WASHINGTON (AFP) — Damage to US jobs blamed on the North American Free Trade Agreement has made the pact the latest target of Democratic presidential candidates, who are vigorously competing to criticize it.
With a nominating contest looming next week in the hard-hit manufacturing state of Ohio, one of two potentially decisive votes for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both have laid into the treaty (NAFTA).
In a televised debate in Ohio Tuesday night, ahead of next Tuesday's voting there and in Texas, both Democrats vowed to shake up NAFTA, introduced by Clinton's husband Bill Clinton during his presidency in 1994.
"I will say we will opt out of NAFTA unless we renegotiate," Clinton said in a televised debated with Obama in Ohio on Tuesday.
The agreement created the largest trading bloc in the world by eliminating import tariffs on goods circulating among Canada, the United States and Mexico.
But free trade caused the loss of nearly a quarter of Ohio's manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007, according to a recent study by the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition.
"It has worked in some parts of America," Clinton said. "It has not worked in Ohio."
"I will make sure that we renegotiate in the same way that Senator Clinton talked about, and I think actually Senator Clinton's answer on this one is right," said Obama in Tuesday's debate.
"I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out" to force Canada and Mexico to reopen trade talks, he said.
"We can't keep passing unfair trade deals like NAFTA that put special interests over workers' interests," the Illinois senator had said on Sunday at a factory in Ohio.
Obama has enjoyed a slew of 11 consecutive successes in state nominating contests and has even appeared to chisel into Clinton's voting support base among blue-collar workers. He has also used NAFTA as ammunition against her.
"It was her husband who got NAFTA passed," Obama said. "In her own book, Senator Clinton called NAFTA one of 'Bill's successes'."
Clinton insists that she has opposed NAFTA from the start despite her husband's role.
She shot back on Sunday that Obama "continues to spend millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods ... talking about NAFTA in a way that tries to make him appear to have a plan when he does not."
While striking a broadly pro-free trade stance, Obama has promised measures to prevent jobs shifting overseas.
"We can't shy away from globalization. We can't draw a moat around us," Obama said.
"The problem is we've been negotiating just looking at corporate profits and what's good for multinationals, and we haven't been looking at what's good for communities here."
Republican frontrunner John McCain is a supporter of NAFTA, though in a video interview with the Des Moines Register newspaper in Iowa, he said it has had its "winners and losers."
The Democratic candidates' suggestions that United States might pull out of NAFTA drew criticism Wednesday from US, Canadian and Mexican officials, who warned that protectionism would be devastating to the region.
"NAFTA is a successful agreement" with 230 billion dollars of trade, US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told reporters in Mexico. "If you go over the figures, it's clear (NAFTA) has benefited the three countries."
Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urged the candidates to seek advice from "those who are very knowledgeable about NAFTA" before making sweeping judgments for political gain.
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