Clinton’s NAFTA Endorsement

Gov. Bill Clinton knows that President Bush’s proposed North American Free Trade Agreement can mean thousands of badly needed U.S. jobs will be moved to Mexico where wages are pathetically low.

So why did he give it a qualified endorsement last week when one of his key campaign slogans is “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”?

According to a senior policy adviser, Clinton took that position because he became convinced that the serious flaws in the “free trade” agreement can be corrected if he is elected President.

As President, Clinton believes that he can do that by getting side agreements with Mexico and adequate congressional legislation to implement the treaty. He would sign the proposed treaty “if and only if” he and Congress can ease the job losses and environmental damage it will cause as it now stands.

There is no need, Clinton said, to renegotiate the entire agreement that was hailed as already terrific by President Bush last Wednesday at a meeting with the heads of the Mexican and Canadian governments.

The trouble is that the agreement is running on a “fast track,” which means in theory Congress can only vote it up or down as it now stands. It’s hard to see how it can be fixed without starting from scratch.

Also, if Clinton loses, Bush will have Clinton’s limited endorsement of the agreement to help push it through Congress in the same sad state it’s in now.

Besides, the Mexican government would be foolish to accept Clinton’s proposals for side agreements that he hopes will raise Mexicans’ wages meaningfully to help our workers compete for jobs with U.S. corporations encouraged by the treaty to move to Mexico.

Pushing Mexican wages up significantly in the foreseeable future would in itself be a monumental achievement since our $4.35 minimum hourly wage is about six times higher than the average wage in Mexico.

Nor is Mexico likely to even start seriously enforcing environmental protection laws, because if they do, and also raise wages of Mexican workers, Mexico would lose much of the attraction it now has for American businesses.

And that attraction is powerful. A recent survey of American manufacturers commissioned by the Wall Street Journal found that 40% are inclined to move at least some manufacturing to Mexico in the next few years, if the agreement is implemented.

Many U.S. companies have already been attracted to Mexico by the low wages there--about 75 cents an hour with few if any fringe benefits--and the lack of environmental law enforcement.

It is estimated by the liberal Economic Policy Institute and others that about 2,100 U.S. factories and 500,000 U.S. jobs have gone south of the border in recent years and that the treaty ardently advocated by Bush would mean the loss of an estimated 500,000 more jobs.

Even more discouraging is a report issued two weeks ago by the nonpartisan Congressional Office of Technology Assessment showing that lower-skilled workers are at the highest risk of losing jobs or facing wage cuts as a result of the proposed trade agreement. These are the workers who have already been battered so severely by the recession.

Organized labor has waged a remarkably effective campaign against Bush’s version of free trade. Initially, few people understood it enough to support or oppose it. Now polls show more than half of those surveyed have an opinion, and there is almost equal support and opposition to it.

That opposition, apparently due in large part to labor’s massive campaign against the agreement, also makes it far from certain that Congress will approve it, even with Clinton’s qualified support.

Yet despite labor’s often furious opposition against the proposed agreement, unions have only gently chided Clinton for his “yes, but” endorsement of it. They wanted a “no, unless” response from him.

Desperately anxious to get Bush out of the White House, labor and other foes of the plan were caught in a bind. They fear harsh criticism of Clinton for his qualified endorsement of the Bush plan will cost him votes among those workers who are counting on him to help defeat it.

On the other hand, their credibility with their members will be hurt if union leaders praised Clinton for his understanding of the damaging impact the plan will have on workers and just ignored his partial support of it.

AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland handled the political dilemma by mildly noting that while the labor federation was “disappointed” by Clinton’s position, he “is going to win this election with the energetic support of union members in every state.”

However, Kirkland and other union leaders also insisted that, contrary to Clinton’s view, the Bush free trade plan is so seriously flawed that it can only be corrected by dumping it and negotiating a new one.

While thus softly challenging Clinton on one of labor’s top priority issues, they may be able to have their cake and eat it too. They can keep pressure on Clinton and continue to fight the Bush plan, and at the same time show that Clinton is no captive of unions, as the Bush campaign wants voters to believe.

Clinton’s qualified endorsement of the proposed trade agreement was obviously not concocted jointly by strategists of Clinton and the unions because union leaders have been pressing him directly and through his aides to unequivocally oppose the treaty.

But all will end well if Bush’s plan to pit U.S. workers against workers in Mexico fails and Clinton in the White House realizes the need to renegotiate a trade plan that will increase trade between our two countries without increasing pollution and sending our jobs down there.