NAFTA Kills Jobs: Mexican Labor Boss

It was 11:34 a.m. yesterday when President Bush announced he would be fast-tracking the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia.

Half an hour later, at a forum on the North American Free Trade Agreement, Benedicto Martinez Orozco, the co-president of a Mexican trade union, told a filled hall at the United Steelworkers Building just how bad an idea the free trade agreements are.

In the first two years after Nafta was signed, Mr. Martinez said, thousands of small and midsize Mexican companies found they could not compete with the multinational companies that suddenly flooded the Mexican markets.

"In the first years thousands of middle-sized businesses closed, and that left thousands more workers without jobs," Mr. Martinez said through an interpreter. "Bigger companies bought up businesses, and we started to see the concentration of industries."