go.

Money always comes in the form of corporate lobbying and one consistent pattern i've noticed is that Obama will always vote in their favor. I dont know much about Nafta but i am willing to bet no negotiations favors coporations more than the people.

If it doesnt involve big money then Obama will usually vote the way the people want.

[Jakes Progress]

15. The campaign people

make sure this happens. DLC is convinced that only placating big money will get the donations they think they have to have to run an election.

You can agree or disagree with whether they are right about that, but you cannot disagree that it is sleazy and will never serve the people.

[zulchzulu]

23. China now is a huge player in the NAFTA game

I'm certain there is full intention to renegotiate NAFTA and the article mentioned in the OP does not say anything about not renegotiating. The issue is about new FTAs (free trade agreements) with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. These new post-NAFTA FTAs address the issues of workers' rights and environmental impacts, which NAFTA did not.

All Kirk said in the article is that he doesn't want to freeze the FTA negotiations in process now.

As for China and NAFTA, there are many Mexican and Latin American seaports that allow cheap Chinese goods into the U.S. through the NAFTA trade pipelines.

Should we be isolationist and get involved in a trade war with China, who OWNS us? We certainly need NAFTA negotiations immediately, but the stakes are very serious to say the least.

The trade issues with NAFTA are very complex and need to be administered with reform carefully.

[rpannier]

55. The China Owns Us meme has been shown to be simplistic at best

There is a saying "You owe the bank 5000 dollars, the bank owns you. You owe the bank 5000000, you own the bank."

China has taken on a lot of US dollars, which means it has a vested stake in not doing anything that would undermine its investment. China can't simply call in the debt, because if it does it could weaken the dollar which would adversely affect the value of what they're holding now.
They could try and find another buyer, but where? As was pointed out on MME (Marketplace Middle East) there are western Asian governments that would consider buying some of the currency from China, but if they smelled it as a desperate move by China, they would use that as leverage to force the Chinese into taking much less than it's worth -- same with places like Russia.
To announce that they won't take any more US debt could also have seriously negative consequences for the value of the dollar. Again, if the US can't find buyers for the debt it could have the effect of weakening the dollar more.

5 years ago the Korean Gov't announced they were going to unload about 100,000,000 dollars worth of US dollars. The dollar dropped about 8% -- which made me happy as I have been living and working in Korea and the dollar went from 1 to 1,012 to 1 to 984.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

18. You didn't actually read this article, did you?

It says nothing of the kind. Kirk is saying that there are three trade agreements (none of which have anything at all to do with NAFTA) that have been previously negotiated, and these will not be held up pending a review of NAFTA. The reason? Because a trade agreement with South Korea isn't effected by any review that occurs with regard to NAFTA - so why hold it up indefinitely?

[Hansel]

20. Doesn't have to. Posting something negative about Obama is good enough.

It's just one of many that are usually equally legitimate.

[Name removed]

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[brentspeak]

26. If the particular article I posted above didn't spell it out, this one from last year does:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/11/obama_reverses_campaign_pledge_to_renegotiate">Obama Reverses Campaign Pledge to Renegotiate NAFTA

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

28. It spells out something all right....

Two people who aren't from the Obama Administration making pronouncements about the "intentions" of the Obama Administration.

Now it's my turn -- and my uninformed postulation is at least as good as theirs -- the intention of the Obama Administration is to not cause significant economic turmoil at the very moment that the U.S. economy is attempting to claw its way out of the worst financial downtown in seven decades. There are, in fact, any number of ways to improve NAFTA without actually renegotiating the agreement. As any number of economists have pointed out since the day NAFTA was created, separate treaties could provide for protections of the environment and for the protections of workers.

[brentspeak]

29. NAFTA is one the major reasons for our signficant economic turmoil

And there is no way for any nation to claw its way out of any financial downturn when trade policies help cause job losses to mount.

