Obama Explains His Position on Trade to the AFL-CIO

Obama addressed an AFL-CIO audience on a wide range of topics, including trade, on April 2 (Obama's Remarks to the AFL-CIO).  Here's what he had to say:

Now, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that we can't stop globalization in its tracks and that opening new markets to our goods can help strengthen our economy. But what I refuse to accept is that we have to sign trade deals like the South Korea Agreement that are bad for American workers. What I oppose - and what I have always opposed - are trade deals that put the interests of multinational corporations ahead of the interests of Americans workers - like NAFTA, and CAFTA, and permanent normal trade relations with China.

And I'll also oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement if President Bush insists on sending it to Congress because the violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these kinds of agreements. So you can trust me when I say that whatever trade deals we negotiate when I'm President will be good for American workers, and that they'll have strong labor and environmental protections that we'll enforce.

This is a somewhat different view of CAFTA than he expressed in The Audacity of Hope (Obama on trade: An in-depth look, Trade Diversion, March 30):

CAFTA. Viewed in isolation, the agreement posed little threat to American workers -- the combined economies of the Central American countries involved were roughly the same as that of New Haven, Connecticut... There were some problems with the agreement, but overall, CAFTA was probably a net plus for the US economy...

I told the President that I believed in the benefits of trade... But I said that resistance to CAFTA had less to do with the specifics of the agreement and more to do with the growing insecurities the American worker. Unless we found strategies to allay those fears, and sent a strong signal to American workers that the federal government was on their side, protectionist sentiment would only grow...

I ended up voting against CAFTA... My vote gave me no satisfaction, but I felt it was the only way to register a protest against what I considered to be the White House's inattention to the losers from free trade.