{{950823 - added overlapping speaker at ~120 sec}} {{950823 - fixed overlapping speaker at ~485 sec}} {{ Corrections: 951003 JGF, Converted acronyms to have periods, escaped punctuation }} A: [music/] From Los Angeles, this is Marketplace B: Yes or no? Will we or won\'t we? The end of the road. Congress votes on the North American Free Trade Agreement. One commentator enjoyed a brief spate of fame when he became a bestselling author. But now he\'s back to being old what\'s his name. And exports to Europe are helping the American coal industry to continue steaming along. [audio_change] X: We have much more efficient operations here. We have much cleaner coal here. Uh, the dirtiest that we have is still even significantly better than than uh than what many other countries in the world have. [audio_change] B: This is Marketplace. A: Marketplace is produced by K\. U\. S\. C\. at the University of Southern California for American Public Radio and is made possible by G\. E\.. From power systems to plastics, to financial services. G\. E\., we bring good things to life. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public radio stations nationwide. B: It\'s Wednesday, November seventeenth. I\'m David Brancaccio. Here\'s some of what\'s happening in business and the world. Divisive to the end. The debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement came down to the wire today with no let-up in the fervor of the arguments on either side. One independent count shows the Clinton Administration with enough votes to win on NAFTA today in the House of Representatives, with five votes to spare. Speaking at the White House, Treasury Secretary [/music] Lloyd @Bensen was optimistic but refused to confirm that number. [audio_change] C: I\'ll believe that when I see it. Uh, you got some leaners in that one. Uh, so I want to be sure that they walk right up there and make their vote. You\'re going to see quite a bit of milling around right at the last, I\'ll bet. Uh, as they look at that count. # So I think we\'re going to win it, # AA: # just follow # C: but I think it\'s going to be very close. [audio_change] B: One of the staunchest voices against the treaty, Texas businessman Ross Perot, again accused the administration of winning NAFTA votes by making expensive promises to lawmakers, calling it the biggest purchase of votes in history. One ally, Republican Congressman Gerald Solomon of New York, produced a list of trade-offs that he claims totaled billions of dollars to buy votes for the treaty. Treasury Secretary @Bensen said that was hogwash. [audio_change] C: I think when we end up there\'s no net cost to the Treasury. [audio_change] B: Within the House Chamber, eight hours were scheduled for formal debate on the trade agreement. John Lewis, Democrat from Georgia, was among those who tried to deep-six NAFTA, arguing on the House floor that the trade agreement does little to protect the rights of U\. S\. or Mexican workers. [audio_change] D: If we pass this NAFTA, we will be sending a message to the American people that human rights can be bought and sold like packaged goods over a store counter. Let me say again, I am for trade, but I\'m not for trade at any cost, at any price. I say with this NAFTA, the price is too high. It costs too much. [audio_change] B: Many of the arguments for the trade agreement borrowed from the White House\'s marketing strategy, stressing that change can come if fact conquers fear. Congressman Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. [audio_change] E: We\'ve heard a lot of economists quoted on the floor today. I\'d like to quote another counselor. His name was Bob Dylan. And he wrote thirty years ago, "You\'d better start swimming, or you\'ll sink like a stone." Our economic times are truly changing. Our future is in global competition. Expanded trade is an opportunity. It is not a reason to panic. We have the most productive workers in the world. We have the best farmers and we are blessed with natural resources other nations would long for. America need not apologize. America can compete. NAFTA gives us a new market. A new opportunity and a new challenge. [audio_change] B: Richard Durbin of Illinois. The NAFTA campaign has allowed President Clinton to build new bridges to political enemies in the grand old party, but at what cost to his more traditional alliances with organized labor, those unions that found the trade agreement so execrable Washington editor John @Dimsdale has the story. [audio_change] F: Organized labor was part of the coalition that put Bill Clinton in the White House. But to get NAFTA through Congress, Clinton has turned his back on labor\'s objections and is relying more on Republicans than Democrats, and many of the pro-NAFTA Democrats come from states that voted for George Bush in nineteen ninety-two. The