Salinas Lobbies for Trade Pact : Mexico: On first day of a three-day visit to California, the president campaigns for an agreement linking his nation to the United States and Canada.

Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari argued forcefully Saturday for his vision of a free-trade future linking Mexico, the United States and Canada 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 scheduled to conclude Monday, when he is to inaugurate a much-anticipated exhibit of Mexican art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

After his 10-minute address, Salinas met privately with Gov. Pete Wilson, whose Administration views a prospective free-trade agreement 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.

Salinas’ visit, his second to California since becoming president, is part of a lobbying effort on behalf of the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement. Details of the agreement are being ironed out by negotiators from the United States, Mexico and Canada.

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

Critics south of the border, however, 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 in Spanish. “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, a calamity that has sent millions of Mexican citizens fleeing north in search of improved opportunities in the United States.

While new economic refugees continue to move across the border, 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 of 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 as 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 attempted to provide basic services to communities throughout Mexico.

The initiative, Salinas said, had provided funds to furnish running water for 8 million Mexican households and electricity for 11 million households, and the program has also financed repairs to about 50,000 schools.

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

Mexico has long had one of the world’s most protected--and inefficient--economies, experts say.

Salinas has moved to change that, opening up the nation to foreign investment and products, reducing tariffs and other trade barriers, and divesting the nation of about 1,000 formerly state-owned enterprises.