Word: nafta
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...Secretary of State Warren Christopher nor National Security Advisor Anthony Lake convey to the country that they are firmly in command even as the President is busy elsewhere. All the same, Clinton's foreign policy deserves more respect than it usually receives. He normalized ties with Vietnam, pushed the NAFTA and GATT trade agreements through Congress, propped up the Middle East peace process, deployed forces to Haiti--with almost no casualties--and worked out a deal to halt North Korea's nuclear-weapons program. His Partnership for Peace program has bought time for everyone in Europe and NATO to adjust...
...America's already immense and growing commercial involvement in the world beyond its borders. Americans spend more than 10 billion minutes a year on international phone calls. Travel abroad is exploding. About 20% of the U.S. economy now depends on international trade. The Mexican peso's collapse has sullied NAFTA, and makes it harder for Washington to argue the instant benefits of free trade. But the trend toward international economic interdependence is inexorable, and those who participate--some 10 million Americans owe their jobs to exports--are a natural constituency for more robust U.S. leadership...
...trade, as on immigration, Buchanan yields to no presidential contender in the extremity of his policy. Not only did he vocally oppose NAFTA and the creation of the World Trade Organization (unlike Dole, Gramm and Clinton), now that these agreements have passed, he won't let bygones be bygones. He wants to dismantle both pacts and erect new trade barriers: a 10% tariff on Japanese goods, a 20% tariff on Chinese goods and a "social tariff" of unknown size on goods from Mexico and other developing nations...
There are less risky ways to dampen the effects of cheap foreign labor on American wages, but they are the tools of Democrats, not Republicans. Trade deals like NAFTA can require member nations to have a high minimum wage, maintain strict environmental regulations or guarantee the right to unionize. Such rules directly confront the problems of inhumanely low wages and reckless environmental degradation--the Third World production shortcuts that Buchanan says justify his social tariff. But Buchanan's ideology won't countenance this solution since it involves the transnational panels of adjudication that he deems inimical to sovereignty...
There has been no reported surge in crossings from illegal immigrants trying to tune in to an O.J. broadcast, so the case has no implications for NAFTA...