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The last campaign strategy by John Edwards focused on trade agreements. He has many claims on how he would manage trade agreements. The main thrust seems to fit in with his chosen set of victims. He would oppose any trade agreement that did not meet his opinion on what favors the American worker, American families and possibly the environment.

The North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act of 1993 and records and reports related to it reveal some interesting facts. The bill passed both Houses of Congress which had significant Democratic party majority representation and a White House presided over by a Democratic President. In the House of Representatives, the Democratic majority was 238 Democrats versus 175 Republicans and 1 Independent. The Senate had a Democratic majority of 56 Democrats to 44 Republicans. And as mentioned earlier the President was a Democrat.

Some reports offered here from excerpts in a publication on trade indicate most Democrats were opposed to NAFTA. It was suggested that the President’s support of NAFTA was relying on a party line vote from the GOP for passage. The roll call vote in the House resulted in passage by a vote of 234 to 200. 75% of Republicans voted for NAFTA. About 40% of Democrats did. Had a mere 18 YEA votes been converted to NAY, the bill would have failed in the House.

The situation in the Senate was also a bit puzzling. All reports reviewed indicated most Democrats were against NAFTA. If that is the case, why did a 56 to 44 Democratic majority in the Senate pass NAFTA with a roll call vote of 61 to 38 with one not voting?

Based on President Bill Clinton’s position favoring and working to pass NAFTA as well as a large Democratic majority declining to oppose it along party line and a GOP membership largely in favor of it, if you opposed NAFTA in the past and still oppose it now, neither party will be much help.

In terms of the Democratic side of the 2008 Presidential race there is no reason to believe the Clinton’s position on this issue has changed. The Democratic party’s performance the last time around renders Edwards’ take on trade agreements moot. There is no indication members of the Democratic party would act any differently if Edwards was calling the shots.

For the GOP members to largely vote in favor of NAFTA while many conservative voices opposed it may indicate satisfying corporate lobbyists as the reason for supporting it. For Democrats the reason may be the same but to curry favor by voting with the President is another possible reason. Some members on either side of the vote are still members of Congress.

The bottom line suggests that criticizing the GOP for the results of trade agreements is pointless, at least as a campaign tool. The Democratic party’s record on trade agreements is not substantially different. So the discussion related to the 2008 Presidential election need not include trade agreements. This is one area where political party really doesn’t matter. Edwards use of this issue must have overlooked these points. But then it may have been designed only to appeal to his ‘American worker’ victims.

Stanford Matthews
MoreWhat.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Public Affairs, Money Matters, Bush, wordpress, Politics, campaign, election, GOP, Democrats, conservative, liberal, Clinton, Edwards, Foreign Affairs, Congress, Minimum Wage, Business, WTO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.