Is Hillary Clinton Double-Talking on Trade Deals?
Wednesday, 03 August 2016 00:00 By JP Sottile, Consortium News | News
Analysis
Did perennial Clinton rainmaker and current Virginia Governor Terry
McAuliffe let the cat out of the bag? The "cat" is the widely-held suspicion
that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton isn't really opposed
to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The "bag" is the campaign narrative
that frames her election year reversal on the controversial trade accord as
the outcome of an honest re-examination of a deal that she once hailed as
"the gold standard in trade agreements."
Just to add to the confusion, Hillary Clinton failed to declare her
opposition to the TPP in her historic acceptance speech. Instead, she asked
assembled Democrats to join her if they "believe that we should say 'no' to
unfair trade deals" and "stand up to China."
It was an understandable omission given the grievances of Bernie loyalists
poised to pounce on her every misstep. By avoiding the minefield completely
she disappointed union leaders and deferred the issue until she debates
Donald Trump.
Until then, she -- and notable surrogates like economist Joseph Stiglitz --
will try to convince a trade-weary public that she's truly committed to
renegotiating the increasingly unpopular deal. She'll also be beating-back
the ghost of trade deals past.
United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams claims Hillary assured him
during the primary that she's also committed to reopening the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Like the TPP, she was for it before she was
against it. And like Hillary's campaign promise to tweak NAFTA, McAuliffe
suggested in an interview with Politico that -- if she wins the White House
-- Clinton would make a few tweaks in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade
deal and then support it.
These caveats fit into a long pattern of trade policy triangulation that
raises the question: Is this policy reversal truly a switch or just another
bait and switch? There is good reason for the buyer to beware.
"Once the election's over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a
couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a
global economy," McAuliffe said.
Trading Places
NAFTA is America's most notorious trade deal. Although It was negotiated by
the first Bush Administration, it was Bill Clinton who closed the deal. At
the end of his first year in office he guided NAFTA through the House and
Senate by offsetting Democratic resistance with significant Republican
majorities. Its ratification fit perfectly with the "centrist" mission of
the Clinton-led "New Democrat" movement incubated by the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC) during the preceding decade.
From its inception in 1985, the DLC triangulated against the Democratic
Party's "liberal" moniker that the GOP so effectively turned into an epithet
after Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. The historic loss of "liberal"
former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988 set the table for the
DLC's corporately-minded "New" Democrats. The election of DLC star Bill
Clinton in 1992 was the turning point.
With the DLC's best salesman and former chairman in the Oval Office, the
Democratic Party was open for business. His wheeling-dealing economic team
opened a whole new avenue for Wall Street to influence U.S. government
policies. The Democrats were no longer a political roadblock.
Even if these New Democrats weren't completely trading places with the GOP,
Team Clinton was certainly willing to triangulate against Democrats'
traditional constituencies
particularly on trade.
The biggest signal of Clinton's brand new deal was Al Gore's smug dismissal
of Ross Perot's NAFTA warning on Larry King's CNN show about the trade deal
causing a "giant sucking sound" of American jobs going to Mexico. In
dismissing Perot's worries, Gore fired the starting gun for the go-go
globalization of the 1990s.
The Morning NAFTA
For the first decade of NAFTA, Perot's "sucking sound" seemed to go in
reverse. As Sonali Kolhatkar detailed on TruthDig, big U.S. agribusinesses
flooded Mexico with cheap, subsidized corn and seven other market-crushing
products. That tidal wave put small Mexican farmers out of work. Ironically,
they flooded back across the border to work in -- surprise! -- Big Ag's
burgeoning factory farming operations in states like Iowa, North Carolina,
Alabama and Arkansas. Go figure.
According to a 2014 assessment by the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, Mexico is still waiting for the promise of NAFTA's economic
leveling effect to be fulfilled. It's actually lost ground on economic
growth and GDP per person. And the poverty rate remains essentially
unchanged.
But NAFTA did offer another low wage alternative to manufacturing in the
United States. That helps keep retail prices low enough to match the eroding
purchasing power of American consumers, which suffers because their wages
are, like Mexican workers, flat or declining. The one thing that hasn't
suffered? Corporate profits and the executive compensation it is predicated
upon. Again, go figure.
Where Credit Is Due
Although NAFTA is the usual target of ant-trade fervor, it simply doesn't
compare with the transformative impact of Bill Clinton's biggest "trade
deal" -- securing Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status for China. Repeated
approval of Chinese access to U.S. markets set off a wave of job losses in
America's industrial heartland. It stoked corporate profits and consumer
debt. And it ushered in the often-lamented era of the big box store.
