Presidential hopeful John McCain has criticized his rival, Barack Obama, for what McCain perceives to be an Obama slap at the North American Free trade Agreement. However, Obama, recently met with Prime Minister Harper of Canada to issue assurances that the "Obama Administration" will have "an enormous interest in maintaining a robust relationship with Canada and Mexico."

John McCain has said that Barack Obama's opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is "nothing more than retreating behind protectionist walls." Obama actually met with Prime Minister Harper of Canada to reassure him that if elected his administration would have "an enormous interest in maintaining a robust relationship with Canada and Mexico," so his supposed "opposition" is feigned. He used it, though, to gain support from blue-collar out-of-work Americans on the campaign trail.

McCain made some wonderful-sounding claims himself in an Associated Press story that was featured on the GPOUSA website. He was reported as saying, "Since NAFTA was concluded, it has contributed to strong job growth and flourishing trade. Since the agreement was signed, the United States has added 25 million jobs and Canada more than 4 million."

If you can’t disprove the figures that NAFTA has been a virtual disaster for the middle class in America — job losses and closed factories and loss of industry are endemic — then you start making up the numbers and hope that mainstream media doesn’t decide to go into a fit of honest reporting and challenge your figures!

It may be easy to quote bloated figures like his and paint a pretty picture about the glories of NAFTA-style "free" trade in a state that hasn’t been hit hard by NAFTA, but to hold a straight face and preach the wonders of regulated trade in states where the anthropogenic-caused job tsunami called NAFTA has devastated hundreds of thousands is moral blindness or worse!

How many factories have closed in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan? How many jobs did NAFTA put on the negative side of the chart? Detroit, "looks like a city bombed out after World War II," says Connecticut conservative Paul Streitz. He continues, "In Bridgeport, CT, a three-floor G.E. factory that once employed 12,000 people sits empty. It is a depressing monument to Free Trade. Syracuse, New York is so devastated by the deindustrialization of the United States that perfectly good housing is abandoned as people leave the city."

So is it just a matter of who are you going to believe, or is NAFTA just a convenient target this election season? Do figures exist to support John McCain’s figures or has NAFTA really caused such economic devastation that cities like Detroit are reminiscent of Dresden or Berlin after WW II?

Let’s set the jobs debate aside and consider that even if NAFTA had produced the jobs that McCain says it produced, would that be sufficient reason to continue participating in this so-called "free" trade agreement? Absolutely not! With nearly a thousand pages of regulatory legalese that encompasses the NAFTA, the trade agreement demonstrates that NAFTA is not about "free" trade, it’s about controlled trade. Worse, the nose of the camel now has its head and neck inside our nation’s sovereignty tent. NAFTA tribunals are overruling U.S. district courts on trade law. The world trade psychosis has affected the thinking of U.S. judges who don’t want to step on any toes, unless those toes belong to the average American small businessman or worker!

There are other ways to challenge the NAFTA cheerleaders by showing the figures of our trade deficit with NAFTA trading partner – Mexico. Pro-NAFTA Business Week says after NAFTA, "U. S.-owned auto parts companies set up shop [in Mexico]. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Volkswagen, and Toyota expanded their Mexican lines. Mexican car production leapt three-fold, to 2 million units per year. With two-thirds exported. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. now had a $34 billion deficit in cars, trucks, and parts last year with Mexico. Since 1999, some 200,000 auto-related jobs have left Michigan and Ohio." Well, maybe the metaphor of a "bombed out" Detroit isn’t so far removed from reality.

The job losses are one thing – the loss of our nation’s independence and right to pursue our own destiny has been handed to an unelected bunch of bureaucrats by global-leaning politicians who know that the job losses can be hidden from the public’s view for a time. However, the McCain happy talk will be shown to be a lie. When NAFTA took effect in 1994, trade between Canada and the U. S. "was already near duty-free."  That should demonstrate that NAFTA was a sham and a con job perpetrated on the America people to move us a step further toward hemispheric integration under the North American Union.

McCain and Obama are playing political football with NAFTA and neither one is at all concerned about U.S. sovereignty.