9-12-08, 10:17 am

Former ultra-conservative Mexican President Vicente Fox took a swipe at Michigan workers this week while appearing to endorse John McCain.

In an interview with The Detroit News, President Fox seemed to suggest that Michigan workers should get over the loss of jobs caused by free trade agreements like NAFTA, federal tax policies that help corporations move Michigan jobs out of the state, and globalization generally.

Fox, a former corporate executive, said, 'The loss of manufacturing jobs is a problem not only of Michigan but of the United States, and is a product of the new economy.' But the ability of US automakers to move jobs out of the country and locate factories in countries with extremely low wages is a good thing, Fox said.

He further suggested that good-paying jobs in Michigan are bad for corporations who want higher profit margins, and thus bad for Michigan workers. In Fox's view, workers should be happy with low wages because they are good for corporations.

Fox then stated that he sees John McCain as the candidate who shares most of his thinking on these issues.

And he is right. During the Republican primaries, for example, John McCain suggested that he has given up on fighting to keep jobs in Michigan and other manufacturing states, telling a Midwestern audience that jobs lost to NAFTA and globalization weren't coming back and he wasn't going to do anything about it. Instead, in line with George W. Bush's economic policies, McCain called for more free trade agreements fast-tracked through Congress with little public scrutiny.

McCain offered no policy to help rebuild the manufacturing sector in Michigan.

According to data from the Economic Policy Institute, Michigan alone has lost tens of thousands of jobs due to NAFTA. The state currently has the highest unemployment rate in the country.

John McCain's political record reveals that he has played a role in that economic downturn in Michigan. Throughout his career, John McCain has used his Senate vote to provide taxpayer subsidies to corporations that move manufacturing out of the country or who make profits from businesses that are not based in the US. He has helped block measures that would have ended tax breaks to companies that ship jobs to other countries.

McCain has steadfastly refused to provide federal incentives for US automakers to develop new green technologies, such as hybrids, to allow them to better compete from US-based factories with automakers based in other countries.

So far, John McCain has failed to explain how the economic policies he has proposed put his country or American working families first.