Rising retail titans like Arkansas-based Walmart rushed into China's
incredibly favorable labor market. The cheap products they made turned the
1990s into a decade of plenty. Big box stores were stocked with cheap
plastic stuff and consumers gobbled up the bargains with one or more of the
credit cards they'd been given during an unprecedented era of ubiquitous
consumer credit.
A study by Demos published in 2003 found that during Bill Clinton's tenure
the "average American family experienced a 53 percent increase in credit
card debt, from $2,697 to $4,126." Low-income families experienced a "184
percent rise in their debt." And, despite the rise in income inequality
during his presidency, even "high-income families had 28 percent more credit
card debt in 2001 than they did in 1989."
Demos also found a sharp rise in credit card direct mail solicitations from
1.52 billion in 1993 to a staggering 5 billion in 2001. Monthly minimums
where lowered from 5 percent to 2 percent, thus making it easier to carry
debt. And the consumer credit industry "tripled the amount of credit it
offered customers from $777 billion to almost $3 trillion" by the time
Clinton left office. It was a bill of sale first written by Bill Clinton on
the campaign trail in 1992.
Promises, Promises
When Bill Clinton ran for president, the Cold War was over; the Savings and
Loan scandal had exploded; the economy was mired in a sharp recession; and
incumbent President George H.W. Bush couldn't do a damn thing right. He
seemed bored by people's "pain." He looked woefully out of touch in a
grocery check-out line. And he'd broken the infamous "no new taxes" pledge
that helped him defeat "Taxachusetts" Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988.
With Reaganomics on the ropes, Team Clinton scored repeatedly with their
"It's the Economy, Stupid" campaign. But Clinton also exploited another
weakness -- the Bush Administration's quick embrace of the Chinese
Government after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. That embrace was
sealed with a discomfiting handshake by Bush's national security advisor
Brent Scowcroft.
Shortly thereafter, President Bush renewed China's "Most Favored Nation"
trade status, which, among other things, lowered tariffs on Chinese imports
into the U.S. He was widely criticized, often from within his own party, for
cutting a deal with a regime some called "The Butchers of Beijing."
In the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton exploited Poppy's "kowtowing" to great
effect. Clinton accused Bush of "indifference toward democracy" in China.
And Clinton famously said Bush was willing to "coddle dictators." On March
9, 1992, Clinton proclaimed, "I do not believe we should extend 'Most
Favored Nation' status to China unless they make significant progress in
human rights, arms proliferation and fair trade."
Of course, that all changed after he took office. On March 28, 1993, the
cagey President announced he'd cut a deal with a Congress to extend a waiver
that effectively approved MFN while deferring human rights-related
conditions to the following year. Clinton even outlined other concerns,
including China's "$18 billion trade surplus" with the U.S.
But all those concerns, along with his campaign pledge, where jettisoned on
March 27, 1994 when Clinton made the economy-changing decision to "de-link"
China's MFN status from human rights. That decision buried Tiananmen Square
in the crowded graveyard of America's often-trumpeted "advocacy" for human
rights around the globe.
It also unleashed American corporations to dive headlong into China's vast,
cheap pool of low-wage labor. By the time Clinton made his state visit to
China in the summer of 1998, MFN was becoming a footnote to the amazing
story of China's skyrocketing industrial output. Facing charges of hypocrisy
on human rights, Clinton countered, "I'm going because I think it's the
right thing to do for our country."
That may be a debatable point. What's not in doubt is that it, like MFN, was
the right thing to do for the bottom line of American business. And it was
specifically beneficial for an emerging retail behemoth that had a long,
close relationship with the Clintons.
The Power Greeter
Alice Walton likes Hillary Clinton. That's a fairly safe assumption given
the $353,400 check she cut for the Hillary Victory Fund during a mad dash of
pre-election year fundraising at the end of 2015. And she also kicked in
another $25,000 into the "Ready for Hillary" SuperPAC. Those big donations
are, like the estimated $130 billion net worth of Walton family, a legacy
handed-down from Walmart founder Sam Walton.
That legacy dates back to Bill's time as Governor -- when the Walton family
began a long history of financial support of the Clintons, according to
Bloomberg. It made sense given Walmart's supersized role in Arkansas.
It also made good political sense that, as Michael Barbaro of the New York
Times reported back in 2007, Hillary was brought onto Walmart's Board of
Directors back in 1986 at the behest of Walton's wife Helen. That effort to
add a woman to the boardroom turned into a six-year stint that cemented the
long relationship between Arkansas' most famous corporation and its most
famous political family.
As Brian Ross of ABC News reported in the lead-up to her 2008 run, Hillary
notably left that glass ceiling-shattering appointment out of her biography.
