The Birth of NAFTA-It Took Clinton to Get It Ratified

[babylonsister]

http://www.counterpunch.org/?ts=1204232249

It Took Clinton to Get It Ratified
The Birth of NAFTA

By FRED GARDNER


The best defense, some say, is a good offense. Hilllary's "Shame on you, Barack Obama" performance deflected attention from the fact that the Clinton Administration did indeed get NAFTA through a resistant Congress. NAFTA was conceived under Reagan and then pushed by Poppy Bush, who got an extension of fast-track negotiating authority from Congress. (Meaning Congress couldn't revise the text, just vote yes or no.) Agreement with Canada and Mexico was reached in August '92.

As a candidate for president Bill Clinton supported NAFTA with the proviso that side agreements (that would not involve renegotiating the NAFA text) might be needed to protect the environment and the rights of workers. After taking office, Clinton negotiated the side agreements, ignoring the majority of Democrats in Congress whose preference was to scuttle the pact altogether.

snip//

Rockefeller's lifelong gopher, Henry Kissinger, weighed in at the same time with a piece in the LA Times calling NAFTA "the single most important decision that Congress would make during Mr. Clinton's first term ... . the most creative step toward a new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War ... not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system."

Meanwhile, on the legal front, Public Citizen, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth had sued the Bush Administration for not completing an environmental impact statement on NAFTA. On June 30, 1993, U.S. District Court Judge Charles Richey ruled that the White House did indeed have to complete an EIS before sending NAFTA to Congress. The Clinton Administration asked a U.S. appeals court to reverse the decision. Solicitor General Drew S. Days III argued that the Environmental Protection Act applies to federal ITAL agencies, END ITAL not to the president, who would be in charge of implementing NAFTA. (George W. Bush's advisors didn't invent the imperial presidency.) A three-judge panel overruled Richey and Clinton sent an implementing bill to Congress in November '93.

According to the NAM history, "Anti-NAFTA forces claimed they had enough votes to defeat the bill in the House, but as the House vote scheduled for November 17 approached, intense lobbying efforts by the White House and by the NAM and its members proved successful ... In the end, the House approved NAFTA by a 234-200 vote."

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, some say, is that the Democrats do it to us with lubrication. Poppy Bush probably could not have forced NAFTA through Congress. It took the Clinton side agreements to slide it through.

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. And losing the congress 2 years after taking office meant nothing? I love

rewritten history.

[Demeter]

2. Those Pesky Little Facts

always getting in the way of a good story...

[zonmoy]

3. which probably means that

if hillary wins through some way we will cease to be the united states and become part of the north american union.