CNN Report including speech by Barack Obama wherein Obama noted Clinton's early support for NAFTA. One thing is really clear as you read that Clinton says in Time, NAFTA was inherited in her husband's administration, Obama isn't falling for it...
Clinton challenges Obama in Texas
...While campaigning in Wisconsin, Obama took his own shots at Clinton, criticizing he for supporting the North America Free Trade Act while former President Clinton was president.
"You know, in the years after her husband signed NAFTA, Sen. Clinton would go around talking about how great it was and how many benefits it would bring," Obama said in Janesville, Wisconsin. "Now that she's running for president, she says we need a time-out on trade. No one knows when this time-out will end -- maybe after the election."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/13/2008.hopefuls/
Hillary: "I Have to Earn Every Vote"
Thursday, Feb. 01, 2007 By KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON
TIME: Do you think NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by Bill Clinton] was the right thing to do?
CLINTON: I think NAFTA was, in principle, a good idea to try to create a better trading market between Canada and the United States and Mexico. But I think the terms that it contained, and how it was negotiated under the Bush Administration and the failure to have any tough enforcement mechanism, like pollution on our border with Mexico, for example—
TIME: That was your husband's Adminstration, wasn't it? Because I recall a lot of debate about it not having labor standards and environmental standards.
CLINTON: But it was inherited. NAFTA was inherited by the Clinton Administration. I believe in the general principles it represented, but what we have learned is that we have to drive a tougher bargain. Our market is the market that everybody wants to be in. We should quit giving it away so willy-nilly. I believe we need tougher enforcement of the trade agreements we already have. You look at the trade enforcement record between the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration brought more trade enforcement actions in one year than the Bush Administration brought in six years.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1584649,00.html
Clinton Breaks With Husband's Legacy on Nafta Pact, China Trade
By Kristin Jensen and Mark Drajem
March 30 (2007)
One of President Bill Clinton's enduring legacies was his hard-fought push for trade deals with Mexico and China. His wife is heading in another direction.
Senator Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, wonders why the North American Free Trade Agreement is ``continuing to drive hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people from Mexico into our country,'' she said in an interview. ``We just can't keep doing what we did in the 20th century.''
Somewhere along the Clintons' ``bridge to the 21st century'' -- their 1996 campaign mantra -- they parted ways on trade. Bill was a champion of the global economy and prodded Congress to approve Nafta in 1993 and China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Hillary, 59, says new deals may need to be put on hold pending a review -- an idea she calls ``a little timeout.''
Last Updated: March 30, 2007 00:26 EDT
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=atUKcP4eSEvY&refer=politics
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