By Gerard Colby

The Free Press editorial "On track for trade" (Aug. 7) states that the Bush administration won "fast track" authority for free trade "following a bruising battle in Congress." What was that battle all about? The editorial leaves us hanging.

Let me suggest that the battle pit the president against Congress over who has the final say in such vital issues as growing trade deficits, losses of good-paying manufacturing jobs, environmental degradation and oppressive governments abroad. It was, and continues to be, a battle over the future of American democracy.

The new "fast track" authority prevents our elected congressional representatives from amending trade treaties sent to them by the president's trade advisers, regardless of any of these vital issues. This tips the balance of constitutional power away from the careful "advise and consent" authority over treaties given to Congress by the founding fathers, and toward what Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger has termed the imperial presidency.

What have been the results with trade? In the first seven years of NAFTA, the U.S. trade deficit with Canada has ominously grown from 1993's $10 billion to $50 billion in 2000; with Mexico, from a trade surplus in 1993 to a $20-plus billion deficit by 2000. In NAFTA's first three years, U.S. exports to Mexico created 150,000 jobs, but Mexican imports cost us a whopping 385,000 jobs.

In Mexico, often trumpeted by NAFTA and FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) advocates as an island of prosperity in a Latin American sea of "economic chaos," trade with the United States has grown, but much of it is generated by U.S. corporations operating in Mexico and abroad.

These companies have abandoned the manufacturing base of their homeland in search of cheaper labor abroad where workers are often deprived of basic human rights. Too often, these workers do not enjoy even the minimum labor law protections for safe working conditions and collective bargaining that American labor fought for and won in this country despite stiff and often violent corporate opposition. Some of these companies, reincarnated as merged giants under new names, now use such labor in China and the Pacific Rim and transport their products to Mexican and Central American nonunion sweatshops for final assembly before shipping them on to the United States, the largest, most lucrative consumer market in the world.

These policies are encouraging capital investment abroad and deindustrialization at home whereby decent-paying jobs that used to support families are being replaced by low-paying service jobs that offer little future for our youths. The aggregate trade scores for these corporations, reflected in profits in corporate bottom lines, look good for the United States and for world prosperity and peace, much like they did for Enron's books.

NAFTA and similar "free" trade deindustrializing policies have not helped American workers. The average real (inflation-adjusted) wages of young, entry-level workers without a college education (which few can afford anymore) has dropped by over 25 percent since 1980. American women with less than six years in the work force and without a college education have seen their average real wages decline 18 percent since 1980.

We can only hope more Americans wake up to the fact that what imperils their livelihoods is also imperiling the constitutional balance of power that is at the heart of our government's hallowed longevity as the oldest constitutional republic in the world.

Gerard Colby of Burlington is the co-author of "Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon" (HarperCollins, 1995) and is president of the Champlain Valley Labor Council.