President of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, Jeff @Foe, says Clinton has abandoned his base of support, and with no prospect of job growth in the future, @Foe calls the threat to the president\'s re-election chances ominous. [audio_change] G: You know, every time a factory closes in the United States, uh whether it moves to Mexico or not, it\'s going to be blamed on NAFTA. That\'s exactly what happened in Canada. Uh, the progressive Conservative party bulldozed uh NAFTA through and the Free Trade Agreement through with the United States. Uh, a few years later, the progressive Conservatives ended up with just two members of the House of Parliament. [audio_change] F: Jeff @Foe sees another potential problem for Clinton\'s labor relations. In the name of deficit reduction, @Foe says the administration will cut funding for worker training programs designed to give American workers a place in the global competitive economy. I\'m John Dimsdale in Washington. [audio_change] B: In Mexico, expectations ran high today that NAFTA will pass into U\. S\. law. @B\. @B\. @Crouse reports from Mexico City. [audio_change] H: Headlines in all the major morning newspapers were hopeful, reporting that momentum in the Congress was beginning to shift in NAFTA\'s favor. Good news about NAFTA always seems to send the Mexican stock market soaring, as it did following last week\'s debate. But even the slightest pessimism about the treaty can turn that around, as it did today. NAFTA\'s backers believe its [static/] passage will [/static] lock in investor confidence toward Mexico, and they fear the repercussions its defeat might bring, not the least of which could be a market crash and a devaluation of the peso. Although a spokesperson for the Mexican president\'s office says Mister Salina will not be watching the Congressional debate or the vote, the future of both his political party and his sweeping economic reforms package hangs in the balance. In Mexico City, this is @B\. @B\. @Crouse. [audio_change] B: Today, prices on the Mexican stock market ended up dropping almost eleven points under a half percent, as profit takers sought to take advantage of what they regarded as a pretty sure win for NAFTA. There are further signs today that the U\. S\. economy is continuing to grow, this time from the construction industry. Housing starts for October were up two point seven percent, to the highest level in nearly four years. [audio_change] I: Housing starts look very nice after uh two years of saying it\'s coming, it\'s finally here, I think. [audio_change] B: David Blitzer, Chief Economist at Standard and Poor\'s. And that\'s the top of our news [music/] for Wednesday, November seventeenth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down almost six and a half points. Details when we do the numbers. Later on tonight\'s program, the @Apex Summit in Seattle is getting a lot of press this week. But one economist believes such meetings are just a waste of time. Coming up next, is all the recent Japan and Europe-bashing associated with NAFTA justified? This is Marketplace. [pause] [audio_change] J: At the Foreign Desk, I\'m George @Lewinsky. The administration\'s campaign to win the NAFTA vote is going to be a costly one. It\'s already cut expensive deals with individual politicians. As one member of Congress charged this morning, the White House handed out more pork in five days than Congress could manage in five years. The campaign may also cost the administration [/music] some goodwill abroad. [audio_change] K: If we say no to NAFTA, the champagne corks will be popping all over Japan and Europe. And we\'ll be crying in our beer. Because if we don\'t take the deal, they will. # America needs NAFTA (( )) # [audio_change] J: # Lee Iacocca, Vice President Gore, President Clinton. # All have warned that Japan and Europe are poised to steal Mexico away from the United States. Yoshi @Kumouri is Washington Bureau Chief of Tokyo\'s @Sankei newspaper. He says that\'s untrue and unfortunate. [audio_change] L: Most of us were just surprised to see this scare scare tactics. It is certainly one thing to to suggest that the Europeans as well as Japanese would uh probably make some benefit out of the possible collapse of ((the)) NAFTA, but that it would be quite another to suggest that the Japanese as well as Europeans are waiting or somehow conspiring to to see that uh happen. [audio_change] J: And what does this tell Japanese about the administration and American businesses' attitudes? [audio_change] L: Bluntly, I think the j- image in my of Japan among them is quite uh negative, ((and)) that\'s the reason that the uh the old Mister Clinton own to Mr\. Iacocca uh, have decided to use Japan as a sort of bogeyman uh in in the context of this NAFTA NAFTA debate. And that can be