She basically "de-linked" herself from a stridently anti-union company that
was also a notoriously thrifty spender on employee wages and benefits. The
ABC report also referenced a 1992 report showing her trumpeting Walmart's
"Buy America" campaign in spite of Walmart's reliance on children working in
sweatshops in places like Bangladesh. That's a practice Walmart continued
into the 1990s.
It came to a head in 1996 when All-American "sweetheart" Kathie Lee Gifford
got embroiled in a child labor scandal in Honduras. Coincidentally, that
scandal broke the same year Walmart entered China "through a joint-venture
agreement." And that was just two years after Bill Clinton "de-linked" human
rights from MFN.
It was also the same year that he successful renewed MFN with an
overwhelming vote of support by the House of Representatives. The timing
couldn't be better for Walmart. They'd auspiciously formed their
international division in 1993 and were poised to profit off Bill's broken
promise to "not coddle dictators."
But, as with all things Clinton, there really isn't a "smoking gun" linking
Bill's MFN reversal with Walmart's amazing good fortune in China. There is
just the lingering miasma of happy coincidences. Bill Clinton's crowning
coincidence before exiting the Oval Office was Congressional approval of his
proposal to give China permanent Most Favored Nation trading status in 2000.
The New Normal
On Oct. 10, 2000, he signed the U.S.China Relations Act of 2000 into law.
Most Favored Nation status officially became Normal Trade Relations. Also in
that year, the $18 billion trade deficit he decried in 1993 ballooned to $83
billion. Meanwhile, Walmart rode low-cost Chinese manufacturing to the top
of the retail heap. Walmart's massive workforce is now the third largest in
the world behind the U.S. Defense Department and, ironically, China's
People's Liberation Army.
Amazingly, the U.S. trade deficit with China more than tripled to $263
billion in the eight years after Clinton secured "Normal" trade relations in
2000. Meanwhile, Walmart's infamous low-wage practices at home were
subsidized annually to the tune of "an estimated $6.2 billion in public
assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing,"
according to 2015 report in Forbes.
Also amazingly, the Clintons' wealth skyrocketed to $111 million in the
years after Bill left office. Hillary spent those years in and out of
"public service" and the former President turned the Clinton Foundation into
a $439 million powerhouse by 2014.
While the Foundation's philanthropy is demonstrable, criticisms of it as a
de facto slush fund remain. But the link between political promises and
trade policy persisted. This time it was Hillary running for president. The
trade deal was with war-torn Colombia. And the campaign trail leads back to
the Clinton Foundation.
Rinse, Repeat
There is a strange symmetry between China's MFN status, the TPP imbroglio
and a notable "flip-flop" on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement by first-time
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008. Then like now, she was
competing against a movement candidate in newcomer Barack Obama. And then
like now, she struggled to protect her "left" flank on economic issues.
At issue in 2008 was a sweeping deal negotiated by the second Bush
Administration with the U.S.-supported, civil war-wracked narcostate of
Colombia. Obama "vowed" to oppose the deal. To keep pace with her
high-octane opponent, Hillary repeatedly reassured labor leaders of her
opposition to the deal.
The rub was two-fold. Not only did she have a decidedly pro-free trade
voting record as a senator. But both her free-trading husband and her chief
campaign strategist were on record supporting the deal. She ditched her
Colombia-linked strategist and matched Obama's anti-deal stance. But, just
like China's MFN before it, the trade agreement with Colombia eventually
became a "big win" for a Democratic President who was for it before he was
against it.
This time it was a flip-flopping President Obama. With the help of his
flip-flopping former foe and then-current Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, he scored a trade deal trifecta on Oct. 12, 2011. That's when
Congress approved the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement
(CTPA) and separate deals with both South Korea and Panama. Obama called the
trio of trade deals "a major win for American workers and businesses." Alas,
it turned out that there was a lot more change on trade than reason to hope
Obama or Hillary would keep their promises.
Mining the Depths
Meet billionaire mining magnate Frank Giustra. According to the New York
Times, the financial power-player's global interests have included
philanthropy and a $45 million stake in a deal to sell strategic uranium
mines in Central Asia and the United States to the Russian atomic energy
agency Rosatom. Strangely enough, those two interests -- charity and
strategic resources -- fit together nicely. That's because the uranium deal
required U.S. agencies -- including the State Department -- to sign-off
before it was approved.
The eight-year process for the uranium deal required approval by the U.S.
Committee on Foreign Investment of which the State Department is a member.
That approval finally came in 2010 when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of
State and while the Clinton Foundation was continuing to collect millions of
dollars from related investors.
