Dan Shoom, Kingston IS Five Part Series on NAFTA

Part 2
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Both Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton got elected largely because
they campaigned against the records of their despised predecessors.
The Mulroney Conservatives and the Reagan/Bush Republicans were
identified with the pro-market corporate agenda, and seen as caring
little about the suffering experienced by the majority of the
population. Chretien and Clinton, meanwhile, promised to build hope
through using government to get the economy going, create jobs, and
help those to whom wealth did not trickle down.

NAFTA has shown that despite this rhetoric Chretien and Clinton are
just as much buddies of big business as Mulroney and Bush before
them.

Chretien's implementation of NAFTA despite such meaningless changes
demonstrates the similarity between the new Liberal government and
the hated Conservatives they just replaced. Like the Tories - or
the provincial NDP governments, too - the Liberals are emphasizing
deficit reduction through cuts, not by recovering the billions owed
in back taxes by business, or by increasing the taxation levels on
big business and the rich which were cut by the Tories. While the
Conservatives deficit reduction plans were not believable, and the
Reform Party's are scary, the Liberal's have set a target that is
believable.

The Liberals previously were critical of the high interest rate
policy of the Bank of Canada's governor John Crow. This policy put
hundreds of thousands of people out of work by forcing up the value
of the Canadian dollar, making exports more expensive and forcing
many exporters out of business. High interest rates also inhibit
borrowing which exacerbates the recession.

Liberal Finance Minister Paul Martin is now saying that his
disagreement with Crow is about something that happened
two-and-a-half years ago. But Crow still claims price stability is
his primary concern. He's still more concerned about a two per cent
rate of inflation than two million people without jobs. And
relative to the rate of inflation interests rates are still high.
This is prolonging the recession.

Martin's apparent concern that investors remain confident is not
surprising. Martin along with trade minister Roy MacLaren and
industry minister John Manley are known as the 3M's. By appointing
three men whose reputations are as being as pro-business (and
pro-NAFTA in MacLaren's case) as Conservatives, Chretien sent out
a strong signal that his government will be just as friendly to big
business as their predecessors.

For President Clinton, NAFTA was similarly the clearest example of
his coziness with big business. This is what an article from the
Wall Street Journal, the leading American business newspaper,
reprinted in the Globe & Mail, Canada's leading business newspaper,
had to say: "On issue after issue, Mr. Clinton and his
administration come down on the same side as corporate America,
with the successful fight for the North American free-trade
agreement only the most conspicuous example."

The same article also notes that the "Clinton presidency has
revived the Business Roundtable, which consists of 200 big-company
chief executives. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the
Roundtable was nearly irrelevant. Now, it's a major player. It
formed the core of USA NAFTA, a pro-NAFTA group that had lobbyists
for nearly every big business interest in Washington working
hand-in-hand with the White House."

When Clinton endorsed NAFTA during the Presidential election
campaign he made his endorsement conditional on winning side deals
to protect labour rights and the environment. The side deals agreed
to by Canada, the U.S. and Mexico in August were seen by most
opponents of NAFTA as meaningless. Now, Clinton apparently agrees.
In a Washington Post article on Oct. 29 the Clinton administration
admitted that the side deals were meaningless.

Other, less conspicuous but no less telling examples of Clinton's
corporate agenda:
-In his first ten months in office Clinton lunched with small
groups of top corporate executives 80 times.
-Clinton wants to force all foreign aid recipients to buy more U.S.
goods. Such 'tied aid' is frequently criticized by non-governmental
development organizations for undermining the very goal of helping
poorer countries.
-Clinton has sided with environmentalists over the objections of
business on only one issue so far.
-Said Harold (Red) Poling, recently retired chairman of Ford Motor
Co.: "We're getting along much better with this administration than
we did with previous ones."