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This is one area [NAFTA, GATT] where I disagree wholeheartedly with the president. I would hate to integrate our economy into the thirdd world economies of Latin and South America.

Yeah, instead lets keep paying higher than necessary prices for the food, clothing, etc that they could produce cheaper, and continue supplying a tenth of their GDP through AID out of the taxpayer's pocket rather than trade that would beneift both of us.

>>supplying a tenth of their GDP through AID out of the taxpayer's pocket rather than trade that would beneift both of us.<<

I am not an economist, so I know I may be missing something fundamental when I make a judgement on this issue. My objections to integrating our respective economies:

1. Millions of U.S. jobs have been lost already to imports or production abroad; those displaced find low-paying jobs.

2. Service and white-collar jobs are joining blue-collar ones in being vulnerable to moving where labor is cheaper.

3. Food safety cannot be guaranteed. Produce is grown in unsanitary conditions, and new microbes are emerging in the U.S. from Mexican and South American food imports. Likewise, I would never eat meat from Mexico or South America.

4. Indirect costs of transporting goods back and forth by mega-tractor trailers, such as reduced quality of life, wasteful energy consumption, air pollution, and costs of new highways or maintaining old heavily traveled ones are not worth cheaper consumer goods, to my mind.

5. Integrating makes our economy vulnerable to what happens in these countries.

6. I don't believe the individual consumer would gain much. When one reads the World Bank and WTO literature, one sees vividly that the purpose of total economic integration with the developing world is to spread our wealth to the poor masses, who have overpopulated beyond self-sustenance--'spreading the dollars,' it's called. Surely, this is a noble pursuit, but not at the expense of the American worker or to the diminishment of our own economy.

I am familiar with the economist's take on the benefits of trade without barriers, but I see no signs of these benefits in America thus far, and the downside, to my mind outweighs the advantages.

regards,
risa