"A lot of that is being inordinately blamed on trade," he said.
While there always is a political tension between advocating free trade and protecting American jobs, "it has bubbled to the surface in this election. You'd have to go back to the `30s to get this kind of intensity. It's really quite surprising," Hufbauer said.
A Labor Department office set up to help workers displaced because of NAFTA certified 79,395 workers eligible for benefits in 2001, 112,376 in 2002 and 17,641 in 2003.
Other records show that 80 percent of such laid-off workers were re-employed within 26 weeks.
Back on the Democratic campaign trail, Edwards asserts: "It's clear that Senator Kerry and I have a very different record on trade," noting that Kerry voted for NAFTA while he opposed it.
Retorts Kerry: "He wasn't in the Senate back then. I don't know where he registered his vote, but it wasn't in the Senate."
Edwards argues that he opposed it all along and campaigned against it in his 1998 Senate race.
But the one-term senator acknowledges there is no documentation on his position before 1998, while he was working as a plaintiff's trial lawyer.
But news accounts at the time show it was not a major issue because both Edwards and then-incumbent Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth both opposed NAFTA.
Even though he voted for the measure giving China most-favored trading status, Edwards voted against free trade pacts with Singapore, African and Caribbean nations.
Both Edwards and Kerry say future trade agreements should provide labor and environmental protections.
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