Failures of Diplomacy

A bit of a mini-storm has been unleashed into the Democratic side of the U.S. presidential primaries. Resulting from fairly incautious electoral promises of a certain incendiary nature issuing from the mouths of both leading contenders to job- and economy-stressed Ohioans.

When there are no easy and ready responses to local crises, just cast around for the most likely scape-goat and grasp it, brandish it, and utilize it as though it represents the answer. And that's just what was done, with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama laying the blame for that state's fallen economy on Mexico and Canada.

The fact is, despite worries on all three sides, the North American Free Trade Agreement boosted the three-way trade of all three countries involved, benefiting their economies to a great degree. But there are other elements of economic struggles beside those of worrying that manufacturing jobs will evaporate elsewhere, to places where workers are paid less, where environmental degradation is of little concern; and that's not necessarily Canada and Mexico. As the candidates well know.

Smoke-stack industries have been bleeding out of North American for decades, much pre-dating NAFTA and its predecessor the FTA. Where at one time they went to the maquiladoras in Mexico, they now go quite a bit further afield. Where wages paid out to workers in un-unionized, unregulated, and sometimes cottage-industry, sometimes indentured-industry atmospheres in places in the far East undercut wages elsewhere. No country can compete with China in the production of lower-cost manufactured goods now exported around the world.

As far as Canada-U.S. trade is concerned, Canada is the single largest foreign consumer of American goods in the world, to date. Easily jeopardized by re-negotiating or reneging on the NAFTA deal, potentially costing a whole lot of dependent Americans their existing manufacturing jobs. Moreover, Canada, grateful as she is for NAFTA's result in tripling of exports to her U.S. partner, holds a kind of trump card in that she is the largest supplier of energy to the U.S. Want to re-negotiate that, too?

Despite which grievances, it's a lamentable failure of diplomacy that somehow or other words spoken in confidence by a political confidant of Senator Obama in assurance that what has upset Canada should be viewed as election hyperbole, has been betrayed by leakage. Meaning that Senator Obama's kindly diplomatic assurance was betrayed. Thus making the private public, and in the process giving his opponent a handy ethical cudgel to beat him with, before other incipient primaries.

Unfortunate because really, one country should not be involved in the internal politics of another country. More specifically the internal political machinations of rivals for the highest seat of the land.