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Presidential Primary Less Than Two Months Away



Editor’s Notebook , Tom York

It’s hard to believe, but balloting for the 2008 presidential primary is less than two months away.

The Legislature changed the traditional first-Tuesday-in-June date earlier this year to Feb. 5 (along with 19 other states) to bring California into step with other states that want more of a say in determining the two candidates who’ll go up against each other in November.

(The days of the New Hampshire primary officially launching the presidential election year is but a quaint custom of the past.)

I tend not to get too excited about the presidential races in the early going. But with the voting approaching, it’s time to focus on some of the national and international issues that the next president will have to deal with. This is especially true of U.S. business and industry (at least, what’s left of U.S. industry, especially manufacturing), given the upheaval in the global economy of the past 20 years.

First and foremost on my personal list of concerns is trade, or more accurately, free trade. All of the candidates say they favor free trade, but, really, we don’t have free trade on a global scale.

True enough, we have lots of goods and services moving across borders, but protectionism abounds, to the detriment of our own economy.

Consider our sometimes-vexing relationship with the Chinese. It’s bad enough that we’ve exported entire sectors of our manufacturing capacity to China, but what made the shift painless is the fact that the Chinese have rigged their currency so that they continue to make and dump stuff here at bargain-basement rates.


Artificially Low Levels

Beijing keeps the yuan at artificially low levels vis- & #341;-vis the major currencies of the world, such as the dollar and yen, which allows the flood of cheap goods into our country, what we now call the Wal-Mart effect.

None of the abundant crop of candidates has addressed this issue, and probably won’t, given the perceived importance of not upsetting those who live in and around the Sino-sphere.

Or consider our relationship with Mexico. Several candidates on the Democratic Party side have complained about the economic impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, adopted back in the heyday of the Clinton administration.

The trade agreement opens the doors to the free flow of goods and services, and has given a rebirth to the maquiladoras, or assembly plants, that dot our border with Mexico.

San Diego’s economy has immensely benefited from this system.

Personally, I think abandoning the treaty would be a mistake, and would weaken the already-weak economy of our neighbor to the south.

By the way, I think the debate about the flood of illegal immigrants entering this country should be kept apart from the debate over Nafta’s future.

One reason why so many citizens of Mexico come here illegally is the fact that there is so little work in their country, so Nafta has helped stabilize (and create jobs for) what would be an otherwise wildly unstable economy, as opposed to just an unstable one. The treaty has also benefited U.S. business and industry as Mexico has become one of our biggest trading partners, and the Mexican wealthy and middle class purchase billions in products from the United States.


Endurance Run

Our presidential election system has grown into a two-year endurance run that rarely allows the candidates to address the substantive issues facing the nation.

The candidates try to say as little as possible of substance, and spend more time posturing for the camera than postulating positions that would advance the national agenda.

Even the ongoing war in Iraq gets short shrift, as do numerous other critical domestic and foreign issues.

What we need , other than getting the big money out of campaigns , are shorter, decisive campaigns that allow the candidates to say what they think without fear of a negative rating in the polls the next day.

The campaign for the next resident of the White House has been as shallow as some of the candidates who participate in it. Let’s hope it gets better next year.


Tom York is editor of the Business Journal.

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