Nafta

When free trade proponents sold the American people on the idea of the North American Free Trade Agreement, they promised that it would be a boon economically. Evidence, however, suggests that it has been anything but. Since NAFTA's implementation, Americans have dealt with stagnating wages, outsourced jobs, increased illegal immigration, an influx of contaminated products and rapid environmental degradation. By 2008, according to EconomyInCrisis.org, NAFTA had cost America nearly 3 million well-paying manufacturing jobs, 3,000 family farms, countless businesses - and with them tax revenues - and billions of dollars through trade deficits.

This ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest movements are the result of the Obama administration and Congress' mismanagement of foreign trade. When the real story is told it will be seen that it is unfair trade agreements such as NAFTA and others that have contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs in this country. We have allowed unfavorable trade agreements to limit the sale of American products in foreign countries, while we tolerate the flight of entire trade sectors to China, Korea and other emerging nations.

THE intellectual and political elite have lined up in support of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but it's the grunts, the ordinary working men and women of America, who will face the consequences in the form of wage contraction, lost jobs and reduced standards of health and safety.It's too bad Ross Perot is the leading opponent of NAFTA. Working people deserve better. When Mr. Perot starts waving his arms, tossing out misleading data and shrieking about "that giant sucking sound," his noise drowns out the serious discussion of the problems with NAFTA.

Your editorial on pending trade agreements ("The benefits of trade," Oct. 6) reports projected benefits to the depressed U.S. economy from the proposed trade deals with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama of $12 billion in exports and tens of thousands of jobs. Though smaller than the 200,000 jobs and untold billions in exports to Canada and Mexico that NAFTA was expected to provide, the new projections are equally bogus. In fact, America's trade deficit with Canada (which averaged a modest $8.1 billion in the four years preceding NAFTA)

One down, one to go. And a bigger one at that.For all the huffing and puffing about the North American Free Trade Agreement, decisively approved by the House last night, there is another trade agreement on the table more far-reaching in its impact: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, better known as GATT. NAFTA was vital to the economic growth of the U.S. and its immediate neighbors. GATT involves just about all of the economically significant world.This is not to diminish the importance of last night's vote.

If a show of presidential passion can rescue the North American Free Trade Agreement from defeat in Congress, the White House provided it in quadruple measure yesterday. In an unusual tableau in the ceremonial East Room, Presidents Clinton, Bush, Carter and Ford said the pact would create jobs at home and foreign policy dividends in the hemisphere. They deplored the fears and the fear-mongers that have placed NAFTA in deep trouble.Although the name of treaty foe Ross Perot went unmentioned, the Texas billionaire-politician was a specter throughout.

So far the debate about the North American Free Trade Association has been unnecessarily emotional and vague regardless of the side being argued. Opponents appeal to populist fears about low Mexican labor costs, and proponents ask us to have courage about American competitiveness and faith in the benefits of free trade.In a nod to reason, both sides have relied on economists to make projections about job gains or losses. Most of us, however, have plenty of history to justify our skepticism when it comes to econometric models and predictions.

When Gov. William Donald Schaefer was down Mexico way the other day, he advised officials there that they had better start selling the North American Free Trade Agreement to gringo politicians in the Midwest and Northeast sections of the United States instead of "preaching to the choir" of NAFTA advocates in states along the border.Good idea. Now for a better one.Maryland's globetrotter governor should start preaching -- and preaching hard -- to his own delegation in Congress. Right now, of the Maryland Ten, only Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest of the Eastern Shore is forthrightly for NAFTA.

NAFTA is good for the citizens of the Eastern Shore. That was the message from the agriculture secretaries representing the tri-state Delmarva Peninsula last week in an attempt to put the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico in proper focus. Propaganda aside, the proposed treaty could mean a big boost in poultry and grain exports for Delmarva farmers.That translates into prosperity and more jobs for local agriculture. Contrary to the assertions of union and environmental hardliners, NAFTA is likely to provide Maryland and most other states with more jobs, not fewer, and stimulate a growing demand in Mexico for American produce and American-made products.

It's remarkable how much more heat than light has been generated by the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement, which comes to a vote today in the House. There are few more important issues facing this country: its economic relationship with its two closest neighbors and by implication with the rest of the world. If its supporters, led by President Clinton, got off to a slow start in explaining it, its opponents have also been assiduous in obscuring what it is really about.While lowering trade barriers often produces some dislocations -- lost jobs as well as closed businesses -- historically it has brought increased prosperity to both partners.

