Ohio leaders call for changes to NAFTA

By Marc Kovac

Ohio and Michigan have lost thousands of jobs because of NAFTA, the officeholders said.

COLUMBUS — The United States should renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement to include labor, environmental and other protections for citizens in all three member countries, Gov. Ted Strickland and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown told reporters.

Stumping for presumed presidential nominee U.S. Barack Obama, the two Democratic officeholders and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said the junior senator from Illinois would do just that if elected.

“I don’t think any of us are opposed to trade ...,” Strickland said Friday, adding, “Ohio is exporting a lot of goods, and I’m thankful for that.”

The three spoke during a conference call coordinated by the Obama campaign and focused on NAFTA on the same day that Republican presidential hopeful U.S. John McCain, R-Ariz., was in Canada.

Obama has been critical of NAFTA. His campaign positions state that “Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.”

And in a recent interview with Fortune magazine, Obama said, “... I think that if we manage trade more effectively, if we’re better partners, if we are thinking about the dislocation that occurs as a consequence of it, if we’re true to our belief that labor and environmental standards should be a part of raising living standards around the world instead of a race to the bottom, then we can have free trade and it will be sustainable and we will have political support over the long run.”

In their conference call Friday, Brown, Strickland and Granholm spoke about manufacturing job losses in Ohio and Michigan — 200,000 and 400,000, respectively, over the last eight years — which they blamed in part on NAFTA.

They criticized McCain’s continued support of that and other free trade agreements.

“Ohio can’t afford that,” Brown said of McCain’s support of trade agreements without labor or environmental protections. “Workers in Ohio can’t afford that. The environment can’t afford that.”

He added, “I am absolutely confident that [Obama] will reopen the negotiations on NAFTA.”

McCain has countered such criticism, however.

In a column published Friday by the Detroit Free Press, he wrote “The North American Free Trade Agreement has provided our economy with a framework in which we can become more competitive. We will never achieve our goals by simply demanding the unilateral reopening of the treaty or threatening to unilaterally abrogate it. Such a move would be the height of economic and foreign policy irresponsibility.

“What is needed is the cooperative work of partners to reduce the burden of complying with NAFTA’s rules of origin and to reduce border delays so they do not become impediments to trade or the equivalent of a tariff. Perhaps most of all, those who would lead our countries must work to ensure that the benefits of NAFTA are understood throughout our countries, and not jeopardized through ‘cowboy diplomacy.’

“U.S. Sen. Barack Obama does not understand this. He has called NAFTA ‘devastating’ and ‘a big mistake,’ characterizations that are out of touch with the reality of NAFTA in Michigan. What truly would be devastating is to jeopardize the trade expansion of NAFTA through a misguided, isolationist impulse that would inevitably and understandably alienate a key partner like Canada.”

mkovac@dixcom.com