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While on the campaign trail Obama talked out of both sides of his mouth about the trade issue. He made noises as if he might renegotiate NAFTA (his campaign even stated he’d been consistently opposed to it), but in the final presidential debate, he came out of the closet as unashamedly in support of free trade. In recent days we’ve seen Obama do everything he can to distance himself from a Buy America proposal in the stimulus plan. As on nearly every issue, Obama had to portray himself as all things to all people when it comes to the trade issue too (why should it be different than any other?).
In an Orwellian use of the term, barackobama.com states that the Obama/Biden team supports fair trade. What possibly can Obama/Biden mean by the ‘fair trade’ that they make reference to on their website, when Obama has come out in numerous fora in support of corporate globalization, third world slave labor conditions, and longstanding global ‘free’ trade agreements. Indeed, no one on Obama’s economic team has a history of supporting anything but free trade economic theory.
Both Obama and his competitor Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary attempted to tap into the populist furor against free trade agreements (by trying to outdo each other on who is more opposed to job killing ‘free’ trade deals such as NAFTA), while on the campaign trail, however, now that the deal has been sealed (now that Obama has four years before having to face the wrath of the voters again) we see what Barack Obama’s true feelings actually are on trade. Obama stands with the global corporate oligarchy, and not with the working people and wage laborers who voted him into the office of the presidency. Obama stands for continuing the race to the bottom, and the third worldization of the country he ostensibly supports a good standard of living for and believes in and loves.
