PERSPECTIVE ON FREE TRADE : A ‘Done Deal’ Won’t Be a Fair Deal : Workers on both sides stand to lose unless environmental, job and other protections are negotiated in advance.

There is no such thing as absolute free trade. All trade among nations involves the sharing of reciprocal costs and benefits. “Fair” trade is achieved only when trading partners each benefit from the arrangement and when the costs to each are roughly in balance. There is an increasing likelihood that the proposed trade agreement with Mexico will be neither free nor fair.

The Bush and Salinas administrations have joined forces to conceal the true costs of the agreement now being negotiated. They hope to limit the treaty to provisions dealing solely with economic liberalization. Yet there are serious collateral issues that, if not addressed by the treaty, threaten to further degrade labor, environmental and living standards in both countries.

Evidence of this joint strategy can be seen in the Bush Administration’s aggressive--and successful--lobbying for “fast track” consideration of the treaty. This measure was designed to avoid linkage with broader issues by limiting debate and precluding amendments to the treaty once it reaches Congress for approval. The Bush Administration hopes to forestall debate during the formulation period as well, and to present Congress with a fait accompli when it will be too costly, politically, to reject what the Administration proposes.

Similarly, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his commerce secretary have ruled out any linkage between free trade and such issues as workers’ rights and environmental protections.

The philosophy behind the joint strategy is the mistaken belief that unrestrained free trade is the key to economic growth and prosperity. This same philosophy in the 1980s caused the United States to unwittingly subsidize the flight of low-end manufacturing jobs across the Pacific Rim and then sit idly by as foreign competitors engaged in unfair competition and protectionism. The success of the philosophy caused the elimination of 1.5 million manufacturing jobs and a reduction in average American income for the first time since World War II. In the last two years, the electronics industry in the United States has lost 440,000 jobs and the auto industry 140,000, while employment at the border maquiladoras has increased proportionately in these industries.

The pending trade agreement with Mexico promises another decade of false hopes unless Congress insists on linking trade liberalization with labor and environmental concerns. Even without the agreement, the integration of the U.S. and Mexican economies will continue, as will the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs, as companies relocate to obtain the benefits of cheap labor and lax environmental controls.

Congress must demand provisions that will control the mass exodus of American jobs and at the same time ensure that increased productivity in Mexico will be rewarded with an increase in Mexican wages. This means insisting on the gradual harmonization of the minimum wage in both countries. Only in this way can the exodus be controlled and an increase in the standard of living of Mexican workers be assured.

Congress also must insist on provisions that respect the dignity of labor by ensuring minimum standards of health and safety in the workplace, and that preclude the exploitation of child labor.

Congress should impose a windfall profit tax on manufacturers who reap the reward of cheap Mexican labor, and use those proceeds to retrain and re-employ dislocated U.S. workers, many of whom, ironically, will be Latino.

Similarly, Congress cannot permit hard-won environmental victories in this country to be undermined by manufacturers and investors who seek the advantages of unregulated industrial development just south of the border. The maquiladora sector employs millions of Mexicans who must live and work in areas without sewage systems or waste-treatment plants. A cholera epidemic in the country’s interior continues to spread. Congress must insist on Mexican environmental standards and enforcement procedures approximating those in the United States. Congress should require that a portion of the windfall profit tax be used as an emergency clean-up fund in the event of environmental accidents.

Finally, Congress must insist on some measure of political reform in Mexico and within the authoritarian government party. The Bush Administration and Congress have linked economic and political issues in the case of Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, China and, most recently, the Soviet Union. If the Mexican public’s support for free trade is as great as Salinas’ party insists, it has nothing to fear from free elections.

Congress has the power to insist on a fair trade agreement. We must do all that we can to see that it does.