Republican presidential candidate John McCain ventured to Canada to attack his Democratic opponent on trade, while Barack Obama dismissed McCain’s push for US offshore oil drilling as making “absolutely no sense.”
The rivals were hammering at each other on economic issues that are key to US voters’ ahead of the November election. McCain attacked Obama over his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement while Obama jabbed at McCain’s proposal to allow offshore oil drilling.
Reports filed on Friday with the Federal Election Commission also showed the two presumptive presidential nominees almost even in fundraising during last month. Obama raised US$22 million while McCain raised US$21 million.
PHOTO: AP
McCain, speaking to business leaders in Ottawa, said Obama’s opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement is “nothing more than retreating behind protectionist walls.”
The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting added that if he wins the White House, “have no doubt that America will honor its international commitments — and we will expect the same of others.”
McCain did not mention Obama by name as he spoke before the Economic Club of Canada, a business organization whose membership cheered his remarks.
Obama, on the campaign trail in Florida, shot back: “What’s interesting to me is that he chose to talk about trade in Canada instead of in Ohio or Michigan ... I think Senator McCain should have shared some of his views there to American voters.”
The Democrat said he talked to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on June 9 after he secured the Democratic presidential nomination and that he expected to continue “robust trade relationships” with Canada and Mexico.
McCain supports the trade pact, while Obama has reached out to working-class voters by stressing his opposition to it. Many working-class Americans see the deal as responsible for job losses.
McCain asserted on Friday that the US has added 25 million jobs and Canada more than 4 million since the agreement was signed 15 years ago.
While McCain talked trade, Obama took a swipe at his opponent over his energy plan on Friday. He told a gathering of Democratic governors in Chicago that the Republican’s proposal to allow offshore drilling “makes absolutely no sense at all” and won’t lower gas prices until 2030.
Instead, Obama said he would invest US$150 billion over the next 10 years to create green jobs, particularly in the automotive industry and to improve the electricity grid so people can drive plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Obama continued the theme later in Jacksonville, Florida.
He said opening up the US coastline to oil exploration would not give Americans any short-term appreciable savings.
Offshore drilling is not popular in many — if any — coastal states, particularly Florida, the presidential swing state that decided the 2000 election and where McCain is favored and Obama is looking to gain ground.
The likely Democratic nominee pledged to keep in place the federal government’s 27-year moratorium on offshore drilling, and criticized McCain on changing his position on the matter.
In McCain’s 2000 campaign, the Republican said he favored the moratorium. This week, he said he supports lifting it to give states the option to drill, and cited as a reason alleviating the pressure on consumers facing high gas prices.
McCain also is calling for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged US$2 billion a year in federal funds to make clean coal a reality.
Meanwhile, a new poll by Newsweek magazine gave Obama a lead of 51 percent to McCain’s 36 percent, with a 4 percentage point margin of error. Obama’s lead over McCain appeared to reflect the “bounce” that observers have been anticipating since he secured his party’s nomination.
The poll was done last week. The previous Newsweek poll last month showed Obama and McCain tied at 46 percent and was taken while Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were still competing for the Democratic nomination.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done