FWD: nafta-taa

[MDOLAN <mdolan@citizen.org>]

  My friends:
  
  Our close allies at the Institute for Policy Studies, the prestigious and 
  progressive think tank here in Washington, D.C., prepared the following 
  helpful talking points concerning the use and abuse of the NAFTA TAA 
  numbers (which, as we often say, reveal only the "tip of the iceberg" of 
  NAFTA job losses).
  
  I pass them along to you.  Here.
  ===========================================
  
  
  To:             All interested
  From:           Sarah Anderson, IPS
  Date:           June 30, 1997
  Re:             IPS response to 6/30/97 Wall St. Journal article, "Shaky
                  Numbers: Layoffs Not Related to NAFTA Can Trigger Special 
  Help                 Anyway," p. A1.
  _____________________
  
  The Wall St. Journal ran a page 1 story today attempting to discredit the 
  NAFTA- TAA program.  The article is enormously misleading.  I wrote the 
  following talking points for IPS purposes, but thought they might also be 
  useful for others who may get questions on this from reporters.  Comments 
  appreciated.
  
  
  1.  The Institute for Policy Studies has made frequent use of the figures
  on job loss from the NAFTA Transitional Adjustment Assistance (NAFTA-TAA) 
  program in its analysis of the impact of NAFTA.  We have presented these 
  data as a rough, but interesting gauge of general employment trends related 
  to free
  trade.
  At the same time we have never claimed that every layoff certified for 
  NAFTA-
  TAA was directly caused by NAFTA.  Instead, we have used these data to:
  
  *       locate workers who could speak from their own experiences of having
  lost their jobs because their employer, in the aftermath of NAFTA's 
  passage,
  made a decision to shift production to Mexico.
  
  *       get a general sense of the types of industries, workers and
  communities that have been most affected by trends associated with the free 
  trade pact (i.e., shifts in production to Mexico and increasing U.S. trade 
  deficits with NAFTA partners).  For example, we have found that rural 
  communities, women, and people of color appear to be disproportionately 
  affected by these trends.
  
  *       illustrate the hypocrisy of pro-NAFTA U.S. corporations that
  claimed that the trade pact would be good for U.S. workers, in some cases 
  promising not to move jobs to Mexico, and then went back on these claims 
  within the first few years of NAFTA.  Indeed, in our report "NAFTA's 
  Corporate Camouflage," we reveal that 12 of the 28 manufacturing firms that 
  led the NAFTA charge have laid off workers who subsequently qualified for 
  the NAFTA-TAA.
  
  
  2.  At the same time, we have also criticized the NAFTA-TAA figures insofar 
  as
  they do not give an accurate picture of job loss under NAFTA.  For every 
  case
  cited by the WSJ as being "shaky," one could likely find numerous other 
  layoffs
  that never show up in the NAFTA-TAA figures even though they were the 
  result
  of a shift in production to Mexico or Canada or of increased imports from 
  those
  countries.  This is because many workers do not know about the program, do
  not meet its criteria, decide to apply for a different assistance program,
  or find new employment.
  
  3.  The WSJ article focuses on cases in which the reason for NAFTA-TAA
  certification was that the layoff resulted from increased imports.  And
  yet, the leading cause for certification is a shift in production to 
  Mexico, a trend that can be more concretely linked to the increased 
  incentives provided by NAFTA for U.S. corporations to take advantage of 
  lower labor costs in Mexico.
  
  4.  One reason we have used the NAFTA-TAA figures as one, albeit flawed,
  indicator of the impact of trade on jobs is because the Clinton 
  Administration
  has failed to carry out serious research on this issue.  The USTR continues 
  to
  make the ridiculous claim that NAFTA has created hundreds of thousands of
  jobs by generating increased exports to our NAFTA partners, without
  considering the impact of more rapidly increasing imports from Canada and
  Mexico.
  ***** NOTES from MDOLAN (MDOLAN @ CITIZEN) at 7/01/97 5:21 PM
  
  
  ****************************************************************************
   /s/ Mike Dolan, Field Director, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
  
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