Tom Piatak

April 24, 2009

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial this morning chortling that Obama has quietly abandoned pledges, made while campaigning in the industrial Midwest, to renegotiate NAFTA.  Of course, this should come as no surprise.  An Obama adviser reassured the Canadians during the campaign that Obama’s criticism of NAFTA was empty campaign rhetoric, as Matt Roberts pointed out here at Takimag at the time.  And it has only become more clear since then that Obama will almost invariably seek to reflect the consensus of the liberal upper middle class, a class that remains committed to free trade, despite the economic damage wrought by globalism on America’s manufacturing base.  Obama believes our economic future lies in “green jobs,” health care, and education—the three biggest beneficiaries of his stimulus package—and Americans who voted for Obama in the misguided belief that he would defy the establishment consensus for global free trade will continue to be disappointed.