attributed to the this uh almost perennial uh trade uh deficit that United States has been suffering uh with regard to Japan. Uh, but uh I don\'t think Japan is as uh nearly as aggressive or they are conspiring as it has been portrayed. [audio_change] J: The government of Japan is on record as welcoming NAFTA. Japanese business has long believed it\'s a done deal. @Kumouri also points out that Japan\'s recession is so deep, it\'s investments abroad are turning out so sour, that Japanese corporations are licking their wounds and don\'t have the stomach for any kind of push into Mexico or anywhere else. Portraying Japan as a bogeyman also gives ammunition to powerful interest groups in Japan who don\'t want to see the country opened up to foreign goods and the economy deregulated. Bogeymen aren\'t engaged; they\'re eliminated. In Europe, business, politics, and labor are united, too. They want NAFTA. [audio_change] M: This is Stephen Beard in London. If NAFTA fails, European companies might have a better chance of selling into Mexico. But without NAFTA, a bigger prize might be lost. Richard Bates, Director of the International Chamber of Commerce, says Europe certainly won\'t be cracking open the bubbly if Congress throws the treaty out. [audio_change] N: If NAFTA fails, that would be sending signals out to the rest of the world that the United States is turning protectionist. And that would be very bad news, indeed, for the successful conclusion of the Uruguay round. [audio_change] M: European business, says Mister Bates, is much more concerned about the resolution of the Uruguay round of the GATT World Trade Talks. The failure of NAFTA would only serve to encourage the most vehement opponents of the GATT, like the French farmers. European shares and bonds are likely to fall if the agreement\'s voted down. Markets fear that the failure of NAFTA and of GATT would lead to higher inflation and falling trade. But economics isn\'t the only concern, says Clive @Crooke, Deputy Editor of the Economist magazine. [audio_change] O: Although in Europe opinions are divided on whether Clinton is such a good thing, uh nonetheless, I think most people would agree it is a bad thing to have a president who is weakened. [audio_change] M: Many Europeans feel that American fears over NAFTA are misplaced. Western Europe, after all, embarked on exactly the same process of lowering tariff barriers between neighbors more than thirty years ago. None of the member states of the European Community seems to have suffered. Alex @McLaughlin is head of trade relations for the British Computer Giant, I\. C\. L\.. [audio_change] P: The European Community and the growth of an internal market within Europe has been a major source of expanding the European economy, particularly in the weaker states. So the weaker states of the United States, the weaker parts of the United States economy, would be those that would benefit most. [audio_change] M: Governments, business leaders, and labor unions in Europe are hoping that NAFTA will pass. In reference to the slogan on President Clinton\'s baseball cap, one newspaper headline in Britain this week read, "NAFTA: They have to or it\'s splat for the GATT." In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace. [music/] [pause] [audio_change] B: By now, you\'re probably familiar with the rituals of international economic conferences like the @Apex meeting that formally began today in Seattle [/music]. Leaders gathered to talk, dine, pose for pictures, and make solemn statements about how to stimulate the world economy and how to open each other\'s markets. They pontificate about the importance of international economic cooperation, and each nation\'s press duly reports how smart and successful their leader was in delivering his message to the others. But is this what\'s really going on? We asked international economist Paul @Krudman to fill us in. [audio_change] Q: Let me start by telling you a true story. Last spring, a few months before Bill and Francois and Helmut and the others got together for their big G Seven Summit in Tokyo, the White House delivered an edict to its bureaucracy. Give us some numbers proving how much international cooperation could help our economy. The numbers guys, the hardworking people who really know the data, were told to estimate how much a one hundred billion dollar Japanese stimulus package would raise U\. S\. exports. Their answer? Three to four billion dollars. The White House was not pleased. That\'s not enough. Get us a bigger number, it ordered. What was that about? Few people will ever admit what many know and even more suspect. That the White House wanted to believe, or at least wanted the public to believe, that the Tokyo meeting was actually important. High level international meetings are fun and they make great photo