I was shocked to read in Monday's Post that students from such a progressive community as Athens would give NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Agreement) a big ol' stamp of approval. Particularly after nearly all of the respected news authorities called NAFTA one of the biggest issues in this election because of the fact that Ohio was so adversely affected by its passing. It becomes clear to me after reading the paragraph in the editorial Obama by a nose that the staff of The Post, like many of NAFTA's most fanatical advocates, never read the agreement. According to www.citizen.org, NAFTA is essentially an investment agreement as opposed to a free trade agreement. The agreement has allowed investors ever-increasing favor over voting people and workers abroad. It is a one-size-fits-all agreement that all domestic laws in each country involved must adhere to, also according to www.citizen.org. It does away with protective tariffs, thus allowing, and arguably encouraging, investors to relocate to the Third World where the wages are far lower, and the standard of living is often deplorable. NAFTA and other agreements like it allow companies to take manufacturing jobs away from Americans and relocate to countries where cheap labor is exploited, child labor and other laws are lax, and families are forced to choose between sending their children to school or having them work to make ends meet, while corporations like Exxon post record profits (Exxon posted a quarterly profit of $11.6 billion last fiscal quarter, the biggest quarterly profit posted by any company in history). NAFTA has kept millions of families around the world in poverty and destitution in order to satisfy an insatiable corporate appetite. I implore the staff of The Post and anyone else who read the editorial to reconsider before hitting the polls.
Kevin Zieber is a freshman journalism major.
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Letter to the Editor
