Nafta Gets Poor Grades

Just days before the Clinton administration issues what is expected to be a glowing status report on NAFTA, critics of the trade pact put out a grim report card Thursday.

A coalition of labor and environmental groups, as well as affiliated think tanks, released an analysis saying the first 3-1/2 years of NAFTA have proven to be a blessing only to multinational investors.

“This is a bad thing for the United States; it’s a bad thing for our workforce,” Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s assistant director for public policy, said at a news conference organized by NAFTA critics. “We need to recognize and learn from the mistakes of NAFTA - not cover them up,” she said.

Since implementation of the trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada in 1994, critics said the pact has cost some 420,000 Americans their jobs and set the scene for a severe economic downturn in Mexico that put 2 million people out of work.

NAFTA also is responsible for growing U.S. trade deficits with its two partners and a flight of industry to Mexico, said the group’s report, “The Failed Experiment: NAFTA at Three Years.”

But administration officials have long defended NAFTA, saying it has spurred major increases in exports to Mexico and Canada, stimulated domestic industrial production and cushioned the blow of Mexico’s severe recession.

They acknowledge growing trade deficits, but blame them on a long stagnant Canadian economy and the 1994 peso crisis.