North American Free Trade Pact

* California Congresswoman Jane Harman in her article “Not This Treaty and Not Now” (Aug. 2) said, “The short term matters, and in the short term NAFTA could be a disaster for American workers.” It stands to reason that with wages for production workers in the U.S. at $14.83, compared with $1.85 for Mexico, plus the almost total lack of enforcement of safety and environmental standards in Mexico, the U.S. will suffer a dramatic loss in jobs.

Nor am I sure of the long-term benefits. Walter Russell Mead, in his Times article, “As the ERM Falls Apart, It’s U.S. That Will Be Sorry,” (Opinion, Aug. 8) said, “Economically, the 12 European Community members are so closely integrated that even small currency fluctuations wreak havoc with trade.” Compared to the Mexican peso, the U.S. dollar is the Rock of Gibraltar. In the short or long run, NAFTA will be a disaster unless the U.S., Canada, and Mexico can maintain at least some semblance of currency stability. This is as unlikely as the premise that NAFTA is in our best interests.

EDWIN C. BAUR

Rancho Palos Verdes

* Your Column Right by Patrick J. Buchanan, Aug. 10, gives good reasons for NAFTA to be struck down. Buchanan seems to have forgotten that this fiasco was initiated by former President George Bush. Clinton is only picking up the ball and running with it. NAFTA is not a good deal for this country and all the side deals in this world will not make it any better.

While it is being promoted as an equalizer in the way that trade is done between the three nations, the only beneficiaries are big business at the expense of the American worker. Things are changing the world over. America is moving from being an industrialized nation. But until something better than NAFTA comes, America, if it wants to remain a world leader, had better tend to the needs of the people that helped make it great.

WYATT JAMES

San Diego

* If American labor lets the North American Free Trade Agreement move its life-sustaining jobs to Mexico without making a majority of Congress pay for the deed with their careers, it must be even more helpless than I had thought.

ART STANLOW

Costa Mesa

* The article on NAFTA by Adela de la Torre (Aug. 11) might as well have been written by a corporate executive who seeks to convince people that the sneaky, sleazy maneuvering by American insurance companies is good for the oppressed people of Mexico.

De la Torre ignores the fact that Mexican workers are the victims of Mexico’s “liberalized regulatory climate.” They are the ones who must suffer from subhuman working conditions and wages.

The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most polluted areas on Earth, thanks to the ruthless American transnationals and the “attractiveness of the Mexican market.” The Mexican government is just as willing to exploit its people and jump in bed with American transnationals. Their program of economic liberalization is designed to stamp out traditional lifestyles (small farms, local foods) and replace them with a consumption lifestyle (i.e., freeways, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola).

Cigna, Aetna, Chubb, and AIG are waiting like vultures for NAFTA to pass so they’ll be able to make their millions. De la Torre states that Mexicans are underinsured compared to Americans and Canadians, but maybe it’s not necessary because Mexicans don’t all have cars and don’t all eat toxic corporate fast food. The former cause violent accidents and the latter destroys our health, causing chronic diseases from which insurance companies derive their profit.

DYLAN FIERRO

Venice

* For those who have lost their livelihoods to Mexico’s “free trade” zone, there is nothing free about free trade. For the Mexican laborers toiling for 58 cents per hour and living near toxic dumps, the price of trade is high. For Americans who will be taxed to promote the mass exodus of manufacturers and undertake the monumental task of environmental cleanup, the North American Free Trade Agreement will be an economic nightmare. But for the multinational elite (especially bankers) and their lobbyists and paid-off politicians, the path to Mexico (and other Third World countries) is paved in gold.

MARTA NEELY

Corona

* There will always be trade between the U.S. and Mexico, legal or otherwise. Issues like U.S. jobs and the environment seem trivial when one looks at the repercussions the failure of NAFTA would have on Mexican politics, the state of U.S.-Mexican relations and the global economic move toward trade liberalization.

MARK E. FOSTER

Santa Ana