""Shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you."
--Hillary Clinton news conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, Feb. 23, 2008.

Hillary Clinton made a fine show of indignation in Ohio over the weekend, accusing Barack Obama of distorting her positions on NAFTA and universal health care. Both candidates have been trying to convince Ohio voters that they would fight to protect the interests of American workers from "unfair" trade deals such as NAFTA. But neither Obama nor Clinton is being entirely honest on the NAFTA issue. They have both exaggerated their opposition to the 1993 free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada and misstated the other's position.

The Facts
During her news conference in Cincinnati, Clinton cited a mailing from the Obama campaign to Ohio voters that claimed that she thought NAFTA had been a "boon" to the U.S. economy. You can see the mailing here. By placing the word "boon" in quotation marks, the mailing implied that Clinton had actually used that expression to describe NAFTA.

This is not the case. The word "boon" appeared in a September 2006 chart published in Newsday summarizing Clinton's views on the economy, but it was the newspaper's characterization, not Clinton's. Newsday clarified what happened here.

Even though Clinton did not use the word "boon", she has spoken positively of NAFTA on several occasions, including her autobiography, Living History. Bill Clinton staked considerable political capital in persuading the Senate to ratify NAFTA, and Hillary loyally supported his efforts as First Lady. In a March 6, 1996 photo op, reported by the Associated Press, she described NAFTA as "a free and fair trade agreement" and said that it was "proving its worth."

There is some evidence that Hillary Clinton was less enthusiastic about NAFTA than her husband. Two of her biographers, Carl Bernstein and Sally Bedell Smith, said that she was wary about pushing NAFTA because it might interfere with her attempts to get her health plan through Congress, a much higher priority for her. According to Bedell Smith, "Hillary was really prepared to try and kill NAFTA." Bernstein says that she privately accused her husband of practicing "Republican economics."

Clinton's ambivalence about NAFTA was captured in a Jan. 5 2004 teleconference, in which she argued for a "rethinking of our trade policies, not to turn our back on trade, but to come up with a more effective 21st century trade policy." She then said the following:

I think that we have to enforce the trade rules that are inherent in both NAFTA and GATT. This administration has been very slow in filing any kind of trade claims in regard to any of our trading deals....I think on balance NAFTA has been good for New York and America, but I also think that there are a number of areas where we're not dealt with in an upfront way in dealing with our friend to the north, Canada, which seems to be able to come up with a number of rationales for keeping New York agricultural products out of Canada.
In September 2004, Obama took a very similar position while running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois. According to a Sept. 9, 2004, Associated Press report, he said the following in a debate with his Republican rival, Alan Keyes:

Obama said the United States benefits enormously from exports under the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA. He said, at the same time, there must be recognition that the global economy has shifted, and the United States is no longer the dominant economy.

"We have competition in world trade," Obama said. "When China devalues its currency 40 percent, we need to bring a complaint before the WTO just as other nations complain about us. If we are to be competitive over the long term, we need free trade but also fair trade."

In other words, both Obama and Clinton felt that NAFTA has benefited the U.S. economy, but they both believed that the U.S. should be more aggressive in enforcing the rules.

Both the Clinton and the Obama camps have sent out misleading mailings on the NAFTA issue, as demonstrated by my fellow fact checkers at Factcheck.org here (Obama) and here (Clinton).

Obama, meanwhile, made a factual mistake during last week's debate from Austin, TX, when he claimed that he had talked to Ohio workers who had seen "equipment unbolted from the floors of factories and shipped to China, resulting in devastating job losses and communities completely falling apart." His spokesmen told me he was referring to a steel door plant in Niles, Ohio. Amweld Building Products president Michael Burtt told me that the two plants in question relocated not to China, but to Monterrey, Mexico, at the end of 2007. About 200 jobs were lost.

The Pinocchio Test
You would not think it from the way they have been attacking each other, but Clinton and Obama are not all that far apart on NAFTA. They both believe in free trade, but they both argue that the U.S. has got a bad deal from the way NAFTA and other trade deals have been enforced. Both candidates have used quotes selectively to slam the other. Two Pinocchios apiece." (Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, February 27, 2008)