Throughout, Giustra's wheeling and dealing continued with his close friend
and private jet-setting partner Bill Clinton, who gave a $500,000 speech to
a Russian investment bank that gave the stock a buy rating.
Since 2005, Giustra has lavished the Clinton Foundation with repeated
donations, adding up to in excess of $100 million. Yet, putting Bill
Clinton's oddly remunerative, but not uncommon $500,000 speech in Moscow
aside, there still is no smoking gun linking then-Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton to the actual approval of the deal. Once again we just have that
miasma of happy coincidences.
More troubling, though, is the coincidence that her husband's friend Frank
Giustra did benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement deal's "extreme"
protections for foreign investors and special rights for corporations
engaged in "resource extraction," according to an eye-opening exposé by
David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham-Cook and Andrew Perez of the International
Business Times.
At issue is a company formerly known as Pacific Rubiales, an oil company
founded by (you guessed it) Frank Giustra. The State Department repeatedly
fielded accusations of workers' rights and human rights abuses, particularly
related to strike targeting Pacific Rubiales in 2011. Strangely, the State
Department not only ignored these accusations, but actually praised the
Colombian government's stellar progress on human rights. Was this Hillary
Clinton's "de-linking" MFN moment?
Maybe it's worse. It looks like there's a little smoke coming out of this
gun. As Sirota, Cunningham-Cook and Perez reported:
"At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia's
human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with
Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of
Colombia's labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties
with the oil giant's founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now
occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family's global
philanthropic empire."
Those "commercial ties" include the "Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership"
which its snazzy website calls a "pioneering an innovative approach to
poverty alleviation" that "generates both social impact and financial
returns by addressing existing market gaps in developing countries' supply
or distribution chains."
Really, doesn't that "pioneering approach" sound a lot like the long-term
project of the Democratic Leadership Committee?
The "pioneering" privatization of "poverty alleviation" was a big part of
then-President Bill Clinton's famous "welfare reform bill" of 1996.
Profitable privatized prisons grew to match the skyrocketing demand created
by infamous "crime bill" of 1994. The "financial returns" flowed as the
prison "market gap" was closed. And like neoliberal trade policy,
deregulation of Wall Street and the media, it's all symptomatic of the
Clinton-led move of the party toward the corporate-friendly "center."
As Frank Giustra said in a 2006 profile of Bill Clinton for The New Yorker,
"All of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton. He's a brand, a worldwide
brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can." Based
on a Giustra's latest venture in Colombia -- a big financial play in the
Gran Colombia Gold Corporation -- he's still reaping the "free trade"
rewards of his bank-shot bet on Hillary Clinton.
In fact, he's not just going for the gold
but some silver, too.
Big Box Democrats
Back in 1992, the phenomenal Clinton political machine successfully sold the
"new," improved Democratic Party to Reaganomics-starved political consumers.
He felt their pain. He also changed his party and opened the door to the
big-box consumerism. Now that same sharp messaging machine is repackaging
Hillary's free-trading past, pulling Bill's mixed political record from the
shelves, and hard-selling her latter-day transformation on trade and
economic policies.
The question is: Will suspicious voters buy her "Come to Bernie" moment as a
wholesale conversion on the road to the White House? Disgruntled and
disaffected voters have to buy into the idea that she's truly changed on
trade and is not, as Terry McAuliffe implied, simply repeating a well-worn
pattern of bait and switch.
Simply put, she's got a long, demonstrable history of supporting trade
agreements. And by one account she specifically "pushed" the Trans-Pacific
Partnership 45 times. But that was then and this now. And now she's got a
disillusioned cadre of #BernieOrBusters to her left and a new army of
anti-trade Trumpsters to her right. That's left her stuck in the "centrist"
middle with the corporate donors, financiers and loyalists who've been
shopping in the supermarket of political influence ever since the Clintons
transformed the Democrats into the party of Big Box-style democracy.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
JP SOTTILE
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, published historian, radio co-host and
documentary filmmaker (The Warning, 2008). His credits include a stint on
the Newshour news desk, C-SPAN and as newsmagazine producer for ABC
affiliate WJLA in Washington. His weekly show, "Inside the Headlines With
The Newsvandal," co-hosted by James Moore, airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in
Fairfield, Iowa. He blogs under the pseudonym "the Newsvandal."
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Is Hillary Clinton Double-Talking on Trade Deals?