Face it: Obama lied when he'd say he'd renegotiate NAFTA. He listens to Wall Street, not the average American.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

33. Sez you...

And frankly, I don't think you know what you're talking about half the time.

The proximate cause of the turmoil we're in isn't NAFTA. It was an unregulated Ponzi scheme on Wall Street. And so given the choice between tightening the regulation of financial markets and renegotiating NAFTA, I go for giving the SEC more teeth in a heartbeat.

Just out of curiousity, if I say that I'm going to mow the lawn this week, does that make me a liar on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then suddenly I'm not a liar on Friday because I finally got around to mowing the lawn?

[rhett o rick]

36. So are you saying you support NAFTA? I mean it has been a big success. Americans have lost jobs

but Mexicans are working. Of course working for substandard wages. But NAFTA is a huge success. The corporations are making higher profits. That's the goal.

[Name removed]

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[rhett o rick]

42. Sorry, it wasnt clear to me that you were interested in fixing NAFTA. My error. nm

[brentspeak]

40. Fortunately, you're not the one who has been given a "choice" to affect the rest of the nation

It must be one or the either! :eyes:

The job flight preceded the Wall Street house of cards; it even contributed to the house of cards, as Americans' tried to make up for their lost wages/jobs through the real estate market.

[Name removed]

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[spoony]

24. But, but, we can fix it after we pass it... nt

[boppers]

37. Columbia is Mexico and Canada?

Reading comprehension FAIL.

DeFazio is simply trying to watch out for his own state's (and coasts) interests, if the southern border is opened to trade transport (it's not, in spite of the rhetoric) to long-haul trucking, port states in the US are at greater risk... so he wants to keep drivers off of american roads unless they have "their papers".

[brentspeak]

41. .

"The Obama administration is pouring cold water on a suggestion from some congressional Democrats for a “timeout” from new free trade agreements until the existing accords – including NAFTA, the poster child for free-trade pacts – can be fully assessed."

Uh, duh?

[boppers]

49. You're right, my bad.

My apologies.

[IndianaGreen]

43. By his deeds, and not his words, you will know whose side Obama really is

and he is not on the side of the workers.

[Joe Chi Minh]

45. Are you really asking him to be bi-partisan? He's said he feels a real passion

for American-style capitalism, hasn't he?

[xxqqqzme]

48. Yes, he has - many times

And that is part of the problem.

[krawhitham]

50. he has sorta been busy

he can not just snap his finger and make it all better, people around here act like he can and are pissed because he has chosen not to

[Flash Bazbo]

51. I watched Kirk give Dallas away to the big developers...

You really don't want Kirk negotiating anything on behalf of America.

[jeanpalmer]

53. We shouldn't be surprised

"On Feb. 9 Austan Goolsbee, the senior economic adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign, had a meeting with Georges Rioux, consul general for the Canadian government....Afterward, Joseph DeMora, a consulate staff member, wrote an enthusiastic summary...for Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson....DeMora wrote Wilson that in the Chicago meeting, Goolsbee 'candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign' but reassured Rioux that Obama's NAFTA-bashing 'should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans.'"

http://www.slate.com/id/2185753

[SeattleGirl]

54. Breaking! Obama doesn't do everything the way I want him to!

Sorry, but....:eyes:

[zulchzulu]

56. Why doesn't this SHIT get locked?

Clearly, if you read the article, there is NO FUCKING WAY that Obama is breaking his promise on NAFTA...

But then again, DU is becoming as STUPID as FR.

[AzDar]

57. While I'm extremely grateful that McCain/ Palin ain't runnin' the show...

Good GAWD, Barack Obama has disappointed at every turn.:-(

[zulchzulu]

59. Do people actually READ the articles posted?

If one does, one notices that the OP thread is bullshit.

Reading is so. fucking. hard. for some. people...

[AzDar]

62. And *comprehension* is so hard for others...

Wake up. You're being sold the down the motherfucking river.

(edited for excessive cursing... I feel I left in just the right amount :) )