McClatchy Washington Bureau
25 NOV 2016 AT 13:55 ET November 25, 2016
Alex Daugherty
McClatchy Washington Bureau
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush ceremonially signed the North American Free Trade Agreement, slashing tariffs throughout Canada, Mexico and the United States.
In 2016, the agreement signed by a Texas Republican faces its potential demise through Republican President-elect Donald Trump, elected on a wave of populism in Rust Belt states where free trade is seen as anathema to manufacturing jobs.
Republicans have generally supported free trade and expanding trade agreements for decades.
It was Democrats who vehemently opposed NAFTA in the early 1990s. It was a coalition of labor unions, students and leftists who stormed the streets of Seattle in 1999 to protest the World Trade Organization. And it was Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders who pushed Hillary Clinton for months during the Democratic presidential primary with his opposition toward the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
Texas Republicans in Washington and Austin support free trade, as business interests have claimed the state benefits from close economic ties with Mexico in particular.
"NAFTA is not a dirty word in Texas," U.S. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said in an interview with the Brookings Institution earlier this year.
But Trump called NAFTA the "worst trade deal ever" during the campaign and threatened to hike tariffs on certain Mexican goods, worrying trade associations and business interests.
Read more
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/donald-trumps-anti-trade-rhetoric-puts-texas-republicans-in-a-bind/
This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment