Bloomberg Likes McCain on Free Trade

Michael Bloomberg wants to hear where Barack Obama stands on the issue of free trade, he said earlier today, adding that he thinks John McCain has “a better record on this issue.”

Bloomberg was speaking across the street from City Hall, where the Consumer Electronics Association launched a nationwide bus tour advocating free trade with Colombia, among other countries.

“I think that John McCain has a better record on this issue than Barack Obama,” Bloomberg said. McCain, Bloomberg said, advocates “trading with the only ally we have left in Latin America, namely Colombia.”

“I’d like to hear a lot more from him about how he thinks we could reopen NAFTA without becoming a big loser in that,” the mayor added.

Free trade has been a thorny issue this presidential campaign cycle, partly because of a free trade deal with Colombia that Hillary Clinton and Obama opposed, but McCain supported, even traveling to the country just before 4th of July to talk about it.

It's the same deal, of course, that got Mark Penn demoted when it turned out he was working on the deal as a consultant and had met with a Colombian official in Washington.

“We are committing mass suicide by keeping our borders closed and going away from free trade,” Bloomberg said at the event. “And somebody has got to stop this craziness.”