Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 10, 1993 TAG: 9311100177
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From Knight-Ridder/Tribune and The Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Aggressively taking the offensive, Gore interrupted Perot repeatedly to make his points.
Gore appealed to Americans to respond to the message of hope he saw in the trade agreement, while Perot pledged he and his anti-NAFTA allies would not allow the deal to stand.
Perot, straining to maintain his composure, charged Gore with peddling "propaganda" and questioned whether Gore would "even know the truth if you saw it."
Perot frequently invoked catchy one-line retorts to disparage Gore's arguments without engaging them, such as "and there is a tooth fairy and an Easter bunny" and "if you believe that, I've got a lot of stuff in the attic I can sell you."
Gore recalled Perot had once warned that 40,000 U.S. troops would die in a war with Iraq and had contended last year that taxpayers would be soaked from widespread bank failures after the 1992 elections.
"You were wrong about that," Gore said after each challenge. "The politics of negativism and fear only go so far."
Gore also charged that Perot stood to benefit financially from investments in Mexico regardless of whether NAFTA is approved or rejected by Congress and repeatedly challenged Perot to disclose how much he is spending to defeat it.
The agreement, if approved by Congress, would create the world's largest free trade zone by eliminating tariffs and other trade barriers over 15 years.
Gore's calm, hard-edged attacks on Perot highlighted the slam-bang verbal duel before a CNN audience.
Perot brought his trademark flip charts showing what he said were statistics proving NAFTA "is not a good deal for the people of either country."
Gore trumped Perot with his own down-home stories and prop tricks.
He cited a Tennessee rubber worker named Gordon Thompson who decided to support NAFTA because he realized it would lead to increased U.S. tire sales in Mexico. He also said Charlotte, N.C., textile manufacturer Norm Cohen plans to close a factory he opened in Mexico if NAFTA passes and move 150 jobs back to Charlotte, from which he can sell U.S.-made exports to Mexico.
The vice president even offered a disgusted Perot a framed photo of two U.S. lawmakers from the 1930s named Smoot and Hawley, who sponsored legislation that raised tariff barriers and, Gore said, helped produce the Great Depression.
Implicitly comparing Smoot and Hawley to Perot, Gore said "they look like pretty good fellows. They sounded reasonable at the time."
Perot reluctantly accepted the photo, tossing it quickly aside.
Early in the debate, Perot said "36 families own over half" of Mexico and "85 million people work for them in poverty." In fact, the entire population of Mexico is about 85 million people and recent studies indicate about 14 million live in poverty. More than two-thirds of economic activity there is controlled not by big families, but by small and medium-sized businesses.
Perot said Mexican employers were abusive and employees too poor to buy American goods.
"People who don't make anything can't buy anything," Perot said, as he displayed photographs of slums in the shadows of Mexican factories. "Never forget that."
Gore had a chart of his own for his rebuttal. It showed the United States has gone from a $5.7 billion trade deficit with Mexico in 1987 to a $5.2 billion surplus in 1992. "They are buying a lot of products," Gore said. "In fact they are our second-largest customer for manufactured goods."
Perot insisted Gore was peddling "inaccuracies" and said NAFTA would lower living standards in Mexico and America.
When Gore said 22 of 23 reputable studies of NAFTA concluded the deal would generate job gains for the United States, Perot disparaged all government studies as unreliable.
by CNB