Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.issues,americast.usa-today.issues From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: issues Wed, Sep 16 1992 Date: Wed, 16 Sep 92 04:36:01 EDT Message-ID: 09-16 0000 DECISIONLINE: Issues & Debate USA TODAY Update Sept. 16, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network Here are some of the issues and topics being debated across the nation Wednesday morning in USA TODAY: Trade, Endangered species. TODAY'S DEBATE - TRADE: USA TODAY'S OPINION: A leader must have vision to see beyond the next election. President Bush has shown such vision in pushing for expanded U.S. trade - starting with his recently concluded negotiations to add Mexico to the free trade pact with Canada. And Democratic candidate Bill Clinton can display his leadership by rejecting the protectionist calls from some of his backers. If he's for free trade, as he says, he should get off the fence and support this pact. ... As the USA's 78 million baby boomers age, they'll need to save more for retirement. That means consuming less. If new markets aren't found to replace that lost consumption, business will have to cut back, as they are doing in this recession. Then unemployment will rise and living standards fall. ... World trade solves that problem. The free trade pact with Mexico would open wider an 88 million-person market by tearing down tariffs 2.5 times higher than U.S. rates. Economists say the pact will create 325,000 U.S. jobs and $50 billion added wealth for both nations in five years. ... the pact could lead to similar deals with other Latin American nations that are finally heeding decades of U.S. calls for more open markets. The sticking point is what to do about the 150,000 U.S. workers who lose jobs in the process. The answer isn't protectionism. It's retraining. Clinton has a more extensive retraining plan than Bush to keep U.S. workers competitive in the global marketplace. But for any retraining to work, jobs must be created to retrain for. More open trade creates them. ... Trade barriers close the door not only on foreign goods but on U.S. workers. OTHER VIEW: REP. RICHARD A. GEPHARDT, D-Mo., House majority leader: Last week, Labor Secretary Lynn Martin confessed in testimony before Congress that the North American Free Trade Agreement would kill 150,000 jobs, an amount equal to the population of Warren, Mich., or twice the number of layoffs announced by General Motors. ... this announcement probably dooms an agreement that, done right, would be an engine for economic growth and social justice throughout our hemisphere. A good trade agreement would reduce poverty, illegal immigration, pollution in the border region, labor and human rights abuses. It would lift economic growth, exports and living standards. But the administration's version of NAFTA ... validates Mexican protectionism and provides no funding to retrain workers, build pollution-control facilities or provide human dignity to impoverished Mexican workers. Several U.S. industries - energy, glass, automobiles, even wine - are virtually excluded from the Mexican market for as much as 10 years, even as already low tariffs on imports from Mexico are reduced or abolished. ... NAFTA will hasten the exodus of U.S. jobs to Mexico and drag down the wages of manufacturing workers. In the last year, George Bush killed unemployment benefits, proposed a sham job retraining program, vetoed growth incentives to end the recession and now tells Congress to expect NAFTA to produce huge job losses. NAFTA is rapidly becoming a symbol ... of everything wrong with Republican economics. ... NAFTA should be renegotiated and submitted for congressional approval by President Clinton next year. VOICES ACROSS THE NATION ON JOBS RELATED TO ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT: ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Patricia Cassidy, 58, county commissioner: Yes. You have to look at both the saving of the species and the saving of people's jobs. The truth is, it's possible to consider both. Right now, we have endangered people. In some areas of the West, it's real tough to get a job. We're in transition; we just have to hang on. PERRY, Ga., Ronald L. Cain, 50, retired: The main issue, I would think, would be the spotted owl. We need more control of logging when you see all these clear-cut areas and the erosion of land. I don't want to end logging, but there should be more sensible controls. WASHINGTON, D.C., Melissa James, 19, student: They both should be considered important. A lot of waste goes on with logging. A lot of the trees they chop down are left there and not used. A meeting should be held to think up jobs for these people. LOS ANGELES, Calif., Robert Ito, 30, doctoral student: No. There are a lot of people in the defense industry who are out of work, but you can't say we have to start another war because people are out of jobs. These things happen because people are in certain industries. You can't overlook the environmental impact. MILWAUKEE, Wis., Mark Shilobrit, 34, comedian, weatherman: Yes. If we don't start thinking about the human race, there won't be anyone around. The owls can be moved to another area. There's a lot more on the line for people than for owls. Issues & Debate Editor: Kate Coughlin. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. 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