The buzz about the Goolsbee/NAFTA flap has picked up agin, based on the story that the Canadian prime minister’s chief of staff may have attributed some double-talk on NAFTA to the Clinton campaign. This has Matthew Yglesias, among others, claiming the Goolsbee flap was a “bad rap.” It has Dan Riehl claiming that “Brodie was talking off the cuff, had Obama mixed up with Clinton and the ‘journalism’ resulted in some facts coming out.”
First, Yglesias is wrong to the extent that Goolsbee has admitted the meeting at the Canadian consulate in Chicago, but claims his views were misquoted in one sentence of the memo memorializing the meeting. Given that Obama’s current protectionist rhetoric (which itself contains a measure of double-talk)  is at odds with Goolsbee’s well-documented views on trade, the Canadian diplomat might be given the benefit of the doubt.
Second, Riehl may be right about the “smoking gun,” but we should not assume that the reality of the Goolsbee flap exonerates Clinton, either. I doubt anyone would be shocked if some Clinton adviser made remarks similar to Goolsbee’s through back-channels.
The irony in this flap is that when the Democrats claim we need to renegotiate better environmental and labor standards for NAFTA, they are almost certainly not thinking primarily about Canada. But the Dems do not want to be out on the trail openly bashing Mexico. After all, if they bashed our legal trade in goods with Mexico, it would be much harder to bash those in the GOP who are against the illegal trade in services with Mexico as nativists and racists.
Guess what? Canadian diplomats speak English, well maybe with a French accent, but still. And Canadian Diplomats know how to clarify conversational “misunderstandings” before they put their careers on the line with superiors.
The only misunderstanding here was that the Chicago consular official put it in writing and it got leaked. In any event, can we afford to have a President whose advisors put U.S. interests in jeopardy while they engage in on-the-job training?
can we afford to have a President whose advisors put U.S. interests in jeopardy while they engage in on-the-job training?
Many Americans seem to think so, for the sake of Changeyness and Hopetitude.
To be fair, I don’t think Goolsbee (or someone similar in the Clinton camp) put US interests in jeopardy in this case. To the contrary, I believe the intent was to reassure Canada that Obama (or Clinton) was not seriously turning to protectionism. The message was, “don’t pay attention while we pander to OH and PA.” It is the current rhetorical positions of the candidates that are worrying the Canadians.
[…] the wake of the Goolsbee/NAFTA flap, in which Austan Goolsbee suggested to Canadian diplomats that Barack Obama’s protectionist […]
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