The Real Story

The staff is right to express its support for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Put simply, it's a pact that will help the world in the long run.

But the staff also takes a position that is unnecessarily dismissive of the concerns that working people have about the treaty. Such an elitist attitude cannot be condoned. And it is a subtle attempt to try to downplay the real harm NAFTA will do to America in the short run.

At this very moment, dozens of U.S. companies stand poised to leave the country as soon as NAFTA passes both Houses of Congress. Even NAFTA's supporters acknowledge that job losses to the country will be in the hundreds of thousands.

This fact makes the staff's effort to portray all opposition to the treaty as some crazy delusion of Ross Perot inaccurate and slightly offensive. Real people will lose their jobs because of this treaty. The staff seems to overlook that. One hopes that President Clinton and others will consider these job losses more important than does The Crimson, and see to it that attempts are made to retrain American workers who lose their jobs under the pact.

It is almost laughable to watch the staff run for cover behind the "unanimous" support of the nation's leading economists--the same kind of people The Crimson bashed mercilessly during the Reagan and Bush years for their support of lower taxes and less government spending.

Still, I agree with the staff on the most important question: NAFTA deserves your support. It is a worthy treaty because of what it will do for workers in this and other countries in the long run. But support for changes in economic policy that cost thousands their jobs should never come easy--despite what the tone of the staff editorial suggests.