Me and Giuliani Down on the NAFTA?!

The New York Sun has a report on Rudy Giuliani's opposition to NAFTA in 1993. Hot excerpt:

If some of Mr. Giuliani's other strayings from the free-market fold have explanations —complicated ones, but explanations nonetheless — it's a bit harder to make heads or tails of his opposition to NAFTA in 1993.

"I continue to be concerned about the effect it would have on the job situation in New York City," the mayor-elect said in November of 1993, quoted by Newsday. "It is somewhat a narrow perspective, but it's my most important narrow perspective, which is the people of New York City," he said. "I don't think it would help New York City."

In the current campaign, Mr. Giuliani hasn't made free trade a major theme. But he did address the topic briefly at the Club for Growth meeting last weekend, in response to a question from the audience. "We no longer have separation between a domestic economy and a global economy," Mr. Giuliani said. "It's one in the same thing. And I generally agree with the principles of free trade and I think and increasingly have become more convinced of those principles because I almost think they are inevitable. If we fight them we hurt ourselves, if we embrace them we kind of move to the future."

The article goes on to say that the Club for Growth believes that Rudy has "seen the light" on "free trade."

And while you can debate on Rudy's genuineness - then or now - it's yet another indication that a virulent "free trade" platform is a political non-starter in any national race.