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May 25th / 27th, 2007
"An Inconvenient Truth"
This year former Vice President Al Gore won an OSCAR for his documentary
film, “An Inconvenient Truth”. It was a well deserved honor for a well crafted
presentation which raised the public consciousness, and even forced George
Bush out of six years of denial to admit that global warming does exist. This
is not the first issue for which Gore has been out in front. He led a
commission to develop non invasive technology for body searching airline travelers. And, it was Gore who took the high road by not continuing his legal
challenge of the Florida vote count in 2000 (he should have).
But Gore was dead wrong on one issue that has had a devastating affect on
millions of Americans. In 1993 he was Bill Clinton’s attack dog for NAFTA, and
was, on one occasion, sent to do battle with Ross Perot for a special
edition of Larry King Live. I recently reviewed excerpts of that debate. Gore was
cool, calm, and collected, even smug. He spouted out all kinds of
statistics about how NAFTA was going to benefit America, and he had poor Perot (if
you can call a billionaire poor) on the ropes. At one point King asked Perot, “
How does it feel to know that every living President supports this agreement?”. Perot gave a world class answer that was largely lost on the audience. He
said, ”None of them are businessmen, Larry”. Perot also warned viewers
that passage of NAFTA would result in a “giant sucking sound” , the sound of
American jobs being sucked out of this country and into Mexico.
The majority of viewers and nearly every Washington insider believed Gore
won the debate, and rejected Perot as a crazy alarmist. Of the media
darlings, only Jesse Jackson, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader sided with Perot’s view
on NAFTA. And so, eight days later, Congress voted on and passed the
so-called North American Free Trade Agreement. It was the beginning of the end for
American textiles and apparel.
According to the NC Institute on Global Economy, the Tar Heel state had over
252,000 people employed in textile and apparel plants in 1995. But by 2005,
that number had dwindled to 97,525 – a 61% decrease in employment due
directly to NAFTA, including a net loss of 84,000 jobs between 2002 and 2005 alone.
In fact, NC has been the hardest hit textile state overall, but everyone
has suffered, like Ohioans who lost $9.3 Billion in wages as 195,000 people
have been displaced since 2001. And in 2003, just ten years after passage of
NAFTA, the Economic Policy Institute reported what Perot had predicted: that
the trade agreement had displaced production which supported nearly 900,000
U.S. jobs. EPI also confirmed that NAFTA had contributed to rising income
inequality in our nation, had suppressed real wages for remaining production
workers, and had reduced fringe benefits.
Somehow Gore, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, and Bush Sr. forgot to tell us that
NAFTA contained no real provisions to maintain labor standards or protect the
environment , both which would suffer at the hands of greedy U.S. companies
who shut down their plants here in order to hire cheap labor in Mexico.
Back in 2002, our current President claimed that NAFTA had actually created
2 million jobs, but the Great Decider did not factor in the import quotient.
Had he done so, he would have seen that the number of Mexican plants making
products for duty-free entry to the United States had grown from 2,114 in
1993, to over 3,200 in 2002. Put another way, while our exports to Mexico
have grown by 95%, our imports from Mexico have grown by nearly 200%, thus
creating a huge deficit, and the loss of millions of American jobs.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for the passage of NAFTA, but for my
money, Al Gore must shoulder the lion’s share. Just as he influenced us to
believe in global warming, he also influenced us to believe in the benefits of
free trade. Gore is good at influencing people. The problem is that on
that night in 1993, before the largest audience to ever watch a cable broadcast,
Al Gore did more damage to our country than pollution ever will. I can
probably live with some dirty particulates in the air, but I can’t live without a
job.
If we’re going to lambast Bush for misleading us on WMDs, we should also
take Gore to task for misleading us about NAFTA. Gore should make a public
apology to Ross Perot, and especially to the millions of Americans who lost
their jobs thanks to NAFTA. Then, he should lead a campaign to repeal NAFTA and
penalize U.S. companies who shut down plants at home.
Say you’re sorry, Al. Own up to an Inconvenient Truth.
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