Buchanan, sole voice against free trade?

[Doug Henwood]

J Cullen wrote:
>
>Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. conducted a poll for the AFL-CIO,
>July 18-22, 1997, that found, among other things:
>	* 66% of Americans believe that free trade agreements between the
>U.S. and other countries cost the U.S. jobs
>	* 66% of Americans believe that NAFTA has helped large corporations
>        * 73% of Americans believe that NAFTA has not helped small business
>in the U.S.
>        * 58% of Americans agree that foreign trade has been bad for the
>U.S. economy because cheap imports have cost wages and jobs here
>        * 81% of Americans say that Congress should not accept trade
>agreements that give other countries the power to overturn U.S. laws on
>consumer safety, labor or the environment
>        And for the first time ever, Americans say the U.S. trade deficit
>is the most important economic issue facing the country, above taxes, the
>federal budget deficit, and inflation. In 1993, only 7% of Americans
>thought the trade deficit was the most important economic issue facing the
>country, trailing unemployment, the federal deficit and taxes.
>
>(from "NAFTA at 5: Report from the School of Real-Life Results, from Public
>Citizen's Global Trade Watch web site. The entire report, which is a pretty
>good summary of the case against NAFTA and free trade, is available at
>http://www.citizen.org/pctrade/nafta/reports/5years.htm)

Those questions are somewhat stacked to come up with the results that CTW
and the AFL-CIO would like to hear. According to a 1997 Pew Center poll
<http://www.people-press.org/apw2rpt.htm> designed to compare elite and
general opinion, 29% of union leaders thought NAFTA a good thing, vs. 71%
who thought it was bad. But among the general public, the verdict was 47%
good and 30% bad. Those sorts of "global" approval questions are
notoriously unreliable, but still, I don't think the anti-free-trade
position is anywhere near as popular as lots of people think it is.

Doug