Clinton, Trade Agreement Draw New Fire From Perot : Politics: He charges that the pact will send U.S. jobs to Mexico. White House officials say he is offering ‘misinformation.’

WASHINGTON —  Ross Perot on Sunday night stepped up his attack on the Clinton Administration for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement, declaring in a half-hour TV commercial that the United States will lose jobs and investment to Mexico if the agreement is passed.

“In order to be a world leader, we must be a manufacturing superpower,” Perot said on the NBC network in a program paid for by his political organization, United We Stand, America, Inc. “The Mexican trade agreement must be stopped.”

As he spoke, somber black-and-white messages such as “Stop giving our jobs away” and “Is your job next?” appeared on the screen.

The broadcast also included photographs of impoverished and poorly housed Mexicans, dramatizing Perot’s argument that U.S. companies will shift their factories to Mexico to take advantage of low wage rates.

“The typical worker in Mexico lives in a one-room shack with no plumbing or electricity,” he said.

It was the third commercial Perot has aired since March to press the ideas he espoused during his independent bid for the presidency last year. In the two earlier spots, he focused on political reform and the national debt.

The possibility that Perot could make a difficult fight for NAFTA even more difficult has caused considerable concern within the White House and among other supporters of the agreement.

Some within the Administration have talked with allies in Congress about establishing an organization to provide immediate responses to Perot’s anticipated attacks.

On Friday, the White House tried to stage a preemptive strike against Perot’s broadcast. Three Cabinet-level officials--U.S. Trade Representative Mickey Kantor, Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, and Laura D’Andrea Tyson, the chief of the Council of Economic Advisers--denounced his expected attack as one based on false assumptions.

Kantor said the Texas businessman is offering “misinformation. I think unfortunately, Ross has been victimized by some who are not . . . looking at information in what I would call valid terms,” Kantor said.

But the Administration’s effort carried little of Perot’s reach. The three officials refused to allow their news conference to be taped for TV or radio broadcast, although Kantor offered several charts to support his argument that the trade agreement would boost jobs in the United States.

In his broadcast, Perot used many of the same broad themes he first aired during his presidential campaign. He criticized the secrecy with which the trade agreement was negotiated and said it was the product of lobbyists and special interests in Washington.

“The Mexican trade agreement stands as a monument to the effectiveness of foreign lobbyists,” Perot said.

The treaty would eliminate tariffs and other barriers to trade among the United States, Mexico and Canada over a 15-year period. In almost all instances, the tariffs Mexico imposes on U.S. goods are higher than those imposed by the United States on Mexican products.

Supporters of the agreement argue that this would open up the Mexican market to U.S. manufacturers, potentially adding 100 million consumers for the products of U.S. factories.

The pact was signed in December by the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Submission of the agreement to the U.S. House and Senate, which must approve it by simple majorities, has been delayed while negotiators from the three nations work out provisions to protect labor and environmental standards so that cheaper production costs in Mexico--based on lower wages and lax enforcement of environmental regulations--do not pull jobs south.

Kantor and others have argued that whatever jobs move south of the border have already left the United States without the trade agreement, and that rather than encouraging the departure of more jobs, the pact will create work in the United States by opening up additional markets.

“Both sides win,” Kantor said, although Tyson and Reich acknowledged that there could be “some dislocation of low-wage workers.”

Kantor said that if the agreement is approved, there will be 900,000 jobs in the United States linked to exports to Mexico by 1995. Without the treaty, the figure will be 500,000 jobs, he said.

Administration officials are still hoping to work out supplemental agreements to NAFTA to protect the environment and worker rights. But Canada and Mexico have so far refused to go along with the idea of enforcement provisions, such as higher tariffs, to penalize a nation that breaks commitments on the environment and worker rights.

U.S. negotiators are supposed to meet with their Canadian and Mexican counterparts in June for further talks aimed at resolving this dispute.

But Perot made clear Sunday night that he is hoping to organize enough public opposition to derail NAFTA. He urged supporters to create “snow in June” by sending letters opposing the trade agreement to members of Congress and President Clinton.