Hillary Clinton Campaign Press Release - Clinton Campaign Invites Obama Campaign to Add Austan Goolsbee to NAFTA Call

Will Provide Obama Campaign Opportunity To Explain Repeated Misstatements On Goolsbee's Conversations With Canadian Government

"The Obama campaign ought to have Austan Goolsbee on their call today," Clinton Campaign Spokesperson Jay Carson said. "While Senator Obama was telling voters he would fix NAFTA, his chief economics advisor was telling Canadians that his position was just words. Instead of making false attacks on Hillary Clinton's character, the Obama campaign should finally explain why it continues to mislead voters about Mr. Goolsbee's meeting with the Canadian government."

The Obama campaign offered at least five different, and frequently contradictory explanations, of Goolsbee's meeting with the Canadian government. According to a memo produced by the Canadian government, Goolsbee told the Canadians not take Obama's anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously because it was merely "political positioning."

5. 3/10/08 - Sen. Obama: The meeting did happen, they did discuss NAFTA, but advisor just said Obama wanted to make NAFTA 'stronger for U.S. workers.' "So here's what happens. You've got one of my economic advisors goes and visits a Canadian embassy and they're asking him questions and he says, 'Well, Senator Obama isn't planning to repeal NAFTA, but he wants to amend it to make it stronger for U.S. workers.' The Canadian embassy writes it up as, 'Well, maybe Obama is not as tough on NAFTA as you might think.' And the Clintons start waving this and saying, 'See? Actually, he's the one.'" [Mississippi Rally, 3/10/08]

4. 2/29/08: Sen. Obama: 'It did not happen.' Anchor: "So, completely inaccurate, did not happen, end of discussion." Sen. Obama: "It did not happen." [WKYC TV, 2/29/08]

3. 2/28/08 - Rice: 'There had been no contact.' "The Canadian ambassador issued a statement that was absolutely false. There had been no contact. There had been no discussions on NAFTA. So we take the Canadians at their word...period." [MSNBC, Susan Rice, 2/28/08]

2. 2/27/08 - Obama advisor just said 'hello.' "Goolsbee: Canada's consul general in Chicago contacted him '˜at one point to say '˜hello' because their office is around the corner." [ABC, 2/29/08]

1. 2/27/08 - 'No conversations have taken place' with the Canadian government on NAFTA. "Earlier Thursday, the Obama campaign insisted that no conversations have taken place with any of its senior ranks and representatives of the Canadian government on the NAFTA issue." [CTV, 2/29/08]

The Obama campaign has tried to deflect attention from Goolsbee by making false attacks on Hillary Clinton. Several members of the Clinton administration and Clinton biographers independently confirm that she was critical of NAFTA in the early 1990s.

DAVID GERGEN: "I was actually there in the Clinton White House during the NAFTA fight and I must tell you Hillary Clinton was extremely unenthusiastic about NAFTA. And I think that's putting it mildly. I'm not sure she objected to all the provisions of it but she just didn't see why her husband and that White House had to go and do that fight. She was very unhappy about it and wanted to move on to health care. So I do think there's some justification for her camp saying, you know, she's never been a great backer for NAFTA." [David Gergen, Anderson Cooper 360, 2/25/08]

DEE DEE MYERS: Q: And you know, Dee Dee, the first thing that came to my mind is, "Come on." What is she going to do?... Meyers: Right, and she did express - I was there too - and she did express reservations about it, as she said. [MSNBC, 3/20/08]

MICKEY KANTOR: "In August in 92, we had to make a decision," Mickey Kantor the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Clinton adviser, and free trade advocate recalled for the Huffington Post. "President Clinton had to make a decision as governor, whether or not he would support [George H.W. Bush's] NAFTA, and of course he did... Hillary Clinton was one of the great skeptics in the discussion as to whether he should do. So she was always skeptical beginning in 1992 and onward." [Huffington Post, 2/14/08]

Clinton Biographers:

SALLY BIDELL SMITH: "Liberal Democrats, including Hillary, opposed it primarily because it could take jobs away from American workers. But as an advocate of global economic cooperation, Bill was drawn to its free-trade philosophy." [Huffington Post, 2/14/08]

CARL BERNSTEIN: "'Bill,'" he recalled Hillary Clinton as saying, "'you are doing Republican economics when you are doing NAFTA.' She was against NAFTA. And if she would somehow come out and tell the real story of what she fought for in the White House and failed in a big argument with her husband she would end up moving much closer to those [John] Edwards followers." [Huffington Post, 2/14/08]