Wednesday, 03 August 2016 00:00 By JP Sottile, Consortium News | News
Analysis
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Did perennial Clinton rainmaker and current Virginia Governor Terry
McAuliffe let the cat out of the bag? The "cat" is the widely-held suspicion
that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton isn't really opposed
to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). The "bag" is the campaign narrative
that frames her election year reversal on the controversial trade accord as
the outcome of an honest re-examination of a deal that she once hailed as
"the gold standard in trade agreements."
Just to add to the confusion, Hillary Clinton failed to declare her
opposition to the TPP in her historic acceptance speech. Instead, she asked
assembled Democrats to join her if they "believe that we should say 'no' to
unfair trade deals" and "stand up to China."
It was an understandable omission given the grievances of Bernie loyalists
poised to pounce on her every misstep. By avoiding the minefield completely
she disappointed union leaders and deferred the issue until she debates
Donald Trump.
Until then, she -- and notable surrogates like economist Joseph Stiglitz --
will try to convince a trade-weary public that she's truly committed to
renegotiating the increasingly unpopular deal. She'll also be beating-back
the ghost of trade deals past.
United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams claims Hillary assured him
during the primary that she's also committed to reopening the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Like the TPP, she was for it before she was
against it. And like Hillary's campaign promise to tweak NAFTA, McAuliffe
suggested in an interview with Politico that -- if she wins the White House
-- Clinton would make a few tweaks in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade
deal and then support it.
These caveats fit into a long pattern of trade policy triangulation that
raises the question: Is this policy reversal truly a switch or just another
bait and switch? There is good reason for the buyer to beware.
"Once the election's over, and we sit down on trade, people understand a
couple things we want to fix on it but going forward we got to build a
global economy," McAuliffe said.
Trading Places
NAFTA is America's most notorious trade deal. Although It was negotiated by
the first Bush Administration, it was Bill Clinton who closed the deal. At
the end of his first year in office he guided NAFTA through the House and
Senate by offsetting Democratic resistance with significant Republican
majorities. Its ratification fit perfectly with the "centrist" mission of
the Clinton-led "New Democrat" movement incubated by the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC) during the preceding decade.
From its inception in 1985, the DLC triangulated against the Democratic
Party's "liberal" moniker that the GOP so effectively turned into an epithet
after Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. The historic loss of "liberal"
former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988 set the table for the
DLC's corporately-minded "New" Democrats. The election of DLC star Bill
Clinton in 1992 was the turning point.
With the DLC's best salesman and former chairman in the Oval Office, the
Democratic Party was open for business. His wheeling-dealing economic team
opened a whole new avenue for Wall Street to influence U.S. government
policies. The Democrats were no longer a political roadblock.
Even if these New Democrats weren't completely trading places with the GOP,
Team Clinton was certainly willing to triangulate against Democrats'
traditional constituencies
particularly on trade.
The biggest signal of Clinton's brand new deal was Al Gore's smug dismissal
of Ross Perot's NAFTA warning on Larry King's CNN show about the trade deal
causing a "giant sucking sound" of American jobs going to Mexico. In
dismissing Perot's worries, Gore fired the starting gun for the go-go
globalization of the 1990s.
The Morning NAFTA
For the first decade of NAFTA, Perot's "sucking sound" seemed to go in
reverse. As Sonali Kolhatkar detailed on TruthDig, big U.S. agribusinesses
flooded Mexico with cheap, subsidized corn and seven other market-crushing
products. That tidal wave put small Mexican farmers out of work. Ironically,
they flooded back across the border to work in -- surprise! -- Big Ag's
burgeoning factory farming operations in states like Iowa, North Carolina,
Alabama and Arkansas. Go figure.
According to a 2014 assessment by the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, Mexico is still waiting for the promise of NAFTA's economic
leveling effect to be fulfilled. It's actually lost ground on economic
growth and GDP per person. And the poverty rate remains essentially
unchanged.
But NAFTA did offer another low wage alternative to manufacturing in the
United States. That helps keep retail prices low enough to match the eroding
purchasing power of American consumers, which suffers because their wages
are, like Mexican workers, flat or declining. The one thing that hasn't
suffered? Corporate profits and the executive compensation it is predicated
upon. Again, go figure.
Where Credit Is Due
Although NAFTA is the usual target of ant-trade fervor, it simply doesn't
compare with the transformative impact of Bill Clinton's biggest "trade
deal" -- securing Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status for China. Repeated
approval of Chinese access to U.S. markets set off a wave of job losses in
America's industrial heartland. It stoked corporate profits and consumer
debt. And it ushered in the often-lamented era of the big box store.
Rising retail titans like Arkansas-based Walmart rushed into China's
incredibly favorable labor market. The cheap products they made turned the
1990s into a decade of plenty. Big box stores were stocked with cheap
plastic stuff and consumers gobbled up the bargains with one or more of the
credit cards they'd been given during an unprecedented era of ubiquitous
consumer credit.
