Recent Blog Posts
-
SBA Runs Out of Gas
Nov 23 20094:17 pm EDT -
The Bill That Wouldn’t Die
Nov 21 20099:30 pm EDT -
Republicans Talk Turkey on Health Care
Nov 20 20093:54 pm EDT -
Contracts Stolen From Veterans
Nov 19 20093:57 pm EDT -
Main Street's Credit Crunch
Nov 18 20095:41 pm EDT -
Criminalizing Failure
Nov 17 20095:55 pm EDT -
Casablanca on the Potomac
Nov 16 20095:22 pm EDT -
So Big It Will Fail?
Nov 10 20093:02 pm EDT -
Health Care’s ‘Wild West’
Nov 09 20093:57 pm EDT -
Obama's Secret Jobs Plan
Nov 06 20093:13 pm EDT
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The NAFTA Follies
The North American Free Trade Agreement was never as good as its boosters claimed or as bad as its detractors feared. Jobs were heading south before NAFTA and they're still heading south or east. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are right to raise questions about the agreement and even to want to visit renegotiating it. But if you game out their threats to abandon the accord, it seems pretty hollow. Given the shaky markets, weak dollar and other deals we're trying to close what would be the consequences of actually pulling out of a NAFTA treaty? The Canadians have already dangled the prospect of giving the Chinese first dibs on their oil fields. I'm sure Hugo Chavez would make hay of it. And for what? Would modifying the agreement really help preserve at lot of $25-an-hour jobs in the midwest? That's hard to imagine. So keep pandering, guys and gals. But let's be honest with people that there's a lot of jobs that are not coming back.
I note, as always, that my spouse works for Hillary Clinton






