Clinton Sees NAFTA Gains, Urges Foes to Dismiss Fears

President Clinton on Saturday urged opponents of his free trade agreement to cast aside their fears about job losses to Mexico and declared that his campaign to win more House votes is steadily picking up momentum.

Plugging the merits of the North American Free Trade Agreement in his weekly White House radio address and at an airport rally in Tennessee, the President warned that a defeat of NAFTA this week would bring “retreat into a shell of protectionism.”

But he expressed confidence that House members will “seize the moment . . . and vote for hope over fear” on Wednesday, a decision that he said would “create 200,000 new high-paying jobs in the next two years.” If approved by the House, the trade legislation moves on to the Senate.

Before leaving the White House for a one-day trip to Memphis, Tenn., Clinton told reporters he had won 27 NAFTA endorsements in Congress over the last three days. At the Memphis airport, he was flanked by three more Democratic converts to the trade pact--Reps. Harold E. Ford of Tennessee and William J. Jefferson and Jimmy Hayes, both of Louisiana.

Ford said his count showed the White House was eight votes shy of a House victory. But other Administration officials said the pact between the United States, Mexico and Canada--requiring a simple majority approval--might be a dozen or so votes short of the 218 needed, with a sizable number of lawmakers uncommitted.

Clinton, pounding the lectern at his airport rally, said: “We know that it will mean more jobs for this country.”

As to his progress in Congress, he said: “We’re making some pretty good inroads now in places where I didn’t know that we could get some votes. It’s going to be a hard weekend, but I think we’ll make it.”

In his radio address, the President said that “some of our fellow citizens fear NAFTA so much” because advances in technology have created a new global economy requiring painful adjustments. But American workers are “the most productive in the world . . . and can out-compete and out-perform anyone, anywhere,” he said.

“That’s why American workers have nothing to fear from that and why American workers should be very concerned if we vote NAFTA down, walk away from Mexico and the rest of Latin America and the opportunities they present,” Clinton said.

NAFTA would lower Mexico’s barriers to American exports, allowing the United States to sell 55,000 more American-made cars in Mexico next year and “hundreds of thousands” more computers, the President added, claiming this translates into 200,000 new jobs.

Clinton also won support for NAFTA in the Republicans’ weekly radio response. Rep. Tom Ridge (R-Pa.) said that “just as our military strength preserved leadership, the world now looks to America to lead the way to economic growth and prosperity.”

Such leadership “starts with an agreement that tears down walls that have barred American workers from sending their own quality products into our neighbors’ markets,” Ridge said.

House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), a staunch NAFTA opponent, pointed out Saturday on Cable News Network that Clinton will need Republican help to pass the trade pact, because Democrats are so divided over it.

“The Republicans now are the difference on whether or not this thing goes forward,” he said.

Referring to former President George Bush, who negotiated NAFTA, Gephardt added: “If the Republican members won’t support a treaty their President negotiated, then this treaty is not going to pass.”

Representing organized labor’s opposition to the pact, Teamster President Ron Carey appeared on NBC’s “Today Show Saturday” to urge that NAFTA be renegotiated to include a North American minimum wage and other measures to protect workers in all three countries.

“In the NAFTA agreement there are over 2,000 pages protecting corporations but not one mention about workers, not one mention about how we protect them,” Carey said.

Because many Mexican workers make as little as $4 a day, “Mexican consumers don’t make enough money to purchase American products,” he said.