McCain takes free-trade message to Ohio

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - Standing before a nearly shuttered factory pocked with broken windows, John McCain yesterday urged Americans to reject the "siren song of protectionism" and embrace free trade.

The Arizona senator used his own recent political fortunes - a dramatic fade followed by an unexpected comeback to secure the Republican presidential nomination - to illustrate that depressed Rust Belt cities such as Youngstown can rebound.

"A person learns along the way that if you hold on - if you don't quit, no matter what the odds - sometimes life will surprise you," McCain said in a speech at Youngstown State University after meeting the five remaining workers at Fabart, a steel-fabricating factory that had more than 100 employees a few years ago.

Continuing a weeklong tour of what he calls the "forgotten America," McCain called for increased use of community colleges to retrain workers and investment in alternative-energy technologies to replace the manufacturing jobs that have gone overseas, as free-trade agreements have made it easier for firms to move where production is cheaper.

"The American Midwest is more than a Rust Belt, and its economy is more than the sum of past hardships," he said, even as he acknowledged that a comeback "won't be easy."

The hardships are all too real in Youngstown. The city has lost more than 40,000 jobs since its signature steel industry collapsed in the 1970s and '80s. Its population is less than half its peak of 170,000 in the 1950s. About 25 percent of those who remain live below the poverty line.

To preach the virtues of free trade in such a place is risky even for a candidate who prides himself on "straight talk": McCain lost the Michigan Republican primary in part because he told workers there that their "jobs aren't coming back."

During a town-hall meeting in Youngstown, former local labor leader Jack O'Connell denounced NAFTA as "bad."

In response, McCain said again that those jobs were gone forever and he defended NAFTA as an overall plus for the U.S. economy, even as he conceded that wage discrepancies and product dumping hurt U.S. workers.

"I've met too many people who've been displaced as a result of free trade to say, 'Aw, it's all been good for our economy, don't worry about it,' " McCain said. "But I think the adjustment is not to erect barriers and protectionism. I think the answer is to understand that free trade or not, we are in an information-technology revolution. . . . We've got to be part of that new economy, rather than trying to cling to an old economy."