Obama's NAFTA Problem

Look's like Barack Obama wants to have his cake and eat it too with NAFTA.

Obama targets NAFTA but says supports free trade

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama assured U.S. trading partners on Sunday that he did not oppose free trade despite making increasingly critical comments about multilateral deals such as NAFTA.

So what's his problem with NAFTA?

He has pounded rival Hillary Clinton, a New York senator, for switching positions on NAFTA and said repeatedly that he would revisit that pact to instill environmental and labor standards.

Right, so Obama is for free trade, just not this free trade.

Obama can "revisit" all he wants, you don't get to unilaterally change an existing trade agreement. And somebody might want to clue Obama in that saying you want to do so will make it a little hard to negotiate agreements in the future with anybody if he does be come President. Of course, Obama has a different take

:"What the world should interpret is my consistent position, which is I believe in trade," he said after meeting with workers at a manufacturing plant in Ohio.

"I just want to make sure that the rules of the road apply to everybody and they are fair and that they reflect the interests of workers and not just corporate profits."

So now Obama says he wants to negotiate higher standards in future trade agreements, as long as he get's to define what "fair" is. Obama also has plans for future negotiations:

Looking forward, Obama said the World Trade Organization's Doha round of trade talks should have provisions that reject child labor and poor environmental standards while creating opportunities for developing nations to sell their goods to wealthy countries.

Note to Obama, if you truly want to negotiate with these people, you might want to cool it with your current talk about changing an exisiting agreement such as NAFTA. The other parties involved have absolutely no reason to believe you.

Good luck with that.