Williams: NAFTA has ‘crippling’ effect on city agreements

The Youngstown mayor made the comments at his first public Obama campaign activity.

By DAVID SKOLNICK

VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — Unfair trade agreements have cost the Mahoning Valley jobs, eroded its tax base and will have an adverse impact on the city’s budget, including potential layoffs, Mayor Jay Williams said.

The mayor’s statements came during a somewhat unlikely event.

Williams discussed the problems during a Thursday telephone conference with Ohio reporters organized by the U.S. Sen. Barack Obama presidential campaign.

Williams supports the Illinois senator in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

The call was designed by the Obama campaign to contradict the statements of U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., that she was “a critic” of the North American Free Trade Agreement “from the very beginning.”

While others on the call addressed that issue, Williams didn’t.

Williams said he participated in the conference call because trade agreements, such as NAFTA, have had a “crippling effect” on not only Youngstown businesses, but major Mahoning Valley employers such as General Motors and Delphi Packard Electric.

“I felt it was important to speak out,” he said.

It was the first public Obama-related activity in which Williams participated since announcing his support of the candidate in January.

After the call, he said Obama and Clinton want to renegotiate NAFTA, and if the other countries in the agreement won’t agree to do so, both candidates say the United States would withdraw its involvement in it. He supports that position.

The city’s 2008 budget will be finalized in March. During the call, Williams said the city would lose about $4 million in profit taxes from a major employer because of international trade problems. NAFTA is a part of those problems, he said.

Though he wouldn’t acknowledge the company during the call, Williams and other city officials previously have said V&M Star, which makes pipe for the oil and gas industry, is the company in question. He also confirmed that after the call.

That financial hit and the struggles of some other companies in Youngstown will force the city to reduce funding for economic development and property demolitions in this year’s budget and in 2009, Williams said.

The city is “facing the possibility of layoffs,” but officials are working to avoid that from happening, Williams said.

skolnick@vindy.com