Clinton, Obama spar over NAFTA
TOLEDO, Ohio — Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton said rival Barack Obama’s campaign has been caught in a lie about who is really prepared to reform the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Obama’s campaign has denied that his economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told Canadian officials not to worry about Obama’s pledge to renegotiate NAFTA with Canada and Mexico — that it was just political rhetoric.
But the Associated Press found a memo from officials at the Canadian consulate in Chicago saying Goolsbee did meet with officials there and told them just that.
“NAFTA — I don’t just criticize it. I don’t have my campaign go tell a foreign government behind closed doors, ‘That’s just politics. Don’t pay attention to it,’ ” Clinton told cheering fans at the University of Toledo this morning.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, introducing Clinton this morning, said: “It has recently come to light that Sen. Clinton’s opponent has a chief economic adviser who is reported to have talked to the government leadership in Canada [and said] that her opponent is not very serious about what he’s saying in Ohio, that it’s just political rhetoric.”
“Here in Ohio, we think it’s important to say what you mean and mean what you say,” Strickland told the cheering Clinton crowd.
Earlier Monday, Clinton said, “I don’t think people should come to Ohio and you both give speeches that are very critical of NAFTA and you send out misleading and false information about my positions regarding NAFTA, and then we find out that your chief economic adviser has gone to a foreign government and basically done the old wink-wink, don’t pay any attention this is just political rhetoric.”
Obama’s campaign issued this statement from spokesman Bill Burton: “Sen. Clinton knows full well that she's not telling the truth on this story, and that her blatant distortion is just part of her campaign's stated strategy to throw the kitchen sink at Sen. Obama in the closing days of this campaign. The truth is, Sen. Clinton called NAFTA a victory and has switched positions for raw political reasons. Her false attack won't protect American workers, but as President, Senator Obama will.”
Obama is running a harsh radio ad against Clinton in Ohio in which a former steelworker says, “Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA and I lost my job because of that. I just don’t think she supports people like me.”
In their last debate, both candidates walked a fine line, saying they did not think they would have to scrap the free trade agreement they blame for sending U.S. jobs to Mexico. They said the mere threat of scrapping it should be enough to get Mexico and Canada to agree to renegotiate it, guaranteeing better terms for the United States, they said.
Clinton told the crowd this morning that she’s the candidate who cares about their problems.
“Does anybody really care about the hard-working people of Ohio?” Clinton asked.
“Hillary!” her supporters shouted.
“That’s right — I do,” she said. “The steel mills are shuttered, The auto production is iffy. The kind of problems we see in our industrial bases [like] Toledo are not being addressed.”
In a conference call Monday morning, Clinton’s campaign managers noted the start of political fund-raiser Antoin ‘‘Tony’’ Rezko’s trial in Chicago today and urged reporters to question Obama more about his relationship with Rezko.
Clinton left to catch a plane to Texas where Obama is campaigning today. She plans to watch the returns of Tuesday’s elections here while Obama watches them in Texas. Clinton once had big leads in the polls in both states. Now both seem very close, though she appears to have a better chance of winning in Ohio.
“I feel really good about what’s going to happen right here in Ohio tomorrow,” Clinton said.
