Readers Report
Chris Galvin Is an Inspiration at Motorola
The depreciation of Motorola Inc. stock has unfairly been often tied to the CEO soap opera and ineffective mobile-phone penetration ("Motorola," Cover Story, July 16). Motorola is a rare company: Every day, hundreds of millions of people are touched by its products--from air-bag sensors and microprocessors in automobiles to digital set-top boxes to enterprise gateways to home-enabled networks to even yes, those damn little phones. Chris Galvin's most valuable role to date has been to inspire us, and as one of the inspired, I don't care what title they give him.
P.S. My father, the "No. 2" referred to in the article [Chief Operating Officer Robert Growney], is in perfect health.
Matthew I. Growney
Managing Director
Motorola Ventures
Cambridge, Mass.
A Closer Look at NAFTA's Record
"NAFTA's scorecard: So far, so good" (Economics, July 9) fails to include research and information showing the adverse effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement on U.S. and Mexican employees. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda's claim that NAFTA has created 100,000 net U.S. jobs has not been confirmed by other research. Between 1994 and 2000, the Economic Policy Institute finds a net U.S. loss of 766,000 jobs due to NAFTA. My own research, published in Labor Studies Journal, suggests a U.S. loss of 316,000 jobs. Hinojosa-Ojeda's calculations depend on at least seven highly debatable assumptions, each of which serves to minimize the job-eliminating impact of the growing U.S. trade deficit with Mexico.
Distorting the employment impact of NAFTA in order to join the Washington consensus in its push for a return of "fast track" and the realization of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas ("Free trade deserves a fast track," Editorials, July 9) is not representative of your normally accurate coverage.
James M. Cypher
Professor of Economics
California State University
Fresno, Calif.
"NAFTA's scorecard" reveals a worrisome and growing perspective: that the agreement is only a U.S.-Mexico agreement. NAFTA builds upon the highly successful Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) of 1989. Today and for some time now, the two countries have shared the world's largest trading relationship--reaching $434 billion in 1999--well over $1 billion per day. The runaway success of first FTA and now NAFTA can only encourage us all about the eventual success of the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.
Paul D. Frazer
Washington
Editor's note: The writer, a former minister at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, now has his own consulting firm.
The worst grade for NAFTA comes on its most serious goal. Many expected that integration would promote economies of scale and specialization to enhance global competitiveness in both Mexico and the U.S. In fact, despite growth a bit slower than the global average since 1993, North America has seen its deficits triple--to the worst share of total gross domestic product on record. Worst, soaring North American trade losses have come in autos, machinery, and virtually all manufactured goods. If your reporters really are satisfied with NAFTA's scorecard so far, they are watching the wrong game.
Charles W. McMillion
President and Chief Economist
MBG Information Services
Washington
"So far, not so good" is how I would describe the poor state of highway I-35 through Texas, which bears a good part of all this NAFTA traffic. Perhaps this is just a local concern, but Federal programs often don't take into account the hows and wherefores.
Brian Lengel
Austin, Tex.
Silicon Valley CEOs Don't Like What They See
I have felt the same disappointment as Joan O' C. Hamilton ever since the first Valley CEO said they had "no visibility" ("Where's the leadership?" e.biz, July 9). Scott McNealy, John Chambers, Carly Fiorina--all of them run multibillion-dollar corporations, take home millions of dollars a year, and have thousands of employees and the best consulting firms working for them. These CEOs know exactly what they're seeing; they neither like it, nor do they want to admit that they were just reacting to the events of the last two years rather than the visionary master plans they thought they had for the Internet gold rush. Instead they'd rather appear blind.
Arshad Noor
Cupertino, Calif.
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