Salinas Lauds Benefits of Free-Trade Reforms : Border: In a speech in San Diego, the Mexican President skirts issue of a joint airport with Tijuana.

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari arrived in San Diego County Saturday and argued forcefully for his vision of a free-trade future linking Mexico, the United States and Can ada in a vast regional market.

“Investment and trade will offer benefits for each nation in the world of the 21st Century,” Salinas told guests at a Coronado luncheon sponsored by the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego.

The president spoke during the first day of a three-day swing through California that is slated to conclude Monday, when he is scheduled to inaugurate a much-lauded exhibit of Mexican art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It is his second visit to California since becoming president almost three years ago.

After his 10-minute address, Salinas met privately with Gov. Pete Wilson, whose administration views a prospective free trade regimen with Mexico as a financial bonanza for California, which shares a 140-mile-long border with Mexico. Trade between Mexico and California topped $8 billion in 1989, the last year for which figures were available.

In an issue of particular interest to the San Diego area, Salinas gave no definitive answer when asked after the lunch about the possibility of a joint airport linking San Diego and Tijuana. The concept has gained currency in the region but it has also engendered intense opposition from residents fearing increased noise, traffic and other problems.

A joint airport is still being studied, noted Salinas, who pointed out that Mexican authorities and private investors are now pumping some $300 million into improvements at Tijuana’s Gen. Abelardo L. Rodriguez International Airport.

The Tijuana facility, Salinas said, “will become one of the most important airports in the whole nation,” a response that some immediately interpreted as a strong indication that Mexican officials were more interested in increasing capacity at the Tijuana airport than embarking on a joint mega-project with San Diego.

The president’s visit is viewed in part as a lobbying effort on behalf of the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement, details of which are now being ironed out by negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada. The prospective accord would reduce or eliminate tariffs, import fees, and other international trade barriers.

While organized labor, environmentalists and others in the United States have expressed strong reservations about the accord, Salinas has used the near-imperial powers of his presidency to mobilize wide-ranging support for the initiative in Mexico.

Still, critics south of the border have said that a free-trade atmosphere may provide more benefits for U.S. corporate executives seeking access to cheap Mexican labor than to most Mexican workers--a point of view clearly not shared by Salinas, a strong free-market adherent.

“Economies that fail to raise their competitiveness will gradually be left . . . on the sidelines of the dynamic world economy,” said Salinas, speaking Spanish and wearing a conservative dark suit. “Today, more than ever, economic well-being, like knowledge, should be a common benefit extended to humanity as a whole.”

Mexico remains mired in an almost decade-long economic crisis that has sent millions of Mexican citizens fleeing north in search of opportunities in the United States.

While new economic refugees arrive daily via San Diego and other border zones, Salinas pointed to what he views as hopeful signs: The nation’s economy is growing at an annual rate of 4%--double the rate of population growth--for the third consecutive year, and inflation is expected to reach single-digit numbers by next year, compared to the triple-digit readings of four years ago.

“Stabilization has provided the backup and stimulus for the creation of a suitable climate for a profound reform of our economy,” Salinas said, alluding to his wide-ranging program of opening up Mexico’s long-sheltered economy, which has drawn criticism as being both too radical and too timid.

Salinas, whose free-trade programs have been praised by President Bush and other U.S. officials, made clear his belief that international economic integration is the correct path for Mexico and other nations. It is a view that, until recently, was routinely derided south of the border as being anti-nationalistic.

“Jobs are lost when there is a lack of competitiveness, and no amount of protectionism will shield them for long,” Salinas told the luncheon crowd after being presented with the UC San Diego medal by David P. Gardner, president of the University of California system. “Any economy that chooses to follow such a path will find itself beset by new weaknesses.”

Later, asked whether the benefits of economic reform will trickle down to Mexico’s mostly impoverished population, Salinas was quick to praise his much-heralded Solidarity program, which has tried to provide basic services to communities throughout Mexico. The initiative, Salinas said, had provided funds for running water for 8 million Mexican households and electricity for 11 million households. The program has also financed repairs to some 50,000 schools.

“This is the safety net we have built, with a dynamic center,” Salinas boasted, speaking English while taking a few questions following the lunch.

Critics say Salinas and his administration greatly exaggerate the benefits of Solidarity and other initiatives.

“Salinas is here to play politics,” said Raul Ruiz, professor of Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, who is associated with the California chapter of a major opposition group in Mexico.

Mexico, a nation of more than 80 million people that shares an almost-2,000-mile long border with the United States, has long had one of the world’s most protected--and inefficient--economies, experts say. Salinas has changed all that, opening up the nation to foreign investment and products, reducing tariffs and other trade barriers, and divesting the nation of some 1,000 formerly state-owned enterprises, including the airlines, mines, telephone company and the banks, since he was sworn in as president in December, 1988.

Now nearing the halfway point of his six-year term (under Mexican law, he cannot be re-elected), Salinas is clearly hopeful that a free-trade regimen will provide the kind of economic prosperity that will catapult his party--the long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party--into the president’s seat again in 1994, this time without messy questions about the propriety of the election. Salinas himself was elected by a bare majority in an election that critics say was rigged.

While Salinas mostly dwelt on economic issues, he also spoke of other themes, among them the importance of combining effective drug interdiction with protection of human rights. Various rights groups have alleged that Mexican authorities, in their zeal to report drug busts and arrests, have routinely imprisoned, tortured and even murdered Mexican citizens.

“No one will be above the law,” Salinas stated.

As Salinas met with academic and other experts at UC San Diego, some protesters outside called for an end to torture and other alleged rights abuses in Mexico.

After the Coronado luncheon, Salinas participated in a seminar on U.S.-Mexico border affairs at the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.

Funds from the $250-a-plate luncheon at the Hotel del Coronado are to benefit the center’s endowment. Salinas was expected to spend the night in San Diego before leaving for the San Francisco Bay Area early today.