The Invisible Hand

Responding to the Clinton/Obama attacks on NAFTA, John McCain took a strong stand in favour of free trade:

After mostly hitting Barack Obama on national security, McCain turned to trade today, broadening his indictment to take shots at both the Illinois senator and Hillary Clinton for their criticism of NAFTA.

"I want to tell our Canadian friends, I want to tell our friends in Mexico and other trading partners around the world that I will negotiate and conclude free trade agreements and I will not, I will not, after entering into solemn agreements, go and say that I will abrogate those agreements," McCain said at a corporate town hall meeting on the sprawling Dell campus north of Austin.

Good for him (although I don't agree with his reasoning of us tying the issue to Afghanistan).

But listen to what one of McCain's supporters had to say:

Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator, joined in the attack, taking his candidate's rhetoric a step further to portary the Democrats as insufficiently confident in American ingenuity.

"If we can't compete with Canada, who can we compete with?" Gramm asked. "Are these people proposing that we go build a wall around America and hide under a rock somewhere?"

Gramm said the Democrats "don't have faith in our ability to even compete against Canada."

That was the funniest quote I've heard in a long time. Unfortunately, there's probably a certain amount of truth to it.

Labels: economics, free trade, US politics