Adviser's trade chat 'casual': Obama
NAFTA NASTINESS | He dismisses, Clinton spotlights, talk with Canadians
TOLEDO, Ohio -- A "casual" comment an adviser to presidential hopeful Barack Obama made at the Canadian consulate in Chicago has become an international incident, with Canada's opposition leader accusing the prime minister of trying to "interfere" in an American election.
Obama rival Hillary Clinton told voters here Monday that Obama's campaign was caught in a lie about which of them is really prepared to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. Both candidates tell voters here that NAFTA costs Americans jobs.
(AP)
"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 said.
Obama and his campaign managers had denied that Obama's economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told Canadian officials not to worry about Obama's pledges to renegotiate NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, that it was just political rhetoric.
But the Associated Press found a memo from a Canadian consular official saying Goolsbee did meet with them and told them just that.
Obama denied he or his staffers intentionally misled the press last week when they denied Goolsbee spoke to Canadian officials about NAFTA.
"When I gave you that information, that was the information that I had at the time," Obama said. "It turned out that the Canadian consulate in Chicago contacted one of my advisers, Austan Goolsbee, on their initiative. Invited him down to meet with them. He went down there as a courtesy and at some point they started talking about trade and NAFTA."
Obama dismissed Goolsbee's remarks as part of a "casual conversation."
In the Canadian parliament Monday, opposition leader Jack Layton accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper's conservative government of deliberately leaking the memo to help the United States' Republican Party -- a charge Harper denied.
Here in Ohio, the issue of American jobs being shipped to Mexico -- there doesn't seem to be much angst about jobs going to Canada -- stirs voters' passions.
Clinton quickly created a radio commercial telling voters here that Obama is changing his story on NAFTA. Obama has already been running a harsh radio ad against Clinton in which a laid-off worker says, "Hillary Clinton supported NAFTA, and I lost my job because of that. I just don't think she supports people like me."
The polls show Clinton still slightly ahead in Ohio, down from a once-commanding lead over Obama. Polls show the race much closer in Texas, where Clinton also once held a wide lead. Both states, along with Rhode Island and Vermont, have primaries today.