International Law

Obama Administration Prefers Not To Rock The Trade Policy Boat

By Stan

Remember back during the US presidential campaign when American bloggers like me were endlessly speculating on what sort of trade policy an Obama Administration would follow?

The worry was that things would lurch to the left, at least for a while, in a similar fashion to what happened during the first Clinton Administration. Obama himself made some folks nervous by calling on a ban of Chinese toy imports and suggesting that he might reopen existing US trade agreements and renegotiate based on labor and environmental items.

So how’s that working out? With respect to the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the rhetoric appears to have a bit overblown:

President Barack Obama said on Friday that given the weakened state of the U.S., Mexican and Canadian economies, this is not the time to reopen the NAFTA treaty for negotiations. (Reuters)

Shocking, I know. Hey, better that crazy talk during an election cycle is ignored than actually acted upon, though.

This doesn’t have too much to do with China. Talks over climate change issues will continue, trade disputes initiated on both sides will move forward. However, there does not appear to be a desire by this administration to go back to square one on some of these agreements and renegotiate them based on fair trade principles.

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Full post as published by China Hearsay on August 11, 2009 (boomark / email).