NAFTA-bashing of recent vintage

Neither Clinton nor Obama has a clear record on the trade bill

AUSTIN, TEXAS -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama duel tonight in a crucial debate in economically battered Ohio, both are certain to claim that they oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement.

It's a dubious claim, however. Obama touted the benefits of the trade deal with Canada and Mexico when he was running for his Senate seat. And if Clinton had reservations about NAFTA, she kept them to herself when her husband made it one of his presidency's top priorities.

The Democratic candidates spent Monday trading barbs about NAFTA, each painting the other as a fervent backer of an accord that many economists call a success and that some politicians and union leaders label a failure.

The trade deal's passage in 1993 was one of Bill Clinton's biggest policy victories, and those who fought to pass it say Hillary Clinton wasn't a vocal opponent.

Hillary Clinton "certainly was never opposed to it," recalled former Rep. Bill Frenzel, R-Minn., whom Bill Clinton recruited to help lobby for the agreement in 1993. "I guess whatever he was for, she was for."

James Jones, a veteran Democratic congressman from Oklahoma whom Bill Clinton tapped to be his ambassador to Mexico, helped lobby wavering Democrats to get NAFTA through Congress. He doesn't recall Hillary Clinton ever questioning NAFTA, either.

"I have always assumed she supported it," he said.

Clinton barely mentions NAFTA in her 532-page memoir. When she does, it's usually in the context of how it affected her failed 1993-94 effort to overhaul health care. Major newspapers reported her frustration in 1993 that the campaign to pass NAFTA was knocking her initiative into the background.

Clinton's campaign spokesman, Phil Singer, points to a 2000 statement in New York in which she called NAFTA "flawed" and suggested that changes were needed as the earliest evidence he could find of her opposition.

Obama's claims, too, are open to question.

"I don't think NAFTA has been good for Americans, and I never have," he said Sunday in Ohio.

But according to a Decatur (Ill.) Herald & Review story in September 2004, Obama touted the benefits from U.S. exports under NAFTA during his Senate campaign. The Associated Press also reported that Obama favored pursuing trade deals such as NAFTA.

The Illinois senator said Sunday in Ohio that he doesn't oppose free trade but has reservations about NAFTA.

"What the world should interpret is my consistent position, which is: I believe in trade," he said.

But it's hard to be for trade and against NAFTA, because that landmark regional trade deal served as a blueprint for future accords, creating rules for things such as how to label products, timetables for removing tariffs and other trade barriers.