Paraphrasing (Briefing)
Main idea of the passage:
With the establishment of NAFTA and the creation of the WTO, U.S. economic interests were not protected and promoted. Instead, trade deficits and trade-related job losses increased. Against this situation one should pause to think whether the process of negotiating new trade agreements should be sped up or it should be slowed down to have existing trade agreements modified so that most of the participants, if not all, can benefit.
随着北美自由贸易协定的签订和世界贸易组织的建立，美国的经济利益非但没有得到保护和提升，相反，其贸易赤字和与外贸相关行业的就业损失却增加了。在这种形势下，人们应该停下来思考一下，是加快新贸易协定谈判的进程，还是放慢这个进程，对已有的贸易协定进行修订，因而使得大多数，即使不是所有的，参与国家都能够从贸易协定的执行中受益。
Structure of the passage：
The passage can be divided into five parts, the first six paragraphs being the first part, paragraph 7 to paragraph 10 being the second part, paragraph 11 to paragraph 16 the third part, paragraph 17 to paragraph 20 the fourth part, and the last paragraph the fifth part, the conclusion.
The first part presents an overview of the impact of NAFTA and the WTO on the U.S. economy, that is, trade deficits and trade-related job losses, and the intension of some people to put new trade deals on a fast track.
The second part tells the reader the figures of trade deficits and job losses and the comparison of those figures between the period of 1989 to 1994 and that between 1994 and 2000.
The third part tells the reader the job losses in different states and in different industries as a result of NAFTA and the WTO.
In the fourth part the author pinpoints the causes of the trade deficits and trade-related job losses, which are attributable to NAFTA and the WTO: the increase of U.S. foreign direct investment into Mexico and Canada that improved their manufacturing and export capacity; the strong U.S. dollar that makes U.S. export more expensive and U.S. imports cheaper; the WTO’s trade-related rules that seem to favor the European Union and discriminate against the United States, etc.
The fifth and the last part serves as the conclusion, a system of free trade and fair trade is not to be blamed, because, if participants play by its well-defined set of humane, market-based rules, they can benefit. What is to be blamed is the faulty NAFTA and WTO agreements and rules, which should be repaired and rebuilt. And therefore, it is not time to put new trade deals on a fast track.
