As just a quick follow up to my last few posts on trade and Obama, this story provides some great news: The Obama campaign is using Sherrod Brown as its lead spokesperson on the issue:
In an earlier campaign conference call with reporters, high-profile Obama supporters said Canada and Mexico would be forced to reopen talks on the contentious trade deal because of their dependence on exports to the United States.
"We are the largest market for Canada, by far. We are the largest market for Mexico, by far," said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.
"When the president of the United States says 'we are unhappy' with the way this trade agreement works . . . It is clear we are big enough, and strong enough, and important enough, that these negotiations will go forward."
...McCain "should come to Ottawa, Ohio," which lost a television tube manufacturing plant to Mexico almost five years ago because of NAFTA, Brown said. The plant's closure forced 1,100 people out of work and was a "direct outgrowth" of NAFTA, he said.
"This is one issue where John McCain hasn't tried to put distance between himself and George Bush," Brown said. "He continues the same trade policies that have already inflicted so much damage on the heartland of this country."
As readers of this site probably know, Brown is one of America's most outspoken leaders for the fair trade uprising. The fact that the Obama campaign organized a conference call and then asked Brown to use that conference call to hammer John McCain for his NAFTA support is a great sign that Obama could represent a serious departure from the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush legacy pushing lobbyist-written trade policy.
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