The Failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement

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The Failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement In December of 1992, Presidents Salinas (Mexico), Bush (U.S.) and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney of Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Mexican legislature ratified NAFTA in 1993 and the treaty went into effect on January 1, 1994, creating the largest free-trade zone in the world. NAFTA's promoters promised 200,000 new jobs per year for the U.S., higher wages in Mexico and a growing U.S. trade surplus with Mexico, environmental clean-up and improved health along the border. The reality of the post-NAFTA surge in imports from Mexico has resulted in an $14.7 billion trade deficit with Mexico for 1998. By adding the Mexican trade deficit to the deficit with Canada, the overall U.S. NAFTA trade deficit for the year 1998 is $33.2 billion dollars. In the last five years we have gone from a pre-NAFTA trade surplus of $4.6 billion with Mexico to a $14.7 billion deficit. Using the Department of Commerce trade data in the formula used by NAFTA proponents to predict job gains, the real accumulated NAFTA trade deficit would translate into over four hundred thousand U.S. jobs lost. A number of companies that specifically promised to create new jobs actually laid workers off because of the agreement. Allied Signal, General Electric, Mattel, Proctor and Gamble, Scott Paper and Zenith all made specific promises to create jobs, and all have laid workers off because of NAFTA as certified by the U.S. Department of Labor?s special NAFTA unemployment assistance program (NAFTA TAA). (1) These are not the only companies who broke their promise of new jobs. In February 1997, Public Citizen?s Global Trade Watch conducted an investigation ... ... middle of paper ... ...ises. Public Citizen Publication, p.10 2. International Trade Commission, Production Sharing : The Use of U.S. Components and Materials in Foreign Assembly Operations, April 1997. 3. Louis Uchitelle, ?The Economy Grows. The Smokestacks Shrink,? New York Times, 11/29/98 4. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Division of Foreign Labor Statics, ?Comparative Hourly Compensation Cost for Production Workers in Manufacturing Industries, Selected Countries: 1997.) 5. Bronfenbrenner, Kate. Final Report : The Effects of Plant Closing or Threat of Plant Closing on the Right of Workers to Organize, Submitted to the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation, September 30, 1996. 6. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service, ?US Agricultural Consumption Imports,? January 1993 to December 1997. 7. ? New Dangers Make Way to US Tables?, Boston Globe, September 20, 1998.

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