opportunities. But as George Bush found to his cost, the American public gets mad if it feels that you like jet-setting for its own sake. So the current administration wanted to be able to say that all those steak dinners were really about creating jobs. But the basic fact is that even in today\'s global economy, creating jobs is overwhelmingly a domestic affair. For example, the European community spends only about two percent of its G\. N\. P\. on U\. S\. goods and services. That means that when Europe spends a franc on job creation, only a few centimes spill over to American workers. The same is true for Japan, which is, of course, the reason the numbers crunchers gave the White House that answer it didn\'t like. By the way, my sources tell me that the numbers guys stood by their estimate. But it didn\'t matter. The reporters who followed the President to Tokyo were only too happy to help create the illusion of an important event. After all, they like going to fancy international conferences, too. So, by all means, listen to the speeches, watch the ceremonies, and read the pontifications of the pundits coming out of Seattle the next few days. But remember that it\'s mainly theater and that nothing much is really going on. From the Boston Bureau at W\. G\. B\. H\., this is Paul @Krudman for Marketplace. [audio_change] B: Paul @Krudman is an economics professor at M\. I\. T\. who specializes in international trade. [pause] [music/] Now it\'s time to check on the day\'s corporate [/music] news. New York Editor Marty Goldenson has his corporate pin stripes on. [audio_change] R: As of our deadline, twenty-one thousand American Airlines flight attendants are still scheduled to strike tomorrow morning at six A\. M\.. But talks continue in New Orleans. The workers are demanding a raise and they oppose American\'s plan to have them pay post-retirement medical benefits. Airline spokesman Joe @Crawley claims American will be in the air no matter what, and anticipates that lots of attendants would ignore a strike call, which may be wishful thinking. He advises ticketed passengers to show up at the gate. But will the planes actually leave those gates? [audio_change] S: And when the flight attendants show up, well, then, we will take off. If they if we don\'t have a uh the minimum amou- amount that\'s required by the F\. A\. A\., then we won\'t take off. [audio_change] R: According to New York\'s attorney general, Sylvania has agreed to change the packaging and advertising on their energy saver light bulbs. The A\. G\. says Sylvania gave the impression that its bulbs were high-tech, power-saving inventions. But the hundred-watt replacement was a ninety-watt bulb dressed up in a green box, says the A\. G\.. Two European corporate giants are expanding in China. B\. M\. W\. has opened a three hundred thousand dollar showroom in Beijing, and Unilever has set up yet another joint venture in China, on the heels of their ice-cream-making operation there. Actually, the new venture capitalizes on their ice-cream venture; they\'re getting into the toothpaste business with the Shanghai Toothpaste Company. Decay and defense from the decadent West. At the Marketplace oral history desk in New York, I\'m Marty Goldenson. [audio_change] B: Thanks, Marty. Coming up on the program, it\'s bad for the environment, and many of the workers are on strike, so why is the American coal industry doing so well? First, let\'s do the numbers. [music/] [pause] Traders around the world had their eyes on that debate in Washington today over a certain trade agreement whose name we can\'t bear to mention yet again. But even predictions during the day that the president would pull through with a victory this evening weren\'t enough to sustain yesterday\'s record close in New York. The Dow fell just over six points today, closing at thirty-seven oh four. The NASDAQ composite index also fell by one point two percent in heavy trading. But in London, the FTSE climbed, ending the day up about seven tenths of a percent. Tokyo\'s stock market went back to its usual today, after yesterday\'s uncharacteristic surge, the NIKKEI slid three quarters of a percent. And Hong Kong\'s generally jittery market performed true to form. NAFTA fears and another round of Sino-British talks over the island city sent the @Hangsang index tumbling by almost two percent today. You\'re listening to Marketplace on A\. P\. R\. [/music], American Public Radio. [music/] T: Marketplace coverage of Japan is made possible in part by the American Public Radio Fund, whose contributors include the Japan Foundation\'s Center for Global Partnership. If you\'d like to comment on today\'s program, we\'d like to hear from you. Send us a card or letter. Our address is Marketplace Radio, Los Angeles, California, Nine O O eight nine. That\'s Marketplace Radio, Los