A study by Demos published in 2003 found that during Bill Clinton's tenure
the "average American family experienced a 53 percent increase in credit
card debt, from $2,697 to $4,126." Low-income families experienced a "184
percent rise in their debt." And, despite the rise in income inequality
during his presidency, even "high-income families had 28 percent more credit
card debt in 2001 than they did in 1989."
Demos also found a sharp rise in credit card direct mail solicitations from
1.52 billion in 1993 to a staggering 5 billion in 2001. Monthly minimums
where lowered from 5 percent to 2 percent, thus making it easier to carry
debt. And the consumer credit industry "tripled the amount of credit it
offered customers from $777 billion to almost $3 trillion" by the time
Clinton left office. It was a bill of sale first written by Bill Clinton on
the campaign trail in 1992.
Promises, Promises
When Bill Clinton ran for president, the Cold War was over; the Savings and
Loan scandal had exploded; the economy was mired in a sharp recession; and
incumbent President George H.W. Bush couldn't do a damn thing right. He
seemed bored by people's "pain." He looked woefully out of touch in a
grocery check-out line. And he'd broken the infamous "no new taxes" pledge
that helped him defeat "Taxachusetts" Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988.
With Reaganomics on the ropes, Team Clinton scored repeatedly with their
"It's the Economy, Stupid" campaign. But Clinton also exploited another
weakness -- the Bush Administration's quick embrace of the Chinese
Government after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. That embrace was
sealed with a discomfiting handshake by Bush's national security advisor
Brent Scowcroft.
Shortly thereafter, President Bush renewed China's "Most Favored Nation"
trade status, which, among other things, lowered tariffs on Chinese imports
into the U.S. He was widely criticized, often from within his own party, for
cutting a deal with a regime some called "The Butchers of Beijing."
In the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton exploited Poppy's "kowtowing" to great
effect. Clinton accused Bush of "indifference toward democracy" in China.
And Clinton famously said Bush was willing to "coddle dictators." On March
9, 1992, Clinton proclaimed, "I do not believe we should extend 'Most
Favored Nation' status to China unless they make significant progress in
human rights, arms proliferation and fair trade."
Of course, that all changed after he took office. On March 28, 1993, the
cagey President announced he'd cut a deal with a Congress to extend a waiver
that effectively approved MFN while deferring human rights-related
conditions to the following year. Clinton even outlined other concerns,
including China's "$18 billion trade surplus" with the U.S.
But all those concerns, along with his campaign pledge, where jettisoned on
March 27, 1994 when Clinton made the economy-changing decision to "de-link"
China's MFN status from human rights. That decision buried Tiananmen Square
in the crowded graveyard of America's often-trumpeted "advocacy" for human
rights around the globe.
It also unleashed American corporations to dive headlong into China's vast,
cheap pool of low-wage labor. By the time Clinton made his state visit to
China in the summer of 1998, MFN was becoming a footnote to the amazing
story of China's skyrocketing industrial output. Facing charges of hypocrisy
on human rights, Clinton countered, "I'm going because I think it's the
right thing to do for our country."
That may be a debatable point. What's not in doubt is that it, like MFN, was
the right thing to do for the bottom line of American business. And it was
specifically beneficial for an emerging retail behemoth that had a long,
close relationship with the Clintons.
The Power Greeter
Alice Walton likes Hillary Clinton. That's a fairly safe assumption given
the $353,400 check she cut for the Hillary Victory Fund during a mad dash of
pre-election year fundraising at the end of 2015. And she also kicked in
another $25,000 into the "Ready for Hillary" SuperPAC. Those big donations
are, like the estimated $130 billion net worth of Walton family, a legacy
handed-down from Walmart founder Sam Walton.
That legacy dates back to Bill's time as Governor -- when the Walton family
began a long history of financial support of the Clintons, according to
Bloomberg. It made sense given Walmart's supersized role in Arkansas.
It also made good political sense that, as Michael Barbaro of the New York
Times reported back in 2007, Hillary was brought onto Walmart's Board of
Directors back in 1986 at the behest of Walton's wife Helen. That effort to
add a woman to the boardroom turned into a six-year stint that cemented the
long relationship between Arkansas' most famous corporation and its most
famous political family.
As Brian Ross of ABC News reported in the lead-up to her 2008 run, Hillary
notably left that glass ceiling-shattering appointment out of her biography.
