Marketplace: News Archives

Tuesday, September 19, 2000
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It's Tuesday, the 19th of September. I'm David Brancaccio.

Chalking up another late-in-the-game victory for the Clinton administration, a bill to make trade relations with China the same as with most other countries cleared its final hurdle, with four-fifths of the Senate behind it. The House already said "yes" so it's going straight to the President for his signature. History is being made here. It clears the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization, and some say it could bring China closer to the West. But normalizing trade relations has taken forever and ran into stiff opposition from both the right and left, says Marketplace's Washington guy, John Dimsdale.

Dimsdale: "You know, you've got liberals who say that allowing China into the WTO, with China's lack of labor protections and environmental rules, lack of laws against prison labor and sweatshop working conditions, that the U.S. would lose leverage to change China's human rights record. Conservatives use a similar argument, pointing out that China doesn't provide companies with protections for copyrights or intellectual property, for example. But the supporters said that the trade bill is full of benefits for U.S. companies, that China is the one that makes all the concessions on tariffs and opening up it's industries to international investors. In the end, they said that engaging China in the world economy is better than trying to isolate them."

Marketplace's Washington Bureau chief John Dimsdale.

Before we go any further, some stock market tallies. The Dow fell 19 points but the Nasdaq composite was something to write home about, zooming up 139 points or 3.75 percent.

In other Marketplace news today, it's not just Firestone tires failing on Ford Explorers. Now there are worries about 40,000 Navigators made by Ford's Lincoln division running on Continental tires. Marketplace's Sarah Gardner is here with that.

Gardner: "Continental said today it will replace the 16-inch tires that are standard equipment on many 1998 and 1999 models of the Lincoln Navigator, a full-size SUV that sells for around $45,000. The tires reportedly have sometimes lost portions of their treads. So far there've been no reports of related fatalities or serious injury but there have been a significant number of damage claims. Continental insisted today that replacing the tires wasn't a 'safety-related issue,' but one of 'customer satisfaction.' The 2000 Lincoln Navigator comes with 17-inch tires and those are not being replaced. There's some suspicion that part of the problem with Bridgestone's tires was size, they weren't large enough to handle the weight of the Ford Explorer and all the stuff people cram into that type of vehicle. Rajeev Batra, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, says the fact that a different brand of tire is having problems on another Ford SUV eases some of the pressure on Firestone and may lead the public to this conclusion:"

Batra: "That perhaps the problem is not with the tires alone but that the product itself, the SUV itself, also has part of the blame to take and I think this does change the strength fo Ford's argument in the court of public opinion up to this point."

Gardner: "Batra believes this latest recall won't turn Americans off sport-utility vehicles but it may hurt Ford SUVs. I'm Sarah Gardner for Marketplace."

The man who stands to get the biggest career boost from beating Microsoft in court is quitting the Justice Department. Joel Klein is the government's top antitrust official and the lead architect over the government's successful case to brand Microsoft a monopoly. Klein, who says he has done what he "set out to do" isn't disclosing his future plans, but would probably have lost his job if George W. Bush wins in November. William Kovasik teaches antitrust law at George Washington University.

Kovasic: "One of the most important things Joel Klein has done is to bring the antitrust division, bring antitrust cases back into the courtroom and restore the credibility of litigation as the central policy making tool."

Klein's deputy, Douglas Melamed, will now take the lead.

And banging away at the computer keyboard for hours on end can hurt your wrists, among other things. Bureaucrats call them "musculoskeletal disorders," or MSD's. The Labor Department says two million workers are affected. Now a piece in the British Medical Journal is drawing attention to an interesting association: people tend to suffer more from MSD's if they can't stand their job. Helen Palmer at the Marketplace Health Desk got a hold of that journal article.

Hantman: "I was working at this job where I was typing emails, memos all the time."

Palmer: "That's Julie Hantman, a freelancer who files for Marketplace sometimes."

Hantman: "I started getting pains in my hands. They would migrate. There's about 17 kinds of pains. There's tingling, there's numbness, there's shooting pains, there's aches. All of that was going on."

Palmer: "Julie reckons it was partly because the computer keyboard was too high, and she had to crane her neck to look at the monitor, plus she was working long hours. The new study from Manchester University medical school does confirm the link between repetitive movements, as in typing, and forearm pain, but says that a stressful workplace with, say, a lack of support from supervisors and colleagues predict which workers are likely to suffer from Repetitive Stress Injuries, or RSIs. But that's not a view universally accepted. Marcie Goldsteen-Gelb, director of MASSCOSH, the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, says it reminds her of the 'blame the victim' approach."

Goldsteen-Gelb: "Focussing on the workers' psychological state as a cause of an injury has very frequently been used by industry to avoid creating a safe and healthy workplace."

Palmer: "Of course, she says, attitudes do matter. But if employers have unrealistic expectations for how much work can be done in a given time, it's not the workers' fault if they can't reach those goals. What's needed she says, is better designed workspaces and shorter hours. I concur. From the Health desk at WGBH, I'm Helen Palmer for Marketplace."

And that's the top of our news for Tuesday. More details on that Nasdaq rally when we do the numbers.