Angeles, California, nine O O eight nine. [/music] [audio_change] B: In thirteen O seven, the king of England issued the first environmental edict against coal. And today the coal industry must still defend itself against critics of strip mining and carbon dioxide emissions. Compounding these issues is the seven-month-long strike by the United Mine Workers against the big coal operators. Even with these labor and environmental troubles, the coal industry is plugging along. Susan Morris has more. [audio_change] [factory noise/] U: Outside the gates of the @Enlo @Fork Mine in @Green County in Southwestern Pennsylvania, a group of striking mine workers is huddled under a makeshift tent. They\'re sitting around a table talking and playing poker to pass the time. These men are among the fourteen thousand United Mine Workers on strike against the Bituminous Coal Operators of America, the largest organization of mine owners in the country. The workers say the big coal operators are trying to destroy the U\. N\. W\. by hiring non-union workers in their new mines. This is intolerable, says union member Greg King. [audio_change] V: Thing is, you given \'em all these years, fifteen, twenty years, you produce coal for `em, you\'ve mined it safely, and y- you you all a- you do a good job, and then after this mine\'s shut down, they\'re saying like, the hell with you! You\'ve got families, you\'ve got kids you want to put through college. And what are you supposed to do? They\'re going to be awful disappointed if they Well, they\'re never going to break us, but if they ever could. But it\'s not going to happen. As long as it takes, we\'ll be here. [audio_change] U: The strike, which has cut profits substantially, is just one of the latest challenges facing coal operators. Environmentalists have long blamed fuel for emitting the carbon dioxide that they say causes global warming. And Jim McKenzie [/factory noise] of the World Resources Institute in Washington, D\. C\., says the fuel has other environmental problems. [audio_change] W: It has a lot of sulphur in it, and accounts for the uh almost all of the uh acid rain uh from sulphates in the Eastern part of the country. So it\'s a bad ((actor)) from the point of view of uh air quality as well. Lastly, uh the mining of coal is uh very difficult and very uh damaging environmentally. Uh in the Eastern part of the country it leads to um uh acid drainage uh and uh uh subsidence, a- the West the- it does uh, you know, it requires a great deal of strip mining of uh Western arid lands. And then there is a safety problem too. Many miners die each year. [audio_change] U: With all these hurdles, you\'d think coal would be on the ropes, but coal has actually experienced a resurgence in the last few years. Today sixty percent of the country\'s electricity is generated by coal. One of the main reasons is its low price. Unlike its competition, coal has comparatively low exploration costs and, with long-term contracts, its prices stay relatively stable. The United States Department of Energy predicts that in the next fifteen years, coal will be eight times cheaper than natural gas and oil. @Raphael @Velagrande is a coal analyst and senior vice president of Lehman Brothers in New York. He says that prospects look good for the coal industry. [audio_change] X: We\'re the second largest exporter of coal in the world, and we have a we\'re in a position to uh to increase that uh that uh market share over the future years, particularly by some opportunities that are being presented in Europe as they downsize their inefficient uh, very, very dirty coal production. We have much more efficient operations here, we have much cleaner coal here. Uh, the dirtiest that we have is still even significantly better than than uh than what many other countries in the world have. [audio_change] U: Other reasons why coal is doing so well are that in recent years, the industry has cut labor costs, become more efficient, and produced a cleaner, lower-sulphur coal, forced to do so by the Clean Air Act of nineteen ninety. These measures have paid off. Today many of the large electric plants under development in the country are designed to burn coal. Nonetheless a study, done by an independent polling concern, shows that sixty percent of the public opposes any increase in the use of coal. The vice president of @Console Incorporated, Tom Hoffman, says consumers do not understand the importance of coal in the United States. [audio_change] Y: No source of power is without its problems. But we rely to an extraordinary extent in this country on coal. It is a, it is the fuel supply we have in greatest abundance in this country, it it we can supply all of our needs indigenously, we don\'t have to rely on foreign sources to to get that coal. Uh but I don\'t see any way that