• In spite of the at times deceptive salesmanship, NAFTA has never been a win-win situation.

• Bill Clinton’s legacy as the prime NAFTA pusher comes back to haunt Hillary.

• The contention that NAFTA will be heavily modified, if not dropped, is more “pie in the sky,” with the more likely political template, being that once victorious, either one of the Democratic primary contestants will be disinclined to roil the waters with a fight over the pact.

• Some comments on Cuban trade


Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton repeatedly tells the nation that she always has been wary of NAFTA, and would be prepared to suspend compliance with the trade agreement, if need be, should Canada and Mexico oppose reopening the pact to a new round of negotiations. Candidate Obama, while speaking in the same vein, has been less specific, if anything, than even Clinton in calling for the revision of NAFTA. If Obama is occasionally muddled on the free trade issue, he at least is not revising history when it comes to NAFTA, as has been the case with candidate Clinton regarding her own as well as her husband’s record on the subject. On a number of occasions in recent weeks, she has been insisting that she always has been against NAFTA, in spite of the record contradicting such claims. The embarrassing fact is that, over the years, on a number of occasions, she has spoken in support of the trade pact, stressing its importance to the American economy.

Regarding Cuba, Hillary Clinton has insisted that she would not be prepared to enter into discussions with Havana unless a number of pre-conditions were met, including Cuba’s adoption of an open market system. Her critics will attack her on this point, on the grounds that no nation has the right to mandate what economic system or trade policies another nation should embrace unless it has freely affiliated with such a proposal and is not violating its previously established pledges. Cuba has made no such commitment to U.S.-style free trade. In fact, throughout Latin America, there is a distinct counter-trend in the direction back to the region’s traditional economic model, which features a mixed economy composed of strong public and private sectors.