She basically "de-linked" herself from a stridently anti-union company that
was also a notoriously thrifty spender on employee wages and benefits. The
ABC report also referenced a 1992 report showing her trumpeting Walmart's
"Buy America" campaign in spite of Walmart's reliance on children working in
sweatshops in places like Bangladesh. That's a practice Walmart continued
into the 1990s.
It came to a head in 1996 when All-American "sweetheart" Kathie Lee Gifford
got embroiled in a child labor scandal in Honduras. Coincidentally, that
scandal broke the same year Walmart entered China "through a joint-venture
agreement." And that was just two years after Bill Clinton "de-linked" human
rights from MFN.
It was also the same year that he successful renewed MFN with an
overwhelming vote of support by the House of Representatives. The timing
couldn't be better for Walmart. They'd auspiciously formed their
international division in 1993 and were poised to profit off Bill's broken
promise to "not coddle dictators."
But, as with all things Clinton, there really isn't a "smoking gun" linking
Bill's MFN reversal with Walmart's amazing good fortune in China. There is
just the lingering miasma of happy coincidences. Bill Clinton's crowning
coincidence before exiting the Oval Office was Congressional approval of his
proposal to give China permanent Most Favored Nation trading status in 2000.
The New Normal
On Oct. 10, 2000, he signed the U.S.China Relations Act of 2000 into law.
Most Favored Nation status officially became Normal Trade Relations. Also in
that year, the $18 billion trade deficit he decried in 1993 ballooned to $83
billion. Meanwhile, Walmart rode low-cost Chinese manufacturing to the top
of the retail heap. Walmart's massive workforce is now the third largest in
the world behind the U.S. Defense Department and, ironically, China's
People's Liberation Army.
Amazingly, the U.S. trade deficit with China more than tripled to $263
billion in the eight years after Clinton secured "Normal" trade relations in
2000. Meanwhile, Walmart's infamous low-wage practices at home were
subsidized annually to the tune of "an estimated $6.2 billion in public
assistance including food stamps, Medicaid and subsidized housing,"
according to 2015 report in Forbes.
Also amazingly, the Clintons' wealth skyrocketed to $111 million in the
years after Bill left office. Hillary spent those years in and out of
"public service" and the former President turned the Clinton Foundation into
a $439 million powerhouse by 2014.
While the Foundation's philanthropy is demonstrable, criticisms of it as a
de facto slush fund remain. But the link between political promises and
trade policy persisted. This time it was Hillary running for president. The
trade deal was with war-torn Colombia. And the campaign trail leads back to
the Clinton Foundation.
Rinse, Repeat
There is a strange symmetry between China's MFN status, the TPP imbroglio
and a notable "flip-flop" on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement by first-time
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008. Then like now, she was
competing against a movement candidate in newcomer Barack Obama. And then
like now, she struggled to protect her "left" flank on economic issues.
At issue in 2008 was a sweeping deal negotiated by the second Bush
Administration with the U.S.-supported, civil war-wracked narcostate of
Colombia. Obama "vowed" to oppose the deal. To keep pace with her
high-octane opponent, Hillary repeatedly reassured labor leaders of her
opposition to the deal.
The rub was two-fold. Not only did she have a decidedly pro-free trade
voting record as a senator. But both her free-trading husband and her chief
campaign strategist were on record supporting the deal. She ditched her
Colombia-linked strategist and matched Obama's anti-deal stance. But, just
like China's MFN before it, the trade agreement with Colombia eventually
became a "big win" for a Democratic President who was for it before he was
against it.
This time it was a flip-flopping President Obama. With the help of his
flip-flopping former foe and then-current Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, he scored a trade deal trifecta on Oct. 12, 2011. That's when
Congress approved the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement
(CTPA) and separate deals with both South Korea and Panama. Obama called the
trio of trade deals "a major win for American workers and businesses." Alas,
it turned out that there was a lot more change on trade than reason to hope
Obama or Hillary would keep their promises.
Mining the Depths
Meet billionaire mining magnate Frank Giustra. According to the New York
Times, the financial power-player's global interests have included
philanthropy and a $45 million stake in a deal to sell strategic uranium
mines in Central Asia and the United States to the Russian atomic energy
agency Rosatom. Strangely enough, those two interests -- charity and
strategic resources -- fit together nicely. That's because the uranium deal
required U.S. agencies -- including the State Department -- to sign-off
before it was approved.
The eight-year process for the uranium deal required approval by the U.S.
Committee on Foreign Investment of which the State Department is a member.
That approval finally came in 2010 when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of
State and while the Clinton Foundation was continuing to collect millions of
dollars from related investors.
