NATIONAL
March 11, 2009 | Richard Simon
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.
OPINION
March 4, 2009
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.
WORLD
February 18, 2009 | Mike Dorning
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.
OPINION
February 18, 2009
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.
WORLD
April 23, 2008 | James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer
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.
NATIONAL
April 9, 2008 | From Times Staff and Wire Reports
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.