George,

NAFTA is the bete noire of politics in today's South. I don't yet have a firm position on it, but I have been working certain trade themes into my stump speeches. I am not yet sure that using NAFTA as whipping boy is very productive. It's not going away, and is on the verge of being expanded. As the article on Mexico indicates, in the race to the bottom being only a relatively low wage economy is a perilous position.

In Virginia, we have to look beyond that myopia to more productive occupations. Still, if all we could ever want as consumers is produced dirt cheap in China and sold dirt cheap at Walmart, what will our workers produce? Care-workers for old folks? Telemarketing? Distribution?

I think we may see a marked decline in our standard of living, even with cheap goods, until we find new ways to prosper. A global economy is truly a new thing and we will see a sharing of our historic prosperity with the billions of the rest of the world's workers. We have legislated away our ability to protect US prominence (the WTO) in the so far vain hope that we can continually reinvent ourselves to remain competitive. Some will, but many can't, and we must be prepared to redistribute prosperity, at least here at home, if there is to be any social justice.

Al Weed (electronic mail, December 14, 2003)

For related pieces, see also Al Weed Comments on Free Trade, Bush Tax Cuts and NAFTA and Al Weed's Remarks at the Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner.