Free trade isn't all it's cracked up to be

[MDOLAN <mdolan@citizen.org>]

  from:  http://www.theatlantic.com/atlantic/atlweb/polipro/pp9707.htm
  
  
  
                Free trade isn't all it's cracked up to be
  
                                  by Jack Beatty
                               The Atlantic Monthly
                                  July 2, 1997
  
         The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was
         signed into law three years ago. In the fight to pass the
         legislation the Clinton Administration and its business allies
         claimed that NAFTA would create more than 200,000 U.S.
         jobs. In fact the Clinton Labor Department now concedes that
         109,000 jobs have been officially lost to NAFTA. Public
         Citizen, Ralph Nader's organization, released a report this past
         February that calculated NAFTA job losses at 600,000.
         Public Citizen arrived at that number by applying the
         pro-NAFTA job-creation formulas to the $15 billion 1995
         U.S. trade deficit with Mexico -- the idea being that if exports
         to Mexico were supposed to create U.S. jobs, imports from
         Mexico cost U.S. jobs.
  
         The report convincingly disputes the Labor Department's
         official count of jobs lost to NAFTA. Since the creation of
         NAFTA the percentage of its clothes that Guess Inc. makes in
         Los Angeles has fallen from 97 percent to 35 percent. A
         thousand Guess workers lost their jobs in just two months last
         year, yet the Labor Department did not include them in its
         estimate of job losses due to NAFTA -- possibly because few
         of the laid-off workers applied to the Department's little-known
         Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, set up under
         NAFTA.
  
         Another example: Before NAFTA, Florida tomatoes were a
         $700-million industry; they are now a $400-million industry.
         One hundred Florida tomato companies have been wiped out
         by Mexican growers paying low wages. Thus far only one
         company has filed for TAA assistance. It laid off a thousand
         employees. Yet the thousands of other employees laid off by
         the hundred failed companies are not included in the Labor
         Department's estimate of NAFTA-caused job losses.
  
         Public Citizen has also gathered information on the U.S.
         companies who took the most public role in lobbying for
         NAFTA in 1993. These companies made a total of sixty-six
         company-specific promises about the U.S. jobs that NAFTA
         would create. Fifty-nine of these sixty-six promises have been
         broken, Public Citizen found. For example:
  
         A General Electric representative told the House Foreign
         Affairs Committee in October, 1993, that sales to Mexico
         "could support 10,000 jobs for General Electric and its
         suppliers." In fact the Labor Department certifies that
         G.E. has laid off 2,304 workers because of NAFTA -- 2,108 of them
         because of a "shift in production to Mexico."
  
         Mattel, the toy maker, testified that NAFTA would create
         jobs and "have a very positive impact on Mattel and more than
         2,000 US employees." In fact the Labor Department certifies
         that Mattel has laid off 520 workers at its Medina, New York,
         factory because of "increased company imports from Mexico."
  
         Johnson & Johnson promised that "an estimated 800 more
         U.S. positions will be created as a result of trade with Mexico,
         should NAFTA be approved." In fact since the creation of
         NAFTA Johnson & Johnson has laid off 512 workers owing
         to NAFTA -- 400 from a Little Rock plant because of a "shift
         in production to Canada" and 112 from an El Paso plant
         because of " a shift in production to Mexico."
  
         Allied-Signal's Chairman told Lou Dobbs of CNN that his
         company would not move jobs to Mexico as a result of
         NAFTA. By official Labor Department figures Allied Signal
         has shifted 992 jobs to Mexico since NAFTA.
  
        A business coalition calling itself USA*NAFTA got thirty-five
        Fortune 500 companies to serve as "captains" in the lobbying
        drive for NAFTA. The captains contributed a total of $7.2
        million in "soft money" to both parties in the most recent
        election cycle. Seven captains -- including representatives from
        DuPont, BankAmerica, United Technologies, American
        International Group, and AT&T -- were invited for coffee at
        the White House by President Clinton. Many of these same
        corporations will soon be joining President Clinton in a
        campaign to extend NAFTA to other countries in Latin America.
  
         Since the creation of NAFTA employment in the maquiladora
         plants along the U.S.-Mexico border has increased 48 percent.
         Through a NAFTA subsidy program U.S. corporations setting
         up shop in the maquiladoras can get away with paying their
         Mexican workers three dollars a day instead of the standard
         five dollars a day.
  
         A recent House bill, The NAFTA Accountability Act
         (HR-978), gives opponents of NAFTA a cause to rally to: the
         bill would apply a do-no-harm certification process to NAFTA
         and would require the President to renegotiate NAFTA with
         Mexico in areas -- such as U.S. jobs and the environment --
         where NAFTA is doing harm.
  
         NAFTA was a massive betrayal of working American families
         on the part of the American corporate, political, and journalistic
         elites. NAFTA must not be extended further into Latin
         America until HR 978 is passed and until NAFTA can be
         certified as doing no harm to American society.
  
                      Copyright _ 1997 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All
                      rights reserved.
  ***** NOTES from MDOLAN (MDOLAN @ CITIZEN) at 8/05/97 4:11 PM
  
  
  ****************************************************************************
   /s/ Mike Dolan, Field Director, Global Trade Watch, Public Citizen
  
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