North American Free Trade Agreement

Congress has hit the brakes on a Bush administration program to give Mexican trucks wider access to U.S. roads, putting President Obama in the middle of a politically sensitive trade dispute. A $410-billion spending bill that passed the Senate on a voice vote Tuesday would end funding for the cross-border trucking program, one of the most contentious issues to arise out of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement. The House approved the spending measure last month.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have become tough critics of U.S. trade policy as they campaign in Ohio, a state battered by trade-related job losses that holds a crucial presidential primary Tuesday. In most of their exchanges on the issue, each candidate has accused the other of having spoken in positive terms about the North American Free Trade Agreement, a pact that is extremely unpopular among Ohio's blue-collar workers.

Four campaign seasons have come and gone since presidential hopeful H. Ross Perot warned that NAFTA would create a "giant sucking sound" of jobs going to Mexico, and the trade pact is still generating plenty of noise. Calls to renegotiate the 14-year-old deal are rising from both sides of the border. Thousands of protesters paralyzed traffic in Mexico's capital in January to demand a redo of the pact, which they said had hurt Mexican farmers. In the U.S.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged Tuesday to defeat a free-trade agreement with Colombia, even as her presidential campaign was kept on the defensive by disclosures related to the proposed pact. Her camp acknowledged reports that Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, supports the deal with Colombia. The New York senator's campaign also was hit by another call for the outright ouster of longtime aide Mark Penn.

President Bush and the leaders of Mexico and Canada delivered a forceful message Tuesday to the next president of the United States: Don't mess with NAFTA. Their warnings against tinkering with the North American Free Trade Agreement brought them into the presidential race on the day Pennsylvanians voted in a Democratic primary contest that focused on how free trade has cost their state many factory jobs.

Contending that corporate profits dictate the nation's foreign trade pacts, Democratic presidential contender John Edwards on Monday called for a "zero tolerance" policy that would freeze imports of harmful food, toys and other goods. Speaking with an eye toward a forum of Democratic candidates to be sponsored by the AFL-CIO today in Chicago, Edwards proposed new rules on trade policies that he said would boost the standing of workers in the U.S. and across the world.

The U.S. and Mexico have ended a bitter dispute over sweeteners and will begin dismantling trade barriers in preparation for a complete opening of trade in sugar and corn syrup by 2008. The agreement ends a decade of feuding over a sensitive trade issue that had inflamed powerful farm interests on both sides of the border. The accord could affect the pricing on a variety of products, including baked goods and soft drinks. The deal will allow the U.S.

On Thursday, two days after triumphantly signing an economic stimulus measure that he had fought for nearly since taking office, President Obama will go to Ottawa to apologize for it. As is traditional for U.S. presidents, Obama will make his first official foreign trip to Canada, this country's biggest trading partner. There, he will quickly learn that the protectionist sentiments so popular with Democrats on this side of the border don't play at all well to the north.

Campaigning in rust-belt Ohio during last year's Democratic primaries, Barack Obama promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, despised by organized labor. But as he prepares for a seven-hour visit to Canada on Thursday, his first foreign trip as president, Obama is sounding much more cautious about altering the deal.

President Obama's trade agenda is nothing if not ambitious. His just-released policy statement, titled "Making Trade Work for American Families," ties trade to energy efficiency and environmental concerns, entrepreneurship and market competition, workers' rights and global competitiveness. Of course, it remains to be seen how all of these interests will fit into one coherent policy.