"Free trade," specifically personified by NAFTA, is unpopular in rust belt states like Ohio, where manufacturing jobs are being lost to low-priced overseas labor. On the other hand, it's fairly popular in agricultural areas because crops can be sold more profitably in the post-treaty world.

All the candidates have shaped their pronouncements on this controversy differently in different primary states. Duh!

While I certainly sympathize with workers who stand to lose their current jobs, I think we're in an era that will increasingly require all of us to be more flexible about our job skills and our tenure in any given employment situation.

I'm speaking as a person who had a decent twenty-plus-year career in the now-defunct typography industry, and who has been scuffling ever since going through corporate bankruptcy in the mid-90s. There were not nearly so many of us typesetters as auto workers, so we had no politicians on our side when our industry disappeared out from under us. The only message I got, the one thing I learned, was to suck it up and try to adapt. I believe that many other people will have to undergo a similar process for our world to change to the degree that it HAS TO change, and soon.

Our nation, our economy, and our culture have been postponing "future shock" for at least a quarter-century if not longer. Many 20th-century industries and job skills are long overdue for obsolescence. We need to be retooling for a radically different future, and there are plenty of jobs that need to be developed in yet-to-be-created industries related to alternative energy, etc. The birth pangs will be difficult, but prolonging the agony by hanging onto the past is not helping.

One very obvious development that will have to be undergone (in the US) is a transition from today's hopelessly screwed-up medical-payment system. The current setup employs huge numbers of clerical workers spending their days figuring out how to deny customers the medical care they have been paying for. This has to stop, and a radically different system will very obviously be better for everyone in general, but for a whole lot of individuals, it'll mean loss of a fairly comfortable and well-paying job in the short run.

Many of the job losses blamed on free trade should be seen in the same light. The real solution is not to "protect" jobs that are becoming obsolete ~ and "retraining" is only part of a productive solution. Creation of entirely new jobs to replace the lost jobs has to come first, or people will be retrained for opportunities that won't exist.