J.F.K. Would Back NAFTA, Clinton Says : Economy: He cites ex-President’s emphasis on Latin America growth. Ironically, Sen. Kennedy is leaning against voting for the trade pact.

President Clinton declared Friday that John F. Kennedy would support the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada if he were alive today.

In an appearance marking the dedication of a new set of exhibits at the Kennedy Library here, Clinton cited as evidence the late President’s Alliance for Progress, an effort to foster democracy and economic growth throughout Latin America.

On the dais a few feet away, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), brother of the late President who is leaning against voting for the trade agreement, jokingly hanged himself with his tie to the laughter of the several hundred invited guests.

Clinton said later that he had put the “squeeze” on the senator to win his support for the trade accord and that choking himself was “the right thing to do.”

The President told the crowd, which included Kennedy family members and local officials, that “this new global economy is our new frontier”--a phrase borrowed from the Kennedy years. “Our success at home depends on our engagement abroad. . . . Even more than in President Kennedy’s day, the line between foreign and domestic interests is rapidly disappearing.”

Clinton used his remarks to further his drive for ratification of the trade agreement with a congressional vote less than three weeks away. The pact appears to be in trouble because of strong opposition from organized labor and former independent presidential candidate Ross Perot.

Clinton also took the occasion to wrap himself in the mantle of his lifelong hero. Joining him on stage were the leading figures of the Kennedy clan, including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, her children, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and John F. Kennedy Jr., and the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel.

Robert Kennedy’s son, Joseph Kennedy, a congressman from Massachusetts who supports the trade accord, was also on stage and kidded Sen. Kennedy, his uncle, because his position on the pact has vacillated.

In the audience were dozens more Kennedys, including William Kennedy Smith, the acquitted defendant in the celebrated Palm Beach rape trial two years ago. Actress Darryl Hannah, rumored to be John F. Kennedy Jr.’s fiancee, was also present.

Clinton said that he wants to realize President Kennedy’s vision of peace abroad and racial reconciliation and economic justice at home. He noted that Kennedy rejected isolationism and that he, too, is trying to prevent Americans from turning selfishly inward.

“Our generation must now decide, just as John Kennedy and his generation had to decide at the end of World War II, whether we will harness the galloping changes of our time . . . to the well-being of the American people or withdraw from the world and recoil from our own problems as we did after World War I,” Clinton said.

Clinton said that Americans must not fear the changes wrought by the global economy, even if it means temporarily lost jobs for thousands of Americans. He urged employers to support his proposal to create a massive new worker retraining program to aid those dislocated by international competition.

In a speech to a business group Thursday night in New York, Clinton acknowledged that he had underestimated the trepidation of millions of Americans about the pact and about the nation’s economic future.

Opposition to the trade agreement is not based on the terms of the treaty, Clinton said, but on a cramped and frightened vision of the world and America’s place in it.

“This agreement has become the symbol, as I said, for the emotional frustrations, anxieties and disappointments of the American people,” Clinton said. “What happened today in America is we have a whole lot of people who have dealt with this not very well, who feel that they have worked hard and played by the rules and who now are the seedbed of resentment welling up against NAFTA--not because of anything that’s in NAFTA, but because it’s the flypaper that’s catching all the emotion that is part of the runoff of the last 10 or 12 years.”

He said that his intense lobbying of undecided members of Congress over the last three weeks has begun to pay off and suggested that, in a secret ballot today, the agreement would be approved.

He called the 2 1/2 weeks remaining before the scheduled Nov. 17 vote on the agreement “an eternity” and vowed to spend a good part of the time pushing hard for passage in public and in private.

As part of that effort, he visited a Gillette Co. razor blade factory in Boston Friday, touring the assembly line and urging workers to pressure their elected representatives to support the agreement.

Gillette has had razor plants in Mexico since 1949 and today employs 2,000 Mexicans at four factories. The firm strongly supports the pact, although it does not intend to build new facilities in Mexico if the agreement is approved, company officials said.

Clinton barely avoided an embarrassing protest in opposition to the pact at the Gillette plant when Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) inveighed upon organized labor to call off the demonstration. In exchange, Moakley promised union leaders that he would remain firm in his opposition to the treaty.