To the Editor:
“Clinton Confidently Embracing Her Husband’s Economic Record” (news article, Dec. 23) should cause us to consider how President Bill Clinton’s policies ultimately affected the American economy.
Mr. Clinton’s administration gave us the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which greatly accelerated the loss of American manufacturing jobs and started the race to the bottom in wages paid for what was left, and the partial dismantling of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which set us up for the housing bubble and the Great Recession.
Sure, the economy boomed during the Clinton years, but Mr. Clinton’s policies did much to create the mess that followed, which is still with us.
While I agree with the Clintons that a Democrat should be in the White House, these facts, as well as Bernie Sanders’s nice Op-Ed explication of cronyism at the Federal Reserve (“To Rein In Wall Street, Fix the Fed,” Dec. 23), have greatly helped me determine whom to vote for in the Democratic primary. It’s not Hillary Clinton.
LOUISE QUIGLEY
Braintree, Mass.
Note from KBJ: Free trade has been a disaster for this country. It makes the rich richer and gives people access to cheap foreign-made goods, but it destroys the important things, like American industry, community, family, and culture.