Throughout, Giustra's wheeling and dealing continued with his close friend
and private jet-setting partner Bill Clinton, who gave a $500,000 speech to
a Russian investment bank that gave the stock a buy rating.
Since 2005, Giustra has lavished the Clinton Foundation with repeated
donations, adding up to in excess of $100 million. Yet, putting Bill
Clinton's oddly remunerative, but not uncommon $500,000 speech in Moscow
aside, there still is no smoking gun linking then-Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton to the actual approval of the deal. Once again we just have that
miasma of happy coincidences.
More troubling, though, is the coincidence that her husband's friend Frank
Giustra did benefit from the Colombia Free Trade Agreement deal's "extreme"
protections for foreign investors and special rights for corporations
engaged in "resource extraction," according to an eye-opening exposé by
David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham-Cook and Andrew Perez of the International
Business Times.
At issue is a company formerly known as Pacific Rubiales, an oil company
founded by (you guessed it) Frank Giustra. The State Department repeatedly
fielded accusations of workers' rights and human rights abuses, particularly
related to strike targeting Pacific Rubiales in 2011. Strangely, the State
Department not only ignored these accusations, but actually praised the
Colombian government's stellar progress on human rights. Was this Hillary
Clinton's "de-linking" MFN moment?
Maybe it's worse. It looks like there's a little smoke coming out of this
gun. As Sirota, Cunningham-Cook and Perez reported:
"At the same time that Clinton's State Department was lauding Colombia's
human rights record, her family was forging a financial relationship with
Pacific Rubiales, the sprawling Canadian petroleum company at the center of
Colombia's labor strife. The Clintons were also developing commercial ties
with the oil giant's founder, Canadian financier Frank Giustra, who now
occupies a seat on the board of the Clinton Foundation, the family's global
philanthropic empire."
Those "commercial ties" include the "Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership"
which its snazzy website calls a "pioneering an innovative approach to
poverty alleviation" that "generates both social impact and financial
returns by addressing existing market gaps in developing countries' supply
or distribution chains."
Really, doesn't that "pioneering approach" sound a lot like the long-term
project of the Democratic Leadership Committee?
The "pioneering" privatization of "poverty alleviation" was a big part of
then-President Bill Clinton's famous "welfare reform bill" of 1996.
Profitable privatized prisons grew to match the skyrocketing demand created
by infamous "crime bill" of 1994. The "financial returns" flowed as the
prison "market gap" was closed. And like neoliberal trade policy,
deregulation of Wall Street and the media, it's all symptomatic of the
Clinton-led move of the party toward the corporate-friendly "center."
As Frank Giustra said in a 2006 profile of Bill Clinton for The New Yorker,
"All of my chips, almost, are on Bill Clinton. He's a brand, a worldwide
brand, and he can do things and ask for things that no one else can." Based
on a Giustra's latest venture in Colombia -- a big financial play in the
Gran Colombia Gold Corporation -- he's still reaping the "free trade"
rewards of his bank-shot bet on Hillary Clinton.
In fact, he's not just going for the gold
but some silver, too.
Big Box Democrats
Back in 1992, the phenomenal Clinton political machine successfully sold the
"new," improved Democratic Party to Reaganomics-starved political consumers.
He felt their pain. He also changed his party and opened the door to the
big-box consumerism. Now that same sharp messaging machine is repackaging
Hillary's free-trading past, pulling Bill's mixed political record from the
shelves, and hard-selling her latter-day transformation on trade and
economic policies.
The question is: Will suspicious voters buy her "Come to Bernie" moment as a
wholesale conversion on the road to the White House? Disgruntled and
disaffected voters have to buy into the idea that she's truly changed on
trade and is not, as Terry McAuliffe implied, simply repeating a well-worn
pattern of bait and switch.
Simply put, she's got a long, demonstrable history of supporting trade
agreements. And by one account she specifically "pushed" the Trans-Pacific
Partnership 45 times. But that was then and this now. And now she's got a
disillusioned cadre of #BernieOrBusters to her left and a new army of
anti-trade Trumpsters to her right. That's left her stuck in the "centrist"
middle with the corporate donors, financiers and loyalists who've been
shopping in the supermarket of political influence ever since the Clintons
transformed the Democrats into the party of Big Box-style democracy.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
JP Sottile
JP Sottile is a freelance journalist, published historian, radio co-host and
documentary filmmaker (The Warning, 2008). His credits include a stint on
the Newshour news desk, C-SPAN and as newsmagazine producer for ABC
affiliate WJLA in Washington. His weekly show, "Inside the Headlines With
The Newsvandal," co-hosted by James Moore, airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in
Fairfield, Iowa. He blogs under the pseudonym "the Newsvandal."
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