The decision affecting trade policy now before Congress will determine the pace of economic growth and the extent of our own decline in the evolution of the global marketplace. We have so much to offer to our trading partners in North America. It is clear that the benefits are real. NAFTA will boost productivity and elevate our status in the balance of trade with the European Community and the Pacific Basin. The costs of NAFTA are hidden, however, and the burdens are too real to measure.

As increased international trade and lower trade restrictions will allow us to increase output in the economy and lower the cost of inputs to households we will become less likely to accept and assimilate the deficits of humane relationship and cultural defaults of others who are victimized as consumers and producers in a global village and marketplace. These are victims of programmed quality and the vails of ignorance that we wear as absentee owners and investors in production overseas and far away.

Will Congress vote to preserve our jobs in this country or will Congress vote to preserve our asses? As a trained economist I can pose this question but I can not answer to it. What I can say is this: Given our track record of securing jobs and protecting the environment through economic growth policies we have ultimately chose the surest path for consumers. If the choice is ours to make, the better way is not regulate and promote the economics of our pocketbooks, but to regulate and promote the economics of financial institutions on the physical-biological plane that serve our pocketbooks well. Ultimately the choice is ours to make. Thomas Beaulieu Columbia