When free trade proponents sold the American people on the idea of the North American Free Trade Agreement, they promised that it would be a boon economically. Evidence, however, suggests that it has been anything but. Since NAFTA's implementation, Americans have dealt with stagnating wages, outsourced jobs, increased illegal immigration, an influx of contaminated products and rapid environmental degradation. By 2008, according to EconomyInCrisis.org, NAFTA had cost America nearly 3 million well-paying manufacturing jobs, 3,000 family farms, countless businesses - and with them tax revenues - and billions of dollars through trade deficits.

OTTAWA -President Barack Obama offered the nation's largest trading partner assurances yesterday of his support for robust cross-border commerce in a seven-hour visit to Canada that was his first foreign trip as president. In a news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama said he wanted to "grow trade and not contract it." His remarks set a considerably more enthusiastic tone than during the presidential campaign, in which he had called for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement that governs commerce with Canada and Mexico.

Democrats yearn for the bounteous days of Bill Clinton's presidency, when the economy was flourishing, there were good jobs at good wages and poverty was on the wane. So it's a puzzle that on one of his signature achievements - the North American Free Trade Agreement - the party's presidential candidates are sprinting away from his record as fast as they can. It's as though Republicans were calling for defense cuts while invoking Ronald Reagan. Even Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton can't bring herself to defend the deal her husband pushed through.

Trade agreements would be disasters President Bush continues to insist that the entangling of Canada, Mexico and the United States in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been a grand success, not withstanding the fact that NAFTA has [cost] close to a million American jobs. Furthermore, a NAFTA tribunal claimed supremacy over our state and federal courts in a dispute involving a Canadian real estate company. The April 18, 2004, New York Times reported comments of Abner Mikva, a former member of Congress and former federal appeals court judge, "If Congress had known there was anything like this in NAFTA, they would never have voted for it."

WASHINGTON - Mexican trucks and buses soon may be rolling throughout California and the Southwestern states, with the backing of President Bush and the Supreme Court. Bush administration lawyers urged the high court yesterday to lift a court order that has barred Mexican trucks from going beyond a 20-mile border zone, and none of the justices took sharp exception during the hourlong argument. If the Supreme Court sides with the administration, it could clear the way for thousands of Mexican trucks to deliver goods within the United States.

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - As Sen. John Edwards energetically and emotionally talked trade and jobs before a packed crowd at the local Teamsters hall here the other day, a huge sign looked down on him and his audience. It said: "Remember the shafta you got from NAFTA ... Remember the people who told you to vote for the man who gave it to you. Vote John Edwards." The "people" weren't identified, but the message by local supporters seemed to refer to Sen. John Kerry, who voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1993, a key subject of the current debate between the two Democratic candidates in Tuesday's Ohio presidential primary.

Win or lose the NAFTA vote, President Clinton's gutsy stand on behalf of free trade and better relations with Mexico and Latin America constitutes his finest hour since taking office.His high-stakes gamble in sending Vice President Al Gore into a debate tonight with demagogic Ross Perot and his outspoken attack on the "rough-shod, muscle-bound" anti-NAFTA tactics of Big Labor may or may not provide the push needed for a victory next week in the House of Representatives. But this much is sure: passivity by the president would surely doom the agreement, undercut Mr. Clinton's prestige at home and abroad and send the signal that the United States is indeed turning inward and protectionist.

When Congress returns from its summer break, the hottest item on its agenda will be the pending North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada. The White House waited until lawmakers were away from Washington before concluding side accords fulfilling President Clinton's campaign pledge to add environmental and labor standards safeguards to the agreement.Now Mr. Clinton has the task of containing a rebellion in his own Democratic Party, one that has already seen the defection of House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt.

MIAMI - As tens of thousands marched in protest nearby, some with Steelworkers union flags and giant cardboard sunflowers, trade ministers from across the Americas approved yesterday a buffet-style plan to create the world's largest free-trade bloc. The Free Trade Area of the Americas would extend the decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement to eliminate tariffs and trade barriers among all Western Hemisphere countries except Cuba. By late yesterday afternoon, 36 protesters had been arrested outside the temporary metal fencing that surrounded the Intercontinental Hotel, where trade ministers from 34 countries met. Two police officers were injured during protests.