this country can simply walk away from uh coal. It\'s it\'s too embedded in our in our economy, and too embedded in the way in which we generate uh energy, particularly electricity, uh for us to just turn our shoulder. I think coal\'s going to be with us a long time. [audio_change] U: It\'s unlikely the coal industry will ever experience the kind of profitability it did in the early nineteen eighties, but industry [music/] executives and analysts predict a modest increase in coal\'s growth once the strike with United Mine Workers is settled. For Marketplace, this is Susan Morris reporting. [pause] B: Lots of people dream about writing a book that makes it big and earns them a fortune. Well, Marketplace contributor Ivan Goldman recently lived that dream, [/music] at least part of it. [audio_change] Z: Here\'s how it happened. I was chained, day after day, to the Dickensian computer terminal of a big city newspaper owned by one of the media giants. When one day the giants snapped my leg irons. I was thrown out on the street by a merger, just like that, free from bondage. But also from a paycheck. Through miraculous luck, I immediately landed a book contract. To make my deadline, I toughed it through a long string of late night, caffeine-fueled writing marathons. After publication, delirious joy. I watched the fruit of my labors catapult to the bestseller list. I made the talk show circuit. One of my makeup people used to do Carson. As would any self-respecting author under the circumstances, I called the eight hundred number and bought that set of Ginsu knives I\'d always wanted. Then my wife and I threw a book party, invited everyone we could think of, and they all showed up. There was no mistake now. Things were different. Instead of being perceived as a wage-slave schnook, I was a man of substance. An author @schnook. I took my family to Europe. When we returned, the mail-order knives were waiting. We live on one of those Leave It to Beaver suburban streets. The neighbors didn\'t know how to talk to me anymore. Would I still fit in? I wasn\'t sure myself. Everyone seemed to assume we would now move to a classier street lined with houses of other bestselling authors. Then, my book fell off the New York Times list. Valiantly, it climbed back the next week and fell off again, permanently. Along about this time, one of my Ginsu knives developed rust stops. Then the royalty statements started rolling in. Not only had the talk show host forgotten my name, I wasn\'t even rich. My bestselling book, after fifteen months, earned me about what I would have made had I stayed chained to that media giant\'s computer terminal. Only now, I was stuck with the bills for our European trip and the rusty kitchen knives. From the same old street in San Diego, this is what\'s his name for Marketplace. [audio_change] B: Oh, what\'s his name is Ivan Goldman. The bestselling book he wrote is L\. A\. Secret Police: Inside the L\. A\. P\. D\. Elite Spy Network. [pause] [music] Now a few final notes on the news. Four hundred and forty one years after the first Dutch merchants arrived on the Cape of Good Hope, apartheid has finally ended under South African law. Today president F\. W\. @Declerque and African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, along with nineteen other parties, signed a power-sharing proposal for an interim constitution. Still opposing the agreement is the Freedom Alliance, made up of right-wing conservatives and the Zulu-based @Incata party. Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Seattle for the @Apex get together warned that U\. S\. economic relations with Japan aren\'t as good as they should be. The economic pillar in our partnership with Japan is urgently in need of repair, Christopher said today. President Clinton is scheduled to meet with Japan\'s Prime Minister on Friday. French Prime Minister @Edward @Beladur lunched with @Isabelle Huppert and other French film stars today, assuring them that any world trade agreement he okays will maintain government subsidies to the French film industry. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell [music/] almost six and a half points. Marketplace receives production assistance from the London Economist, @Reuters American Incorporated, and Mead Data Central, providers of the @Nexus and @Lexus information services. That\'s Marketplace for Wednesday, November seventeenth. I\'m David Brancaccio. Please join us again tomorrow. [pause] A: Marketplace is made possible by G\. E\.. From motors to appliances to electrical distribution, G\. E\.: We bring good things to life. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and public radio stations nationwide. Marketplace is produced in Los Angeles by K\. U\. S\. C\. at the University of Southern California. [/music] A\. P\. R\.. American Public Radio.