In politics, things are seldom as they appear. That’s a given, since the profession is largely run by the advertising business. Every public appearance, every stump speech, and especially every TV advertisement is meant to have an effect, never openly stated. The key to understanding politics is to ignore everything that is said, and concentrate on actions.
Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA, an agreement designed to allow American corporations access to cheap labor and resources in Canada, but mostly Mexico. Underdeveloped countries need to protect their markets and native industries. Trade may be their friend, but free trade is their enemy. NAFTA was meant to bring our labor costs down, to displace American workers with Mexicans, to open up markets in which to dump American surpluses, and prevent countries that supply us with cheap labor and resources from developing. All the while protecting our vital assets – the markets we want to protect, generally falling under the heading “intellectual property”. That’s our seed and manufacturing patents, the formula for Coca Cola, and weapon system designs. The things we do best.
It’s a neat formula – we get theirs while protecting ours. We used to call it “imperialism”, but we’ve advanced beyond that.
NAFTA was controversial, and it is typical of American politics that both parties favored the treaty while the public was mostly opposed. An outsider, H. Ross Perot, upset the apple cart by opposing it, and built a large public following in the process. Perot kept George H.W. Bush from having a second term, and harmonized with American workers. He was clearly dangerous.
The parties dealt with Perot and others like him in the only way the knew – they took over the presidential debates from the League of Women Voters, and from 1996 forward, prohibited third parties from participating. Never again would an outsider be allowed to challenge the two-party system to the degree that Perot did. Never again would a third party be given that kind of visibility. He almost undid them. He scared them.
Free trade agreements are the staple of both parties. Bill Clinton gave us a little syrup to help us swallow NAFTA by negotiating meaningless environmental and labor side agreements. But NAFTA was meant to be be a hard-wired policy and a wave of the future. Other free trade agreements would follow, each controversial, each supported by both parties, opposed by the public and native populations in targeted countries. The trick would be in the implementation in the face of public opposition. Candidates would have to publicly oppose the agreements while privately supporting them.
Now comes Colombia. Hillary Clinton says she opposes the Colombia free trade agreement. Not likely. But we’ve had a “gaffe” (def: accidentally saying something true) – her trusted senior strategist, Mark Penn, is also working for the Colombian government in promoting the agreement. It’s created a stir. But in every press report I have read about the gaffe, such as this one over at Huffington Post, they refer to the treaty that Hillary Clinton opposes. They take her at face. It’s their job not to be suspicious, and they are good at their job.
Forget what they say, watch what they do. The Colombian Free Trade Agreement was obviously low on Clinton’s horizon, not something she much thought about except to know not to touch it for fear of getting shocked. The fact that Penn is there, that he is actively working for the treaty speaks, and we should listen. Most likely if she were elected, it would sail through, and because it would be early in her term, she could easily withstand the damage. Democrats love being in power, and as with Bill Clinton, will suffer any amount of humiliation to have a “D” behind the person in power.
Hillary Clinton is pro-free-trade, pro-NAFTA, pro-CAFTA, and pro Colombian Free Trade Agreement. I know she doesn’t say this, I know we are to take her at face when she brazenly lies to us, but I see what I see. It is what it is.
We’ve had a gaffe, they’re in damage control mode now, but the Colombian free trade agreement is safe and on track.
Piece of Mindful 
The real reason it’s safe and on track is because of this from Ed M at Hot Air.
“As the editors point out, the irony is that the Colombian pact would benefit the US more than Colombia, although it would boost both national economies. Colombia already imports here tariff-free as an incentive to suppress its drug trade. American goods, especially agricultural goods, face up to 80% tariffs in the Colombian market, making them non-competitive. If we slap tariffs on Colombian goods, we will lose the nation to the orbit of Hugo Chavez and the other socialists in the region, and we will lose their cooperation against narco-trafficking.”
Mark, you wouldn’t be aganist Columbia’s free trade because it benefits Hugo, would you?
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That’s interesting! Let me take a minute here and tell you that I don’t know why Colombia would want a free trade agreement. It doesn’t benefit their people. But it wouldn’t be the first time that a country’s leadership pushes through something that hurts its own citizens, right?
That it would benefit the U.S. far more than Colombia is a given. Maybe it would help the upper crust in that country, the compromised classes, the contradoras. Those are the ones who usually benefit from involvement with the U.S.
Other than starry-eyed ground-level operatives, the Drug War is a sham, so that can’t possibly be the reason. The pact will benefit the Colombian economy no more than NAFTA has Mexico’s, so that’s not the reason. It could be that the U.S. wants to dump agricultural surplus there, as it has in Mexico (devastating Mexican farmers and driving them north), but that would create more refugees, and the U.S. surely doesn’t want more of them. Do they?
Chavez is extremely popular and worrisome to U.S. leaders. He’s a dead man walking. Colombia is seen as an important strategic asset – it has oil and sits on the Venezuelan border, and so can be used as a staging ground for terrorist raids and other activities. Is the U.S pursuing a free trade pact as a means of keeping the leadership of that country in our camp?
I don’t know the reason. I just know that things are never what they appear to be.
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